Page 47 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
I didn’t want to be here a second longer than I needed to be. My bag rattled as I headed for the curb.
Out by the driveway of private hire cars, a cluster of the women I’d seen in passing for years huddled in a half-circle,their orange dresses long gone and replaced instead with casual clothes, harsh whispers leaking from the group.
“…know, did youhearthem last night?”
“Oh, my God, I couldn’t sleep. Full-on screaming match.”
“They were down at the beach, I think. Ryan was drunk off his ass.”
“I swear, they won’t last a month.”
I didn’t slow down. It wasn’t my problem anymore. Maybe none of this ever was.
A driver opened the door to one of the sleek black SUV’s I’d arrived in, dark sunglasses reflecting my face back at me, showing me just how much of a fucking wreck I was.
“You take card, right?” I asked.
He nodded. I jumped in.
I sat in the back seat, arms in my lap, eyes on the palm-lined road bleeding by outside the window. Tulum disappeared behind us, the gorgeous, sun-drenched, postcard fantasy charade dissolving, and all I could feel wasempty.
The driver didn’t speak. The only sound was the soft classical music through the speakers and the thrum of tires over uneven pavement, and the occasionalthudof the faux white orchid hanging from the review mirror hitting the glass.
I hadn’t cried. Not yet at least. It was there, building, threatening me with every breath, but I was too angry to let it happen. Too tired, toostupid.
I said I wouldn’t sleep with him again.
I had said it, out loud, with conviction — over and over, had thought it more times than I could count on my fingers and toes combined twice over. And still, somehow, I’d let myself fall into him, let his mouth end up on mine, let his body overwhelm me, let his fingers and his tongue and his cock in places I’d swore I wouldn’t, let him look at me like I was need, not awant, not agame, not anact.He’d broken my heart. I’d wanted to believe that it was real because I wanted him.
And now he was gone, vanished, not a word, not a goodbye, not a text, not even a fuckingthanks for being something warm to put my dick inscribbled on a note.
Just gone.
My phone vibrated in my lap.
I swallowed, not wanting to turn it over, something that felt a lot like disgust crawling up my throat. Because I knew what it would be. It wouldn’t be aso sorry, something came upor athanks.
I glanced at the screen. My suspicions were correct.
StarStripe Banking: Deposit Received from M. Strathmore.
I wanted to throw up.
I tapped it, staring at my balance with rippling nausea.
$100,242.67.
I should’ve felt relief. The practical part of me, the teacher with an empty savings account that had two hundred forty-two dollars before I’d flown to Tulum, the woman who used to split grocery bills with a man who forgot her birthday, should have cheered. But I didn’t even want to celebrate.
I sat back in the leather seat, the app still open on my phone, and tried to level my breathing enough not to be sick.
Because now last night didn’t just feel like a mistake I’d made or a connection he wanted to run from. It felt like a transaction.
He’d paid me. Not before, not when I could’ve at least pretended it was about the arrangement. No, he’d waited—waited untilafterhe’d touched me like I was more than some pawn in a war with his brother, until after I’d let him in, until after I’d let myself believe him.
It felt like a slap in the face.
You make me feel something.
