Page 27 of Hush Money
I wonderhow much of last night she remembers. If she knows what she confessed. If she knows how many times I’ve thought about it since then.
Speaking of work, though, I should probably check in. I do a quick workout in my gym, towel off, and log into my computer while I’m drinking my protein shake. I put out some fires with the non-profit I started, check in with our department heads, and approve some expenses. I check in with my brothers, but there is no news yet.
So I start going a little crazy.
I plop down on the couch again, trying to figure out what to do with myself while she’s gone, but all I can think about is how that icing looked on her perfect lips. How warm and soft her hand felt in mine. How I held my breath when she pushed her body up against me last night.
But just as I feel that twitch in my pants, my phone buzzes across the couch. I snatch it up when I see Todd’s name on my phone.
“Todd?”
“Sir, he showed up at her office today,” he says in one breath, and I feel my own hitch in my breath. “She’s okay, a little shaken up. I suggested that she wait in the car until I spoke to you, but she insisted on going inside. I instructed building security not to let him in, but he’s still outside.”
My jaw ticks as I grit my teeth together. I motion to Mac that we’re leaving.
“I’ll be there in ten. Text us the address,” I say.
I don’t even know where her office is.
It could be in Brooklyn or New Jersey for all I know.
But Mac better get us there in ten minutes or less.
Lucky for me, though, it’s a nine-minute drive downtown.
And when we pull up, the fucker is still sitting there, leaned against his car. The smug little prick.
The car barely stops before I’m out on the sidewalk, making my way toward him. But before I can put my hands on him, Mac interferes, putting himself between us.
“Are you really this fucking dumb?” I ask him as Mac puts a hand to my chest. “I think I made myself pretty clear the other night.”
But Tanner looks a little more with it today than he looked the other night. But the thing about a narcissist is that there is always a way to bring their true self to the surface. You just have to find it. He rolls his eyes but holds his hands up.
“I’m just here to talk to mywife,”he says sharply, and the word slices through me like a knife.
“Maybe you were too fucked up the other night to remember me telling you that you were not to contact her until she contacted you first.”
“Maybe you think because you’re rich that people have to do whatever you say, but this is the real world. And unless you’re planning on buying this road and this sidewalk, I’ll wait right here.”
My fists ball at my sides.
“You—”
“I know who you are, you know,” he goes on. And I stand back. This should be good.
“Congrats. You know how to use the internet,” I say sarcastically. But to my dismay, he smirks.
“Nah, I talked to her mom,” he says. Her fucking mother. If there was ever a time when she should have been there for her daughter, this would have been it. But she failed Evie in this too. “You’re Keaton Everett. Her ex-best friend, who she left when she foundme.Imagine being a fuckingbillionaire,and shestilldoesn’t choose you.”
I swallow hard.
I see me, on that beach with her, realizing it wasn’t going to be me and her.
I see her face, so much pain in her eyes when she told me she couldn’t pick me.
I see her face two nights ago, when she needed me.
And I seered.
