Page 72 of The Lies of Bryn van Doren

By seven-thirty, she’s in a taxi and on her way to Tribeca. Traffic makes her late, but she can’t find it in herself to care. She’s doing the best she can. Somewhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan, she decides she’ll say what she needs to say to keep their arrangement intact. She’ll give him as much of the truth as she can bring herself to share, but she won’t stay. She can’t stay. Surely, he’ll understand. As little as she knows him, she trusts he cares about her in some capacity. She’s spent enough nights in his arms to know that.

Stepping out of the cab, Jessica hurries onto the sidewalk and then pauses. She glances up the length of the building and steels herself for the conversation ahead. She enters the lobby, catching the elevator with another tenant. After stopping on the fourth floor, she endures the ride to the sixth and wastes no time approaching 601. Much like the last time she arrived at the loft after Khalohn, she finds the door unlocked. In contrast, when she walks inside, the room is lit. She finds the man with his back leaned casually against one of the exposed beams nearest to the small entryway. He’s still wearing his jacket, the front buttoned closed, his forearms lifting the bottom, where his hands are shoved into his pant pockets.

Jessica doesn’t approach him. She doesn’t want to be within reaching distance. She doesn’t want to be touched. Staring at him, even with the blank expression on his face, cooling his blue eyes, she’s afraid she’ll break at his touch. Her chest tightens, memories of the previous morning flashing before her eyes against her will. Her gaze drops to his lips, and she remembers the tickle of his mustache against her mouth as she pressed hers to his. For a second, she can’t ignore the ache she feels, longing for the unexplainable sense of calm and comfort she felt.

“You’re late,” mutters Khalohn, breaking her away from her thoughts.

Her spine straightens, and she clutches the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she lifts her gaze to meet his. Khalohn spots the dark circles beneath her dull brown eyes. He surmises, whatever is troubling her, it’s more than lack of sleep which has painted her pretty, fresh face with what he can only describe as pain.

He’s not one to be left waiting. Not for years. Something his net worth has garnered him. Nevertheless, he’s not upset with her for being late. All he wants is Bryn. All he wants isthis—to see her. To touch her, in search of the answers he seeks.

Khalohn pushes himself away from the wooden beam and takes a step toward her, but Bryn shakes her head and replies, “I can’t stay. I’m here because you didn’t give me a choice.”

Her words stop him in his tracks. He wants to go to her, to hold her, but what she’s said is like a reality check. She’s not there because she wants him. He can’t interpret how this makes him feel. It’s a sensation that registers as foreign. All he can be sure of is, whatever’s happening is out of his control. Not merely his reaction to Bryn, but also her reaction to him.

His frustration speaking on his behalf, he says, “You’re here because that was the deal.”

Jessica shakes her head involuntarily, her body’s warning that she’s on the verge of losing it. The weight she’s carrying—her worry, exhaustion, fear, and sadness—it can’t withstand the pressure of another thing.

“Khalohn, I can’t handle this right now, okay? I have to go.”

“You want out?” he asks, lifting an accusatory eyebrow at her.

“No. I’m here, aren’t I?” she bites back.

He extracts a hand from his pocket, reaching up to run it over his mouth and down his chin. When he drops his hand, he spreads his arm out wide and grumbles, “I don’t pay for this place so you can stand there and tell me no.”

Khalohn regrets what he’s said the instant Bryn’s face falls. He doesn’t have a chance to take it back before she begins to crumble right in front of him. All he can do is watch.

Her brown eyes grow dark in anger at the same time they fill with tears. She sucks in a breath so desperate it sounds like a shriek. Bryn takes a step toward him and cries, “Fuck you. Just—fuck you! You wantedme, remember? You don’townme.” She turns to storm out the door, but she only gets two steps before she whirls back around to face him. Tears streak her cheeks, her anger cooling into something else. Something he can’t understand. Her voice sad and resigned, she tells him, “Actually—the truth is, you might ownBryn van Doren, but you don’t own me. Goodbye, Khalohn.”

When she turns away from him a second time, she doesn’t look back.

Khalohn sits inhis home office, staring blankly across the room. His laptop has gone to sleep, but he doesn’t notice, his mind in an apartment across the city. It’s been nearly two hours since Bryn walked away from him, and themessthat defines the five minutes they spent in each other’s company seems to be keeping him captive.

How he felt.

How she felt.

Where they stand.

It’s all unclear.

She said she didn’t want out,he tells himself.Yeah, she also saidfuck you.

Khalohn scrubs both of his hands over his face. He can’t figure out why he’s so bothered. Or, rather, he doesn’t want to go to the place inside of him that holds the answers he’s avoiding. What he has with Bryn, it was working. It was working better than he could have planned. Thinking back over the last few weeks, it’s quite obvious he was satisfied. But it was more than his sexual appetite being fed. He spent more nights falling asleep wrapped around her or her wrapped around him than he had with any other woman in years.

I’m here because you didn’t give me a choice.

As her words circle through his mind again, Khalohn props his elbows on top of his desk, dropping his face into his hands. She was right. He didn’t give her a choice. He needed to see her, so he forced his hand the best way he knew how. In doing so, he pushed her too far. He’d taken a risk, but for what?

He scowls, irritated he can’t shake her; resigned to the fact that he doesn’t want to. Rubbing his temples, he forces himself to dig deeper, to search for that vulnerable place inside of him he’s kept under lock and key for ages. He’s been a man about business for so long, he’s amazed there’s still a part of him that could even contemplate wanting more. Building the name Khalohn Morgan has been enough. The prestige, the money—that comes with the job, but it’s always been the challenge of seeking and finding something of value, something worth salvaging, worth fixing, worthresurrectingthat has driven him. It gives him purpose and focus. A focus he had a firm grip on until Bryn.

He doesn’t know her. Not really. But he sees her. He sees her for the treasure she is. He’s tasted it. Even his own logic questions the validity of his feelings, but he reasons his way through the doubt. He’s been with enough women to know. Whatever it is Bryn gives him, it’s pure. It’s precious. It’s more than what’s between her legs. The idea of giving her up and returning to his old routine—just thinking about walking through the dimly lit halls of Clandestine’s—he knows it won’t be enough. Not anymore.

You don’townme.

I’m here, aren’t I?

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