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After he fucked me in his living room last night, we retreated here to the bedroom and wound up going at it again. And again in the middle of the night, because he’s as insatiable as ever, it turns out. But now, in the dimmed light of the morning filtering through his overpriced fancy windows, I’m starting to remember why all of this was a bad idea.
“Listen, Bronson, about last night…” I turn toward him, but he withdraws his hand at once, only to place a fingertip over my lips.
“Me first. Please?” he adds, a pleading light in his eyes, probably because I’m glaring and about to argue in response.
I sigh and roll over onto my back, mostly so I don’t have to gaze into those tantalizing, magnetic gray eyes of his. Eyes that lock me in place anytime our eyes meet. Eyes that make me say and do stupid shit, and forget that I ought to be angry. “Shoot,” I tell the ceiling instead. Fuck, I think absentmindedly, gazing up in said direction. Even his ceiling looks expensive.
“I’m sorry,” he starts.
“Go on,” I say, when he hesitates. To be fair, he did promise me an apology when he sent those flowers. And I don’t think I ever fully heard one last night. Granted, we were both pretty distracted all evening. But still.
“I should have told you the truth.” He traces his hand up to my collarbone. Trails his fingertips absently across my skin, distracted yet casual. Again, everything with him just feels so damn easy. Like a dance we’ve done a thousand times. “I should have told you who I was, or at the very least explained everything when I left. But my father…” He trails off again.
A frown appears between my brows. I turn toward him, prop myself up on one elbow, just in time to see him shake his head and run a hand over his eyes.
“No,” he says, finally. “I’ve blamed him for too long, but it comes down to me. I should have told you.” He swallows hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “I was in a really bad spot with debt when I met you, Daisy,” he says. “Collectors were after me—and not the credit card kind, either. Rough guys, guys who… well. Guys you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley. Definitely not the kind you want to owe favors and large sums of cash to.”
My eyes widen. Whatever kind of an explanation I’d expected for his behavior, it wasn’t this.
But he’s not finished. “I was trying to keep a low profile, but they found me. Roughed me up. Bad.” His eyes finally meet mine, not without a wince though. “They mentioned you, when they were beating me. I thought…” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I just didn’t want to drag you into my mess. So after my father bailed me out, and after he made me promise to return here to LA and retake the spot I was supposed to be in all along, start training to inherit this company… I mean, I owed him a huge, impossible to repay favor after all that. But more than that… I figured it was the best move for everyone involved. You included. Those debt collectors were going to leave me alone after that; they wouldn’t come after you too, if I was long gone…”
I search his gaze, my throat tightening. Before, I was pissed at him. Now, I’m just picturing Bronson beaten and bruised, limping back here to LA. It makes my chest ache. However I felt about him when he left, I never wanted him to be hurt.
Suddenly, I’m not angry anymore. I’m just sad. Sad for Bronson and the life he had to flee. Sad for myself, that I don’t fit in here to his new life plans. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. “I have to leave LA soon anyway. We won’t see each other again after that.”
His eyes widen. “What are you talking about?” His hand tightens around my side. “Is it… I mean, did I… was it something I said, something I did?”
“It’s not you.” I shrug one shoulder. Nod in his direction. “I’ve got things I need to deal with too. Life stuff. You understand.”
“Daisy.” He traces his hand up to my shoulder, my jawline. He cups a hand under my chin and tilts my face toward his. “Whatever’s wrong, we can figure it out together. Just tell me about it. That’s what we need to do, be open with one another.”
I bite my lower lip. “Openness can’t fix everything, you know.” I sigh. “I need to leave, Bronson, that’s all. I need out of LA, I need out of this company—”
“You can’t,” he blurts.
I frown. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”
“No, I mean… You can’t leave the company, Daisy. Not now.”
I sit up in bed, my earlier sympathy and sorrow replaced by fresh annoyance. “You can’t tell me what to do, Bronson. You don’t know what’s going on in my life—”
“And you don’t know what’s going on in mine!” He pulls away from me and runs a hand through his hair, tugging on the ends. “Please, Daisy, you have to stay. How can I make you?”
I shove away too, pushing myself to the far corner of the bed, where I climb off it and start to fish beneath it for my clothes, which we finally kicked completely off somewhere around here last night. “You can’t just make me do what you want, Bronson,” I call over my shoulder as I fish out my shirt first, and start to tug it over my head.
He springs across the bed toward me, and stops me after I’ve pulled it on, spinning me around to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “Just listen, please. You have to stay. I’ll lose everything if you don’t.”
I narrow my eyes. “Define everything.”
“My position, my inheritance, my place in the family. Everything.” He gazes into my eyes, as though willing me to understand.
And oh, I do all right. I scoff hard in the back of my throat and reach up to shove his hands off my shoulders. “I see. So once again, this is about your billionaire inheritance and how you need to run off to do whatever it takes to maintain it.”
“It’s not just the money,” he starts, but I talk over him, grabbing my skirt from the floor and striding toward the exit, snatching my bra from where it dangles on a lamp along the way.
“If you really think that’s losing everything, Bronson, then you don’t know a thing about what real loss is,” I’m yelling as I walk. In my mind’s eye, all I can picture is my mother the last time I spoke to her over video chat. How thin she looked, how pale she’d gotten, when she was normally so tan and muscled from working out in her garden every spare hour of the day. She was getting weaker, shrinking into herself. All while I was out here toiling away at a shitty company to try and make enough money to get by.
And Bronson wants me to feel sorry for him that he might lose billions of dollars that he never even had to work for in the first place? He’s just had everything handed to him on a platter, his entire life. Even that debt he says he got himself into—it sounded terrible, but he had someone to call. One phone call to his father and his daddy leapt in and fixed everything, paid him out from under that debt.
If I’d been the one in debt? If it had been Mom’s medical bills I’d gone to some shady lender in order to cover? I’d have no get-out-of-jail free card. I’d have had to cover it all myself. Work my ass off for years upon years, likely in more jobs I hated.
Bronson’s never had to do that, not really. He might choose to work, but not because he has no other options. It’s not the same. And he’ll never understand what it’s like to be in my shoes.
“Daisy, wait,” he calls, chasing after me into the living room as I’m yanking on my skirt. “Let me explain. It’s my last chance with my dad. I already screwed up a lot when I was younger. I want to prove to him I’m not gonna screw things up this time. I want to be a better person—isn’t that a good thing?”
“You can’t be a better person by ordering everyone around you to follow your rules,” I snap. “And if you think money is the most important thing in the world; the only thing you can lose, well…” I shake my head. “I don’t even know how to explain to you how wrong you are.”
With that, I finish zipping my skirt. I look like a mess, disheveled, stuffing my bra into my purse, with my blouse tucked into my skirt in a way that obviously advertises I stayed out all night, and exactly what I
was doing while I was out. But I decide I don’t care anymore. I want to be home now. Four nosy roommates and all.
More than that, I just want to be away from him. Because he clouds my judgment, makes my head fuzzy, when I should know better by now.
“Goodbye, Bronson,” I call over my shoulder as I push the button for his elevator. Luckily it zips right to the floor—it must have been hovering nearby at one of the other penthouse apartments in this crazy building. I step inside and hit the only button there is, an option for the lobby.
When I glance back up, it’s just in time to watch his face crumple in sorrow. Then the doors shut after me, and I glide toward the ground floor, and solitude.
