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“Well, yes,” I said, a laugh breaking from my lips. “We don’t have to hide anymore! We can be together out in the open and no one can—”
“What have you done?” she whispered, looking at me in horror. “You ruined everything that I’d built for myself… and I let you!”
Gwen backed away from me in the bed, tears streaming down her face, a sight I hoped never to be the reason for. My chest felt cold and I was suddenly aware of just how vulnerable I felt with my clothes off.
“What have you done?”
Chapter 81
“Leave,” I said, fighting back the torrent of tears threatening to soak my face. “Just get out, Tristan.”
“But this is for the best!” he said, trying to make me see some brighter side of my life being ruined. How could my reputation being dragged through the mud possibly be a good thing?
“You really have no idea what you’ve done, have you?” I asked, laughing incredulously. “How could you not understand that you’ve ruined everything that I’ve made for myself?”
“It’s just words!” he cried, as though that would make it all better. “It doesn’t mean anything!”
“It means something to me!” I shouted, my face burning red with anger. “My reputation is everything in my business! And now I have a scandal over my head! How are my clients going to trust my discretion when I sleep with my own client! Let alone the fact that you’re my stepbrother!”
Tristan frowned, though the confusion on his face somehow told me that he still didn’t completely understand. How dense could one person be? I wondered.
“I want you to leave, now,” I said, my voice trembling with and effort not to start sobbing right in front of him. I wouldn’t give him the privilege of seeing me weak. “You’ve caused more than enough damage already.”
“But Gwen, I—”
“Get out!” I screamed, picking up the nearest thing I had and throwing it at him—which happened to be my phone. He was more than lucky that I wasn’t trying to hit him. “You’re just like they always said that you were. Your father way right, all you ever do is ruin everything you put your hands on! I never should have agreed to help you, I should have known better than to think you wouldn’t find some way to make this into another one of your media circuses.”
He staggered back out of my bed, once again hurrying to pick up his clothes and put them on before I lobbed another projectile at him, one that wouldn’t miss.
“Go!” I shouted at him again, my voice breaking.
Tristan didn’t say a word as he picked up the rest of his things and left. It wasn’t until I heard the front door close that I allowed myself to cry.
How could he be so stupid? I asked myself. How could I?
How would they trust a woman who can’t keep her hands off of her own stepbrother?
I want to slap him as hard as I could, make him pay for the way he could just drag someone down into the mud and not once bat an eye. He had the privilege of being born into a life of money and power—a life of wealth that he never had to lift a finger for. I was never so lucky as that. I had to put my blood, sweat, and tears into building my business from the meager little thing that it was from my days at the university. My entire life was in that business, and he had taken a flame to it all.
I needed to do damage control.
I dug around in the bed where I’d thrown my phone, surprised not to have even one call from Tina to warn me. Either she was swamped with handling the fallout or something was terribly wrong. I dialed her up and waited for the phone to ring.
She answered after the first one, and I could already tell she was fighting not to panic.
“Marm,” she said, “you’ve seen the news?”
“Tell me how bad it is,” I said, bracing myself for what I knew would be bad news.
“I’ve had clients calling me all morning to cancel their services with you, marm,” she said, and I could feel the worry in her voice, not just for her job, but for the company she’d help me run for the past few years. Both our hearts were in this business and I knew Tina hated to see this just as much as I did. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how well we’re going to weather this.”
I sighed, trying not to cry over the phone as I did my best to come up with some sort of plan.
“I’ll need to make a statement—a message to our clients apologizing for bringing them into the spotlight. At this rate they’ll all be investigated to find out whether they were slept with as well. By the time the day is over they’ll be trying to make it sound like I’ve been running some sort of escort service.”
“I’ll prepare something within the hour, marm,” Tina said dutifully.
“Thank you, Tina,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’d do without you.”
“You’ll not see me abandon you, marm, that I can promise.”
After I hung up the phone I descended into a mess of tears.
Chapter 82
The music pulsed through me, the bass thrumming in my ears as I watched the countless men and women on the dance floor grinding and pressing into one another to the rhythm. I hated clubs
I need somewhere that I could drown myself in enough alcohol to kill an elephant all while having the excuse to ignore anyone who decided that they knew who I was. I wanted to be surrounded by people, while at the same time be alone with my thoughts.
I sat there as the world moved around me in a constant motion, while I felt like I alone stood still, watching everything pass me by, changing and evolving while I stay the only constant. I laughed at myself
, and at how every single word that Gwen had said about me was true—I would never change, and that I had done everything within my power to make her life a living Hell all for my own selfish needs and desires.
She had every right to hate me for what I’d done, for who I was and would always be. I was a burden, an embarrassment, and if that was who I was meant to be, then why hide from it? If life wanted me to play the Fool then who was I to deny it? The best thing that I could do for Gwen was to stay out of her way—to disappear and never show my face anywhere near her again. I’d hurt her enough, and I was more than willing to put an end to all of it right then and there if it meant sparing her another minute of the pain I had caused.
I looked up from my drink to find my eyes draw toward a woman only a few seats over from me at the club’s bar, her eyes half-opened in a sultry stare that I couldn’t deny was utterly enchanting. She smiled at me, her full lips turning up at the corners like a cat that was about to eat the pet canary.
“All alone tonight?” she asked, sliding over into the seat next to me and shouting about the noise. “Sort of shocking for a guy as gorgeous as you are.”
“I had something of a breakup,” I said, my gaze drawn to the plunging neckline of her dress. “I thought I could come here to get over what happened.”
She laughed in a way that made my spine tingle.
“The only way to get over a lover is to take another, darling,” she cooed in my ear. “And I’m more than available for a gorgeous thing like you tonight.”
Why not? I thought, wondering whether it even mattered at this point if I could ever win Gwendolyn back. What was the point of staying true to her if no matter what I did I’d always be a plague on her life? Maybe it’s better if I try my best to forget these last few days ever happened.
“You think you’ve got what it takes to make me forget?” I asked, trying my best to sound coy, though no matter how much I wanted to I couldn’t stop thinking about Gwen. I’d never fallen so hard for any woman in my life, and now that I lost her it was hard to let her go. “She was the best I’d ever had.”
