This isn’t the start of our great love story or even a friendship. I don’t know why McCarthy even bothered to help me. Maybe it’s like when someone finds a half-dead possum on the side of the road and decides to nurse it back to health for the internet karma.
A sob escapes my throat as I peel off my ruined clothes and step into the hot bath, almost passing out from how good it feels.
The water’s cloudy and filthy as I wash my hair, scrub at my skin, and scrape under my nails.
I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck in my client’s house. He’s mildly insane, definitely, and prone to violence. He has also heated up dinner. A plate sits on a tray on the bed whenI tiptoe into the bedroom, oversized robe wrapped around me.
“Er…”
“Your feet.” He holds up bandages.
I hesitate then sit in the chair, not on the bed.
McCarthy has to move all the stuff, but I think sitting on the bed while your boss touches your feet is not an acceptable client activity according to the Prism PR employee handbook.
I scarf down the plate of food he brought me.
“Did you cook this?” I ask, feeling anxious.
“What did I say about chitchat? And no, I don’t cook.” He holds out a hand.
I look up at him. The bath, the food, the fact that McCarthy was touching my feet—I need to lie down.
The hand is unmoving. I give him the plate.
He turns on his heel.
I crawl into the enormous bed. It smells like McCarthy—salty sea-foam and evergreen trees.
I’m delusional. There’s no way he took me to his room.
I need to make a plan. Except I don’t have my notebook or my dotted graph paper or my markers or my special pens or my rulers. They’re all in Nathan’s car, which is now at his town house, with my dog.
I’m fighting off sleep when, in the dark, McCarthy’s face appears, his eyes a demonic silver in the moonlight through the windows.
“Cupcake.”
“Oh shit.”
“Where is your little dog?”
16
MCCARTHY
“Motherfucker.” The curse reverberates around the cavernous room.
It’s followed by the crash and crunch of me ripping the ninety-six-inch TV off the wall, and I don’t even feel the cuts from the glass as I put my fist through it.
A scream rips out of me, unintelligible. Pacing around the room, I smash the lamp.
What must Jenna think to hear me down here, destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture?
“It’s my stuff, and I’ll destroy it if I want to.”
Even though what I really want to destroy is Nathan.
I can’t control my breathing, can’t control the pulse of fury, the bitterness of failure.
