I didn’t know if she was saying my statements weren’t or if she was calling me a liar. Either way, she was wrong.
I brought the flogger down on the sensitive skin where her ass met her thigh. It would ache whether she was sitting or standing. “It is. I’ll put out a statement telling people they’re fucking weird because they are. If that’s not enough, I’ll walk away.”
She lifted her head so I could see pain slash across her face, and I realized how she’d taken it.
“Not from you,” I reassured. “Never from you. From movies. From Hollywood.”
Her body tensed. “But you love what you do.”
“I love you more.”
“No, it… I… It’s too late.”
“It’s not. If you don’t want us to go public, I’ll wait until you’re ready. But if you have a problem with us together, you need to get over it.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She started to shift before freezing.
“You can move.”
She rolled to sit. More tears spilled down her cheeks, and I was pretty sure they weren’t all from the pain of her whipped ass. “Josh… And my dad…” Her pretty face crumbled. “And my mom. My poor mom.”
I had no damn clue what she was talking about. I crouched down so we were eye level. “Start at the beginning.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
OR MAYBE IT CAN…
TRIPP
Iexpected Greer to pressher lips together. To tell me it was nothing. To lie to my face.
She didn’t.
Everything spilled free. The way her ex had treated her. That her parents’ split was because of cheating, but also because her dad was taking kickbacks. That he would be pleading guilty, which said he wasn’t a total piece of shit.
Her ex was a different story.
Greer swiped at her cheeks with trembling fingers. “And Josh saw the videos of us. He said if I don’t get him roles in your movies, he’s going to release the evidence he has of my dad selling Xanax. If that happens, my dad’s deal might get rescinded.”
“I’ll take care of that,” I said, already knowing what I had to do.
“You can’t. You shouldn’t. He might hold it over my head forever, using it to weasel more and more out of his threats. If I quit, he’ll lose the leverage.”
“You’re not quitting.”
“But what if he releases it? My mom has already been through so much. And now that we’re linked, it might blow back on you.”
Her concern broke my damn heart.
I tossed the flogger onto the mattress next to her so I could cup her face and stroke my thumbs across her cheeks. “Poor baby. No wonder you’re so stressed. You’ve got the whole fucking world on your shoulders, worrying about everyone else.”
“I used to be better at handling it. I packed everything away in boxes.” She tried to laugh but it came out as a pathetic little scoff. “But then you came and broke all those down.”
She tried to look away, but I forced her focus back to me. “You don’t need to pack it away. I’m here. Let me take care of you. I’ll listen when that’s all you want, and I’ll take control when you need it. But this bullshit? This is an easy fix.”
“It is?”
“Very.”
