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Did something happen at work, Cait?
Everything happened at work.
“Because if somebody was mean to my bestie, you know I’ll slit his throat, right?”
“His throat?” I say, trying for a joking tone as I join her on the bed. “Who’s to say it’s a man?”
“So there is someone, then? What did they do?”
I shake my head, taking a sip of my cocoa as a distraction.
That’s a mistake.
It’s still boiling hot, scalding my tongue.
I gasp and quickly place it on the bedside table.
“See,” Caitlin says. “That’s proof right there. You’d rather burn your tongue than tell me the truth.”
“It’s … nothing. I met a man, sort of. Nothing’s going to come of it, but—”
“But nothing,” Caitlin cuts in, grinning broadly. “This is amazing news. What’s he like?”
I suppress a groan. I don’t know why I even mentioned anything. Maybe I think I can partly absolve myself if I share this half-truth with her. But now it’s just making me feel sick, my belly swirling.
“He’s pretty cool, I guess,” I murmur.
She narrows her eyes at me.
“No, not pretty cool,” she says. “You’re forgetting how long we’ve known each other. Whoever this is, my very mysterious friend, I think he may have made you smitten.”
“I am not smitten,” I giggle as if for a moment I can make myself believe we’re not talking about her dad.
She laughs, leaning over and shoving me playfully.
“You are very clearly smitten,” she says. “Well, if you don’t want to tell me any more about it, that’s fine. But I’m happy you’ve got your eye on someone. I was starting to worry you’d end up like Dad.”
She cradles her cocoa and brings it to her face, inhaling the steam.
Worry spikes jaggedly through me.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Alone,” she sighs. “Not even looking for love. After Mom left, Dad sort of just stayed still. Don’t get me wrong. He works his butt off to make his company something he can be proud of. He’s great with his employees. But I’ve always felt like there’s something missing.”
“I guess he loved your mom a lot, then,” I murmur.
She rarely talks about her mom walking out. It’s one of the only things about her I don’t know intimately.
“You know,” she says, “I don’t think he did.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know.” She pauses, blowing on her cocoa. “It’s just when she left, I never saw him upset, or angry, or anything like that. He was just concerned for me, for how she betrayed me. He never spoke about how much it had hurt him.”
“Maybe he just keeps it to himself?”
“Maybe,” she says. “But I don’t think so. I don’t know if Dad has ever been in love, really.”
I repress a shiver, half fear, and half delight.
Could I be the one to break down Solomon Sky’s emotional barricades?
Chapter Eight
Solomon
I try to focus on my work the next morning, smiling in all the right places in conference calls, writing all the correct things in reports.
But everything I do is clouded by her, my woman, my obsession.
I pace over to the giant windows and look down upon the city.
The midday sun hangs brightly in the sky, the first hint that summer is truly on the way, that winter is finally behind us. It’s been bitter cold in the winter this year, icy and jagged.
It’s almost as if the weather knows the change happening within me, bathing the city in yellow heavenly light as a sign of the transformation Sophia is triggering inside of me.
Goddamn, that sounds like some second-rate poetry bullshit.
And yet I can’t smirk it away how I normally would.
The idea lingers and expands in my mind, ringing with the tenor of truth, telling me that I’m always going to be bound to this woman no matter what I do.
“Why does she have to be Caitlin’s best friend?” I sigh, shaking my head and turning back to my desk.
I rest my fists against it, my jaw pulsating.
It’s twelve-thirty. Surely that proves I’m not a complete animal, that I’ve at least tried to resist the urge to call my woman up here.
I just need to see her, to drink in her curvaceous beauty with my eyes.
I laugh drily at the thought.
As if just taking a look at Sophia will ever be enough.
I’m just telling myself convenient lies so I don’t feel like the worst dad in the world for what I’m going to do with Sophia—what I have to do with her.
All last night, sleep danced away from me as thoughts of her thick, gorgeous legs invaded my mind, as I remembered the way she shivered and moaned and then finally screamed, gyrating on the hood of my car.
Deep inside of me, a primal need grows and expands, pulsing like a dance song, frenetic energy consuming every inch of my body.
I didn’t even get a chance to tell her what she really means to me.
