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Why did I even go to that stupid party last night?
Why did I talk to Alexander?
How did I not know he had a sex tape of us?
And maybe the worst thought yet, why didn’t I just sleep with him?
I hate myself for even thinking it, hate myself even more because there’s a part of me that wishes I could go back and do just that. That wishes I had brought him into my apartment and fucked him the way he expected. Fucked him the way the old Tori would have, before I started trying to clean up my act.
I never got much pleasure from those hookups, never got much but the temporary cessation of loneliness that came from being skin-to-skin with another person. And so what if I’d have woken up this morning hating myself for going backward, for undoing all the work I’ve done these last few months? At least I’d still have a condo and a car and a phone. At least I wouldn’t be here, in last night’s party dress, begging Miles to have sympathy for me.
Just the idea makes my skin crawl. I hate begging anyone for anything, hate even more the idea of being dependent on someone. Yeah, technically my father paid for my lifestyle while I looked for a job, but it was my trust fund that really paid—a trust fund that was set up for me by my grandmother and that legally became mine over two years ago. The fact that there’s also a loophole in it—one that says he oversees it until I’m thirty and therefore is technically within his rights to take it all away—doesn’t make the money any less mine.
In theory, anyway. In practice, it’s totally not mine because if it were, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting on this bed trying to figure out what the hell to do.
I glance down at myself, see the pink dress for perhaps the millionth time this morning. And suddenly, just like that, I can’t stand it touching me for one more second. Any more than I can stand the fact that Alexander had his hands all over this dress—all over my body—minutes before he leaked the video that would ruin both my life and whatever self-esteem I’ve managed to build up these last months.
I left my bag downstairs, of course I did, but I know that Chloe—or, let’s be real here, Ethan—keeps a robe in each of the guest room closets for people to use. It’s not ideal, but it’s good enough for me. Hell, a towel from the bathroom is good enough for me at this point if it means I get to take this stupid dress off.
With that thought in mind, I push myself off the bed and half hop, half hobble my way into the bathroom, where the closet is located. Sure enough, there’s a long white robe hanging at the front of the closet. I grab it and hobble back toward the bedroom. But halfway there, I glance at the mirror and shit. Just shit. I’m still wearing last night’s makeup, though most of it is pooled under my eyes or running halfway down my cheek.
Jesus. It’s a miracle Miles could even look at me with a straight face. All of a sudden the dress seems the least of my problems.
Embarrassed, annoyed, horrified, I hop over to the sink. Then all but drown myself as I splash handful after handful of water onto my face.
Eventually all traces of mascara and thick black liner disappear, as do the remnants of foundation and fuchsia lipstick. But that just means I’m left with myself when I look in the mirror. With plain old Victoria with her too-pale skin and her too-brown eyes.
My mom always bemoaned my eyes when I was growing up, always told me how she wished they were cornflower blue like her own. I used to obsess about it when I was younger, like some white, uptown version of Toni Morrison’s Pecola Breedlove. I even got colored contacts in high school, hoping to please her. But it turns out that fake blue eyes are worse than real brown ones, at least in my mother’s book, and in the end I had to settle for the knowledge that she knew how genetics worked. If she’d wanted a blue-eyed baby so badly, then perhaps she shouldn’t have married a man with brown eyes, no matter how thick his wallet was.
When my face is finally clean, I dry myself off with one of the towels hanging next to the sink, then hobble back into the bedroom, the robe clenched in my hands. I drop it on the bed, then start the awkward twisting and turning that’s necessary to pull down the back zipper of my dress.
It takes a minute, but I finally get the little tab pulled down enough that I can slide the dress off my torso and over my hips. I’m just stepping out of it—clad in nothing but a pair of hot-pink panties—when the door to my room opens without warning.
And I’m left staring straight into Miles’s wide sapphire-blue eyes.
Chapter 8
Miles
Fuck, she’s beautiful. It’s the first thought that runs through my head as I stare straight at Tori’s naked body.
I mean, sure, it’s no secret that she’s a hot, sexy woman—her bright, brash, in-your-face looks are one of the first things anyone notices about her. But looking at her now, seeing the creaminess of her skin, the light-pink tips of her breasts, the bold patterns of the ink that decorates so much of her torso—she’s breathtaking. Spellbinding. Impossible to look away from, no matter how much my manners are screaming at me to do just that.
I expect her to gasp, to cover herself, but this is Tori, the woman who gives as good as she gets. Who doesn’t back down. Who may retreat for a little while but who doesn’t know the meaning of the word surrender. Which is why—despite what I expect her to do—I’m not actually surprised when all she does is stand there staring back at me, shoulders straight and chin lifted in obvious defiance.
“See anything you like?” she asks after several seconds pass and neither of us moves.
After my first involuntary sweep of her body, I keep my eyes pinned to hers. “I thought you were going to stay off that foot.”
“I thought you knew how to knock.” She quirks a brow. “Guess we were
both wrong.”
Without breaking eye contact with me, she reaches toward the bed and picks up a long white cotton robe identical to the one I found hanging in my closet when I first moved in. She shrugs into it, belts it loosely at the waist.
I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t sorry to see all that gorgeous skin of hers covered up, even though it makes it a lot easier for me to think—and breathe—now that her small, perfect breasts are no longer on display.
“I brought your bag,” I tell her, dropping the duffel bag she’d left in the foyer at her feet. “And Chloe’s slippers, as promised.” I hold up the fluffy pink things.
