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“Baby, let’s go,” I tell her.
“Baby? God Montgomery, you’re so cliché.” She shakes her head before tucking a blonde hair behind her ear. “And then after months of sleeping together, and basically living at each other’s places, when I suggested he come to dinner to meet my family, he turned into a colossal asshole. Told me he didn’t think it was ‘ethical’. I assume the thrill wore off. Fucking his co-worker was no longer exciting. I didn’t give him the adrenaline rush anymore. I guess he had to step up his game.” She puts up a finger. “Married.” She puts up another finger. “Patient.” She puts up a third finger. “Neglectful husband whose wife he could fuck right under his nose. Montgomery you really hit the trifecta with this one.” She rolls her eyes.
“You can kiss your job goodbye, Audrey,” I growl.
She snorts. “That’s rich coming from you. You honestly think they’d get rid ofmebeforeyou? I know you went to Harvard, but don’t tell me you’re that clueless.” I roll my eyes thinking about how she’d gone to Stanford, and we had a long-standing competition over which school was better.
My focus turns back to Charley where it’s been for the majority of her monologue. “Are you done?” she asks with the most indifferent, monotone expression, as if she’s bored and not affected in the slightest.Not sure I buy that.“What did you think you’d succeed in doing with this whole “woman scorned” act? Are you kidding me right now? Is this supposed to make me feel…threatened? I’m coming out of a five-year marriage to a man that didn’t pay me the time of day and you’re complaining about a man that you were screwing for a few months that lost interest? Please! And maybe he used you guys working together as an excuse because, GUESS WHAT?” She raises her voice slightly. “He just wasn’t that into you. And he didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” She shrugs. “Couldn’t imagine why though, you seem like a heartless bitch to me.”
Audrey smirks, possibly guessing that despite Charley’s words, she was affected. “Look all I’m saying, is be careful.”
“Is that all you’re saying?” Charley interrupts. “It sounds a little bit like you’re trying to come between me and my fiancé. Which hate to break it to you.” she leans forward and whispers, “you’re failing.”
“So, you completely trust him then?
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”
She shouldn’t. My mind quips.
“So, you know about the women that came before me…came after me…the woman that was… hmmm…” She looks down at the file in her hands and then back at us. “What would appear to be right before you? Who knows maybe there was even some overlap. I’m a little hazy on the timeline details of when exactly you two started breaking all the rules.”
At this point, I feel like I could break her neck, but I settle for aggressively pulling Charley out of there, not wanting her around that woman for another second.
“I want her off the case,” I growl the second we are in the elevator. I pull out my phone to call J.R. when I realize that Charley is looking straight forward and not at me. I slide the phone back into my pocket and slam my hand against the stop button not wanting to move another floor until I can assure that Charley and I are okay. “Look at me,” I tell her, as I push her up against the wall of the elevator.
Her eyes find mine, and though they aren’t watery, they’re hurt. “You know everything about me.” She shakes her head. “Everything about the only relationship I’ve ever been in. I never thought…” She winces, scrunching her nose slightly and I notice the goosebumps popping up all over her skin. “We spent so much time talking about my relationship I never thought to ask you about any of yours.” She rubs her forehead and reaches around me to start the elevator. “I just need to think.”
“Think about what, Charlotte?”
“Was there an overlap?” she asks. “Were you—”
“After we first slept together, I never slept with anyone else.”
“Just when westartedsleeping together?”
“What do you mean?”
“It means according to you, you were thinking about me for months before we were first intimate…were you sleeping with other women to… fill the void of not having me?”
“We should talk about this at home,” I tell her, and her eyes widen.
“Oh my God! You know at one point, I thought that it was kind of hot thinking about you using other women…maybe even calling them my name in bed but now…” she crosses her arms, “I’m pissed.”
“What do you want from me, Charley!? I couldn’t have you. I couldn’t touch you. I had no idea…I had no idea that we were going to get here. That we’d eventually fall in love. At the time, I didn’t even know we’d ever sleep together! Was I supposed to break my dick off jacking it thinking about you for the rest of my life?”
She scoffs as the elevator dings and walks out without so much as a backwards glance. “Whatever.”
“You’re being irrational, Charley.”
“Excuse me?”
“I understand you being pissed about Audrey and the way she talked to you. Believe me, there was so much more I wanted to say, but being in the position I’m in, I was trying to keep my cool. Fuck her. You were spot on. She’s jealous. But are you really going to be upset about women I slept with years ago?”
“Uh, you slept with them less than one year ago.”
“Charley it was two faceless women. I slept with two women when I first started seeing you and Wells.”
“How many times?”
