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“She was waiting near the door,” I told him in a whisper. “She—”
Hailee got up and sauntered around the couch, moving like a slithering serpent as she walked up to Creed. “Hey, honey. Long time no see.” Her voice came out ten times more sultry than it had sounded when she was talking to me, and the next thing I knew, she was pushing between us to throw her arms around his neck and pull his face down to hers.
I couldn’t watch that, so I quickly turned and said, “I’ll leave you two alone.” I hurried over to grab my bag, and then rushed to my room. I threw my bag on my bed. I should start on some homework, or copy the notes from last week I’d borrowed, but another part of me was so overwhelmingly curious that I found myself inching toward the bedroom door and listening.
Creed hadn’t looked happy. Hailee had looked too smug. Something wasn’t right.
“What the hell are you doing?” That was Creed’s voice; rough, angry, and firm. She must’ve said something to him, something I couldn’t hear, because the next thing he said was, “I don’t care. I told you—” And then his voice dropped lower and I couldn’t hear anything.
I should just let it be. I should forget about it. It was none of my business, and yet it was like something had taken over, and I carefully opened my bedroom door and slipped out. I clung to the wall, inching along toward the living room. It didn’t look like they’d moved from where she’d first embraced him, because I couldn’t see either of them.
This was snooping. Snooping was bad, wasn’t it? Hmm.
“We’ve had the same arrangement for three years now,” Hailee was busy saying. She didn’t sound too happy. “You can’t just cut me out, Creed.” Whatever sugary sweetness had resided in her tone when she’d spoken to me was gone now, replaced by something more bitter and vile.
“I can, and I did. You coming here is out of line.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled when I heard Creed’s voice; he sounded upset. I couldn’t say I’d ever heard him talk to someone like that before, like every word that came out of his mouth was a knife, and he hurled it as hard as he could at her. Vicious.
“But—”
“No,” Creed said. And then it sounded like he was walking her toward the door. The clicks of her heels on the ground grew softer the further away they got. “Find someone else to pay your fucking rent. I don’t need you anymore, so go. And if you try to come into this building again, I’ll have the doormen throw your ass out.”
“Just like that, you don’t need me anymore, huh?” Hailee scoffed. “Have fun with your sister, you asshole.” The sound of the apartment door opening cut into her reply, and if I was honest, my head spun a bit. What the hell was going on?
When the door slammed shut, I hurried back to my room, closing the door and sitting on my bed. I stared at the floor, wondering what all that was about. Just the way they talked to each other, it didn’t sound like they were in a relationship.
But then what else could it be?
A knock on my door brought me back to the present, and I looked up the moment Creed walked in. The look on his face told me he wasn’t happy. He frowned at me, those dark eyes of his radiating something I couldn’t describe.
“You don’t let anyone in,” he said, his voice so strong I knew it was an order. “Especially her.” He said nothing else, turning and walking away, as if that was that. As if he didn’t owe me the teensiest bit of an explanation for what that was, for who she was.
You know what? No. I wasn’t going to sit there and take that.
I got off the bed and followed him. I followed him right to his bedroom. He was in the process of unbuttoning his suit and shrugging the jacket off. “She was there, waiting, when I got back from class,” I pointed out. “I didn’t let her in—she pushed right past me like I didn’t exist. I couldn’t stop her.”
Creed didn’t say anything to that, but I could tell he wasn’t happy to hear it. A muscle in his jaw bulged. He stared squarely at me as he loosened his tie and took it off, tossing it on the bed on top of the jacket.
“Who is she?” I asked. “You told me you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“She’s not a girlfriend,” Creed hissed out. “No matter what she would have you believe.”
“Then what is she?” Did I have any right to ask? I didn’t know. I’d never been in this situation before, so I had no freaking idea. “Who is she to you, Creed?” I added his name to the question on purpose. He’d told me no one else ever said his name like I did, so I hoped it would loosen him up.
He’d unbuttoned the two buttons near his wrists, but he dropped his hands to his sides when I asked that. He stared squarely at me as he said, “None of your business.”
“None of my business?” I echoed, stepping closer to him. “She pushed her way in before I could say no, acted like she owned the place, and was so condescending she made me feel like shit. How can you say it’s none of my business?”
His jaw ground. “Because it’s none of your business.” He untucked his shirt and gave me his back as he started to undo the buttons.
“If you have a girlfriend, why wouldn’t you just tell me? Why not just say, hey, Taylor, I have a girlfriend, and she’s a total bitch—”
His shirt was halfway unbuttoned when I said that, and he whirled on me, stopping me from saying anything else. He took two steps, and then just like that, he towered over me in much the same way Hailee had tried to—only Creed was way taller than Hailee. He was definitely way more intimidating than she was, and yet I tried to hold my ground.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have called her a bitch.
“You want to know what she is?” Creed asked, breathing hard, his head angled down to me. His chest was eye-level with me, his open shirt revealing his smooth, sculpted pectoral muscles. “She’s a business arrangement. Every first of the month, she comes over, and I fuck her until I’m done with her, I pay her, and then she leaves.” He practically hissed out the word, “Happy?”
