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She confessed to me that she didn’t really cook much either. But she said she wanted to make something easy for us that I’d actually eat. And something that would give us leftovers. It took us a while to figure out what that might be, but finally we settled on chicken soup.
We bought a pre-roasted chicken, some vegetables and broth, which I told her was barely cooking. She told me to shut up. I paid for everything. Then, in the parking lot, I kissed her—and informed her that talking to me like that had earned her some especially prolonged “punishment” tonight while locked to my bed.
She kissed me back, breathless with the possibility of what that might mean. “What does that mean?” she asked me, her eyes wide and bright.
“Tell me to shut up again.” I gave her a hungry smile. “You’ll find out sooner than you think.”
She didn’t.
From that point on, she was polite as fuck.
* * *
When we got back to the shack, we washed the vegetables and then she got me dicing them while she started shredding up the chicken for the soup. “So why do you call it the love shack?” she asked me. “Because… you bring women here?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “pretty much.” I wondered if that would bother her. “The truth is I don’t let women stay the night at my loft. Sometimes I bring them here. It’s simpler this way.”
Jolie seemed to be considering that. And maybe the fact that I’d let her stay the night at my loft. “Because… when they see this place, they don’t really know how wealthy you are, is that it?”
“That’s part of it. They also just don’t know who I am, period. I get to be a regular guy in this place, I guess.”
“But you brought that woman, the one who gave you the Lamborghini, to a family event.”
“Yeah, sometimes I do that. Just really depends on the situation. And the woman. Sometimes I just prefer to be anonymous.”
She took a sip of the wine I’d poured for her. “May I ask why she got to know your real name?”
“Because she was grossly wealthy. I didn’t have to worry about her using me for my money,” I said bluntly.
“Yeah, I guess that would be weird. Wondering if women are only hanging around because your family is rich.”
There was something she wasn’t saying. I could tell.
“Is something bothering you? You can tell me if it is.”
“I guess, I’ve just always wondered why you didn’t give me your real name the night we met.”
“I guess I could have.” I thought about it, taking myself back to that night. I wasn’t really in a good mood that night. Not until I met her. “Why didn’t you give me your real name?”
“Because I was torn. Between not trusting you and wanting to jump your bones. And I was ninety-nine precent sure that you must be tricking me somehow. Because, frankly… you seemed way too good to be true.”
I stared at her. She meant that.
So now maybe I could see why she’d so easily believed that I’d been playing her. Because maybe from the start, she’d expected me to play her.
“I wasn’t tricking you,” I told her, looking in her eyes.
“I know that now.”
“I’d had an argument with Brandon. That’s why I took off and walked into that bar in the first place. I skipped out on the engagement party because I was pissed at Brandon and Dad. So really, I probably just wanted to disappear that night. I probably wouldn’t have given any woman I met my name. I didn’t think about it that much.” I studied her face. She was listening closely to everything I said. “I left you my real name in the morning, though. I wanted to see you again.”
She nodded like she understood.
“Do you believe me about that?”
“Yes. I do now.”
“Good.” Maybe she was finally learning to trust me. And not just with her body. “What else is there?” I asked her. “I know there are things about me that make you not want to trust me, still.”
