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“I told you. Rich ex.”
“British rich and New York rich are very different things, though,” Jace comments with a smirk.
I wince. “He wasrichrich.Dirtrich.”
“Lucky fucker.” Jace flexes her arms and takes some stretches as she winces at the calendar, where she’s got back-to-back appointments all afternoon. “And you broke up with him so you could work bars and tattoo oranges, huh?”
“I left him because he stole something from me.”
“What an asshole. Did you get it back?”
I think about standing outside the prison gates, right before I visited the journalist David Mitchell in his office. I went to the Thamesview Correctional prison gates, and I stood there, my heart heavy as a rock in my chest, and I realised I didn’t want to see Richard Thornton again.
Not then. Not ever.
“I didn’t want it back.” I finish my cigarette and stand, crushing the butt in the ashtray and closing the window to the balcony behind me. Luca’s voice murmurs in my head,Cancer’s an ugly way to die, Lynch, and I shiver, reminding myself it’s only the wind.
“Well!” Jace hisses in a breath as she stretches, her T-shirt riding up to show raven wings peeking from her waistband. “Good riddance anyway, girl. I bet rich people can’t fuck for shit.”
I close my eyes with a sigh. “This one could, unfortunately.”
Jace laughs, scrolling through her phone looking for one of her carefully curated playlists. “You know the best way of getting over someone, right?”
Unfortunately, getting under someone to get over Luca Fletcher-Lowe is a little bit like eating kale salads to get over a heroin addiction.
It’s not like I don’t try, and it’s not like I’m notwillingfor it to work. My desire to move on from Luca Fletcher-Lowe vergeson the desperate, and I try everything I can think of. Older men, younger men, women. Dates or one-night stands. I get one guy to choke me during sex on one occasion, and on another, I get an older woman to spank my ass until I can’t walk the following day.
Except that none of it works. There’s an itch inside me that refuses to be scratched, no matter what I try to rub it against.
The closest I got was at the end of a drunken night out with Jace when we stumbled back to her tiny flat and made out still fully dressed on her bed. That night, I was drunk enough for Jace’s white hair and hard stomach to get me all worked up, and when we fell on her bed with her knee between my thighs, I muttered in her ear, “Still hate you, Luca.” Jace shoved me off her, laughed and said, “Call your ex already, girl, shit!”
I wasn’tthatdrunk, and just in case I might ever be, I deleted his number from my phone the following day.
And when I’m reallystruggling with the withdrawal symptoms of not getting chased and fought and fucked by Luca Fletcher-Lowe, I have the perfect antidote.
It comes in the form of a tall hot Brit with dark hair and dark eyes, and her name is Sophie Sutton.
I knew I’d like her the moment Luca described her to me, but unsurprisingly, he failed to paint a full picture of the absolute phenomenon this woman is.
First of all, for someone her age, she really has her shit together. A qualified lawyer and a Harvard graduate, with a job in Manhattan, a gorgeous flat in Tribeca, and a boyfriend who looks like Calvin Klein’s wet dream.
Second of all, she didn’t hesitate for one second to accept my case when I came to her about Luca’s contract. She even insisted on doing pro bono. And when I told her about Luca’s threat to pay away any lawyer who might choose to help me, she scoffed and said, “Hell will freeze over before I ever accept a single penny from him.”
Which brings me to: third of all, she absolutely despises Luca Fletcher-Lowe. Thisreallygives her an edge as far as I’m concerned.
We have a new weekly tradition of meeting for dinner and drinks in a sultry bar near her office. At first, it was to discuss the case, and then, little by little, it became something that felt a lot like meeting up with a friend.
“How the fuck did that dead-eyed creep ever manage to get a girl like you?” Sophie said to me one evening when we went out dancing after our drinks got us in the mood for it.
She was wearing a clingy black dress and big chunky heels, and she danced with a sort of contemptuous awkwardness that made her look hopelessly unapproachable. When she spoke, right into my ear so I could hear her over the music, I couldn’t believe how good she smelled, hot vanilla or sugar, like freshly-baked cookies.
“He got his dog to catch me,” I answered her, honest with alcohol and amused and a little sad. “That’s how I got this scar.”
I stuck up my leg against her chest, where she cradled it to peer at the raised pink scar tissue through the fishnet of my tights. She looked back up at me with wide eyes like cups of sweet black coffee. “Hisdog?”
“Yes, I tried to run and climb the fence behind my flat, and his dog caught me.” And when she looked just as confused and appalled, I tried to explain some more. “But hedidadvise me to kill him because I drugged him and tied him to my bed and I cut him—only a bit!”
“Youcuthim?”
