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Max
Isat in the waiting room outside Cat’s office, bouncing my leg and trying to contain my nerves. I was a fucking live wire, close to going over there and ripping the door down just to see her again.
Her assistant said she’d be another ten minutes, that Cat was finishing up with another client, but it was bullshit. She was making me wait. She was drawing this out, and it was torture. I got here early, wanting more time to question her, but it was a mistake. I should have stayed at home, pacing from one room to another like a trapped beast, dying for the hours to pass. Bunny had booked this meeting exactly twelve days since we’d first met, but it felt like it had been months since I saw her in the glasshouse, eking through every hour trying to get here.
Now I was waiting for her, trying to contain myself, reminding myself not to blow it and lose my head as soon as I was in front of her. I’d gone for conservative, just jeans and a band shirt with a thick jumper. I’d tried to make it seem like I didn’t care, but I might have overdone it. Especially with the new scarf wrapped tightly around my throat. Bunny had made me swap out the ‘tartan monstrosity’ for a more fashionable black cashmere wrap.
Though the bruising was fading, the scratches had turned into pink welts. I still stared at them each morning, tracing every inch of them, hoping to recreate the scene of my desecration.
They were stunning but not enough to distract me from the conversation with Goss. I still needed answers.
The waiting room was like all the other rooms in this place, stuffy, overbearing, with an academic atmosphere the classier pubs we played back in Oxford tried to copy. Only this was the real deal. You didn’t fuck around with these guys when one chair in this room cost more than my parents’ old house.
I clutched the envelope against my hip, containing the contract that sealed my fate. After this, there was only one more step, and I’d be tied to Bunny for years. Before Cat, it felt like it was bearable. Bun and I would live separate lives while she was filming and Clutch toured. Now Cat was here, and Bunny was an obstacle, one I wanted to remove.
When Bun phoned me in a panic this morning, babbling about how she had to skip the meeting with Cat because of a client emergency, I could have kissed her. I’d been searching for a way to see Cat alone, and she gave me the perfect opportunity. Bun told me her assistant had already cancelled lunch, so I just needed to turn up and hand in the papers.
My obsession with Cat had cracked me open, and I couldn’t control what spilled out. Even when Cat and I first fell in love, it took us time to find each other, to learn who we were together, and create something beautiful. Yeah, we could barely keep our hands off each other and screwed like rabbits, but it wasn’t love at first sight. Not like this. Not this incessant need clawing away at me to give and take until there was nothing left.
“You’re almost there, baby. Come on, you can do it.”
“You’re so beautiful.”
“Stop moving. Max, you have to stop moving.”
Her murmurs and cries had been on repeat in my mind since the party. She’d given me so much and asked for nothing apart from my complete submission. I was so mad about her that I swore she was next to me because all I could hear were her whispers, her hoarse choking sobs, and her passionate cries.
She captivated me. Two meetings and I felt like I couldn’t live without her. I needed to breathe the same air as her or I’d collapse. Knowing she was barely ten feet away from me on the other side of the door, happy to sit there and let me suffer… I was going to break if I couldn’t see her soon. I’d already devoured all the free mints in the little bowl on the table to my left, a stress habit that stuck around after I quit smoking.
I tried to be reasonable, telling myself I was scared because my parents had vanished from my life so quickly. I never got to say goodbye or tell them I loved them or even thank them for everything they did to keep their ungrateful son happy.
Cat was here. She was alive. She was back and living and breathing, throwing herself at me, devastating me with her passion. I was just obsessed with her because I couldn’t lose her again, the same way I lost my parents. That was definitely it, and not some other mad reason like I was still completely in love with her.
Lucy’s phone rang. Two quick heartbeats as she answered, looking up and smiling.
“Ms Fischer is ready for you now,” she called through the door to the waiting room.
I had to tell myself not to bolt in there. I rose slowly, lazily smiled at Lucy, pretending nerves weren’t eating away at me as I thought of all the things that could happen when I stepped through her door.
I knocked, entering to find her standing right in front of me, her arms crossed, glaring.
It was a physical relief to see her. I was a boiling pot of sexual frustration, insomnia, and hurt, and I needed her to ease my pain. She was here, in front of me. That was all that mattered.
How had she been? Were her hands bruised like my neck? What the fuck had happened to her flat? What the hell was the video she was talking about? And what had Goss meant by ‘she learnt her lesson’?
She looked stiff, her shoulders tense as she stepped back to let me pass. The scent of lavender and lilies brushed over me, and I took a drag.
She shut the door. Tremors burst through me, and I almost laughed at how vital this meeting was for my sanity. I had so many questions. Everything I’d felt since she walked away last week flooded to the surface, and I stared at her, drinking her in.
“Cat…” I stepped towards her, and she moved back, anger and heat firing at me.
She was more conservative today: black skirt, black jacket, soft makeup, and her chestnut hair pulled up in a tousled bun. None of the flare she had the last two times I’d run my eyes over her, but it was still sexy as hell. Back when we were together, everything she wore turned me on. She could lounge around in the same pair of trackie bottoms she’d been wearing for days, and I’d still want to drop to my knees and make her moan.
After a quick glance at my neck, she kept her eyes fixed on my face. “Did you bring the documents?”
I loved how the hard lines of her face created by her frown countered the soft curves of her body.
“It’s good to see you again.” I wanted her to acknowledge me, us, what we had been through together, and what she had done to me. Instead, she ignored me, holding out her hand for the file.
