“Sure.” I shrugged. “Why not? Preferably for money. You’re not short in that department.”
“Or any other, as we’ve already established.” He pushed off the sink, stopping where I could smell but not touch him. Not too close, but close enough for that shiver to roll down my spine.
And it was true that even after all these years, he still had this effect on me. The unsolicited feeling that I wasn’t entirely responsible or in control of what I might say to him. Or do with him. He stood behind me and brushed a lock of hair away from the back of my neck, making my flesh warm and prickly.
He then leaned down and murmured into my ear, “This kind of apartment goes at eight thousand dollars a month on the market. You’re paying me a hundred bucks a month. Do I need to make you fall in line with the rest of New York, Miss LeBlanc?”
There was zero menace in his tone. Dean ‘Ruckus’ Cole was a different kind of asshole to Baron ‘Vicious’ Spencer. He fucked you over with a polite smile on his face. In that sense, he was the Joker. In his mix of confidence, cockiness, good looks, and money, there was a dash of insanity thrown in. Enough to let you know that he meant every word he said.
Living on the edge, so fully, so recklessly, willing to take the fall.
I swallowed, my heart beating so fast I thought it was going to spill all over the floor. Excitement filled my chest, nauseating and addicting. I’d always stayed away from the Dean Coles of the world. I was the Red Riding Hood who took one look at the wolf, said ‘screw it, it’s not worth the pain’, turned around and ran for her life.
Come to think about it, Dean was the very guy who taught me that lesson.
Darren was more my type. Handsome in a shy, reserved way. A med student I’d met when he ordered herbal tea at The Black Hole. Now, I didn’t know what to do with myself with Dean being so close. My hands felt like they’d been artificially glued to my body. Heavy and alien. I knew what would make the feeling stop. Touching him. But that wasn’t an option.
“Pack. A. Fucking. Bag.” His voice was hard, and if I’m not mistaken, it wasn’t the only thing that was hard about him. “If Vicious comes to New York to take you, he’ll give me shit. See, Baby LeBlanc, I like to keep my life simple. Trouble-free.” He twirled another piece of my hair around his finger, glints of lust flashing through his pupils. The light touch sent frissons all the way to my skull and spine, spinning through the rest of my body like electric shock.
What the hell is happening, and why am I letting it happen?
“That means no girlfriends, no fishy business partners, and no un-neighborly neighbors,” he stressed. “You’re a complication right now, and I hate to do this, but if it’s between pissing you off and pissing that motherfucker off, you know my pick.”
“I hate you so much,” I exhaled, and my lungs wheezed, reminding me that my heart needed to slow down. Being so close to Dean felt like that tumble you get in your stomach when you’re on a rollercoaster. He pressed his body to mine, and I sensed his smile on my skin, just below my ear. In that sensual place between your libido and your soul.
“Vicious claims hate-fucks are the best. Care to test his theory?”
Taking a side step and breaking the physical contact, I retorted, “Care to drop dead?”
There was no point in resisting him, though. He was going to follow through on his threat, and the worst part was, I couldn’t stop him. I knew I was in the wrong. Knew I should just accept the goddamn ticket. Something dark flashed across his face. Something that was always there, but only I seemed to notice.
“Pin this conversation.” He pointed at me with the hand that held his phone and swiped the screen. Finally. It was the third time that person called. “Be back in a sec.”
Dean disappeared into my hallway. I stood there, not sure what to do.
“Hello, Miss Golddigger, how may I be of help? Last time I checked, I told you not to fucking call me. Has that changed somehow?” He paused for just a moment before continuing. “But that’s the thing, Nina, my dear. You don’t get to snap your fingers and have me crawling back to save you. You made your fucking bed. Now lie in it. Not my war. Not my battle. None. Of. My. Fucking. Business.” His voice was exceptionally bitter.
In fact, he sounded so pissed, so angry, so not himself, that I visibly winced when I heard him. It ignited a foreign emotion in me I’d never associated with Ruckus before. Fear. Dean never got angry or flustered. He was the least hotheaded out of the four HotHoles. Rare were the times his feathers were ruffled—that he was truly upset—and I don’t think I’d ever heard him raise his voice outside the football field. Even earlier, when he yelled at Colton, he was scornful of the whole situation. Amused.
I pressed my ear to the wall, blatantly eavesdropping.
“I’m not coming to Birmingham.” Birmingham? As in Birmingham, Alabama? I always thought I knew Dean’s life pretty well. Clearly, he had more skeletons in his closet than Jeffrey Dahmer.
“There is something seriously fucked-up about the fact that I’m even listening to you right now. Your proposal is offensive at best and downright fucking insane at worst. You’ve had years to make this right. Years to let me see him. It’s too late now. I’m not interested. Seriously, Nina, erase my number from your contact list. Save us both time and money.”
Inhaling like his lungs were bottomless, he finished the call. A sudden punch straight to the wall dividing us awarded me with a white noise that rang in my ear. No doubt deserving that, it was my cue and I turned around, launching to the opposite side of the island.
Busying myself in the kitchen was hard, especially when I could still feel his anger floating from the other room. I opened the fridge and took out some vegetables, then a knife. Out of breath, I pretended to make myself a salad. I saw Dean’s tall figure emerging from my periphery, his phone grasped in a death grip between his fingers. He looked a little startled to see me, like he forgot I was there, but then relaxed and fixed his cocky smile back on his face, like he was rearranging a wonky picture on a wall. Loosening his tie even more, he made his way to me.
“One-night stand gone wrong?” I asked, slicing a cucumber into wafer-thin pieces.
“You can say that again,” he muttered, tousling unruly chunks of his delicious hair. “Where were we?”
“I believe you were blackmailing me.”
“That’s right. I was. Friday morning. Suitcase. Clothes. Attitude. On second thought, keep that attitude. I like all that excess energy. You just need a good place to allocate it. I have the perfect place for you.” He winked, and as if I needed confirmation, added, “My fucking bed.”
WHAT IS TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?
Is it a lot of money? A reasonable amount of money? So little, it’s like no money at all? That depends on who you’re asking. To me, twenty thousand dollars was merely pocket change. It had zero effect on my life. Contrary to general belief, it wasn’t because my parents padded my bank account. People thought I’m a trust fund baby, and I let them, because frankly, who the fuck cares?
The reality of things was that my parents put me through Harvard University, fronted the money for my initial investment in Fiscal Heights Holdings, the company I have incorporated with three of my best friends, Trent, Jaime, and Vicious, and assisted me mentally and spiritually. A-fucking-lot. But the fact that I was swimming in more money than I could ever spend at the tender age of twenty-nine? That was all me, baby.
Me, and my savvy ways.
Me, and my persuasive nature.
Me, and my talent with numbers.
So, lack of funding certainly wasn’t the reason why I found it so goddamn hard to click the Approve Transaction button and wire her twenty thousand bucks.
I didn’t want Nina to have it. I didn’t want her to be happy. Did I want her to fail? Did I want her to stay poor, lost, and somber? Did I want to get back at her for being such a vile bitch to me?
And if so, did that make me a bad person? I didn’t think I was. Screwed up, sure. Would I ever want my future daughter to date someone like me? Hell no. I could smell my kind for miles. But then I couldn’t fully commit to the word evil, either. I’d seen evil. Grew up with Vicious—now that’s an evil man. I wasn’t cut from the same cloth. I helped the elderly cross the road, carried their grocery bags all the way to their Buick Lucernes, even if it meant that I ran late to important meetings. I never misled any of my one-night stands. I was polite—and not only by obligation, but by nature—I voted, always used my blinkers, never, ever offended people on purpose and had been sponsoring an African kid for five years now. We even exchanged letters from time to time. (Kanembiri and I both agreed that Scarlett Johansson was fuck hot and Manchester United FC sucked hairy balls. Because some things were simply an international consensus.)
So, can I wholeheartedly say that I was a bad person? No. I wasn’t.
I fucking loved people. And I loved fucking people even more. The most outgoing and social out of each of my friends. Which was why the situation didn’t sit right with me.
Me. Staring at my MacBook screen for twenty minutes. My index finger hovering over the pad. Just fucking do it, I pleaded with my inner asshole. What the fuck do you care? You’re still rich. She is still poor. She will always be miserable, no matter where she goes.
A soft thump on the door threw me out of my musings. Sue walked in without permission. Technically, she knocked, but that was just cheap semantics on her part. My PA was rude, vindictive, and downright nasty when the opportunity presented itself ever since she caught me fucking another chick against an office desk at the Fiscal Heights Holdings Los Angeles branch. Never mind the fact Sue and I only shared a brief, casual fling. Was it wrong of me to fuck my personal assistant? Probably. Did I tell her, right from the start, that she had better chances converting me to Scientology than getting me to commit to a relationship? Yes, I did, multiple times, before I even slipped the tip in. Did she say she ‘totally gets it, and, that she’s like, totally in the same place in life’? You bet your ass she did. But none of that mattered when push came to thrust, then a moan, then a wannabe actress from Los Feliz screaming my name so loud, security almost barged into the office to check if she was okay.