by R. J. Lewis
I glance at him, fighting my surprise. “What?”
“Pardon,” he corrects with disapproval. “Not what, Miss Montcalm, and you heard me.” He looks down at my purse between my legs with a casual look, murmuring, “You’re always carrying your phone around, always talking into it. Who is on the other end?”
“Someone I know,” I answer vaguely.
I underestimated Aidan’s attention of me. He’s been keeping track of my movements. He knew I’d left the house yesterday, too. Who knows how soon after I’d left he had come out to wait for me?
His brows come together. He doesn’t like my response. “It’s pretty obvious you know this person.”
“Maybe be more detailed with your question, Mr West, and I shall do a better job answering.”
His eyes narrow at my cold remark. “I’m asking what this person means to you.”
“Are you asking what this person means to me on a professional capacity?”
“No.”
I narrow my eyes right on back. “Then I’m not sure how I may assist you.”
He nods slowly, not looking away from me. “Is that right, Miss Montcalm?” he says thoughtfully. “Is that how we’re going to be?”
“That’s exactly how we’re going to be,” I confirm, smiling coldly at him.
“I will be more mindful not to press you on matters that aren’t my business,” he responds coolly. “But I expect you to do the same.”
“Noted,” I retort.
Feeling irritable, I have nothing to take it out on but this sheet of paper in front of me. I look it over, eyeing the numbers (I understand it all now) and say, “This company is shit. Yet another one barely breaking even. I do wonder why you’re spending your time on these when you know there are bigger fish to fry.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he returns simply. He doesn’t sound mad, just tired.
I ignore him. “I think you’re purposely throwing numbers at me because you’re passing along the time. I think these companies have spreadsheets that can do all this work for us, and on top of all that, I think you’re perfectly capable of finding better pitches than this, but you’re not, and you’re not because you’ve been hiding in that mansion — hiding from everything and everyone.”
“You know what I think?” he replies in a strangely calm voice. “I think every time you open your mouth, you’re proving why I have such a fierce desire to steer clear of you.”
My mouth does open this time, but no words come out. I stare at him, swallowing back my hurt. I deserved that for poking him, but…ouch. His chest slows at my expression. I guess I’m not doing a decent job of hiding my emotions. I hate that he can see my hurt. More than that, I hate that he appears like he regrets his words.
A pained look crosses his face. “Ivy—”
“Shoot me the next formula,” I cut in, swallowing it all down.
I keep my eyes directed to the binder, waiting.
He watches me for a minute, and then he resumes.
*
The flight touches down shortly after, which was a shame because aside from our bickering, I enjoyed sitting next to him. This was how we met, after all—on a plane, him next to me.
The looks he kept shooting me were strange. I felt…like perhaps he was feeling something familiar? A fleeting sense of nostalgia? I glanced at him every time he looked at me, making eye contact, feeling that…simmering heat between us.
Remember? I wanted to ask.
The look on his face…It was almost like he did remember something.
It’s unusually cool when we step out of the airport. The skies are dark and it’s spitting out. So much for looking good—my hair is already a mess.
Gaston already has a car prepared for us, and he whistles as he drives us through the chaos that is this city. Ottawa feels tiny compared to here. This place is sprawling with people and rich in diverse restaurants. One street can be endless with people donning business outfits, the next can be packed with homeless shelters and people trying to scrape by. It’s sort of in your face, and I blink in surprise, not entirely used to it.
“The night life,” Gaston points sometime during the drive at a place across the street. “Quiet now, but the most affluent people go there.”
The entrance is impressive. Two large double doors side by side, painted orange, against a bright yellow sign that reads “Club Sapphire” on the front. It’s deserted now, but I imagine there must be lines out the door come nighttime. That’s the type of place Ana would make me wait hours in line for. I crack a smile, missing her desperately.
When I glance at the front, I catch Aidan’s face following the sign as we drive by. Seems I’m not the only curious one. He runs his knuckles along the window, rapping it in thought.
The drive to the large apartment building is unusually long. About forty minutes. The parking lot is just as impressive as his penthouse suite in Ottawa. There’s a reserved space with his name written on the signs, and I have to wonder when in the hell Aidan bought an apartment in Vancouver.
He steps out of the car first, and Gaston takes his time, glancing at me through the rearview. “He bought it right after he left Ottawa. It set him back twelve million dollars. I think he was aware he’d be making treks from the island to here and wanted somewhere else to conduct his businesses,” he whispers to me then before slipping out of the car.
I pause, surprised, heart stammering in my chest when I think of Aidan coming all the way here to buy an apartment. He put a lot more forethought into the Georgian estate than I realized.
*
It’s another penthouse.
Of course, it is.
This time, it’s just…remarkable. I can’t put it into words. It’s not as big as the one in Ottawa, but the views are explosive. I can see the city life from here. I stare out of the floor to ceiling window in front of the massive living room—hardly funished, mind you—and feel dizzy staring down at the streets.
“I didn’t think to furnish this place before I lost my mind?” Aidan hisses to Gaston as he walks around. He’s somewhere distant, I think the kitchen.
“It was a planned purchase,” Gaston murmurs in response. “I think it coincided with the accident; don’t you think?”
“Regardless, I could have fucking furnished it this entire time.”
Aidan is pissed about this. I follow them down a corridor. I poke my head into the bedrooms here, noticing they’re empty. Oh, boy.
I find them both in an office, and this one isn’t bare, but it’s missing a lot of office essentials. No bookcases or shelves of any kind. There’s just a huge desk and two chairs, and only one is an office chair. The other is situated before the desk and is a cushioned mahogany chair. The floors are completely bare and hardwood, and it has that smell you get in a new place.
“This is unacceptable,” West continues. “I need furnishings pronto.”
“It’s not that bad,” I mutter. “At least you have couches.”
His head swivels in my direction. “You find this acceptable?”
I quirk a brow. “You sound like you never worked in the basement of your best friend’s townhome, Mr West.”
He pauses then, his brows pinching together slowly. He doesn’t respond for a few moments, but then his lips bunch to one side in a half-smile.
He doesn’t complain again.
“I’ll meet you here in thirty,” he then tells me. “Get settled. Your guest bedroom is on the other side of the apartment.”
Gaston shows me the way, dropping me and my luggage off before my door. He chuckles at me, saying under his breath, “You put him in his place, didn’t you?”
I smile in response before entering the guest bedroom which, too, is lacking furnishings, but there’s a bed, and it’s huge and beautiful and there’s no shadows of fucking Philotes anywhere. Bastard spider can enjoy his time of solace away from me because the next time I see that fucker, let’s just say the itsy-bitsy spider won’t be climbing up the
fucking spout again.
I quickly freshen up in the attached bathroom, feeling relieved that I’m out of the suite and have a gigantic window to look out of.
By the time I return to the office, West is already sitting behind the desk. My steps falter for a second as I catch the chair he single-handedly moved next to him. My heart skips a beat. I swallow it down and join him, ignoring the way his eyes find me and stay there.
*
Once we’re done, I find a handful of pitches that are promising and make a series of calls as Aidan strolls around the office, buried in a book he pulled out of his briefcase.
“I’m calling on behalf of Mr West,” I say flatly. This is not a pitch I want to see in the flesh. “We’ve just run the numbers from your submission looking for an investment opportunity with Mr West. We are keen to have you in for an appointment at our Vancouver location so we can discuss your rather interesting dog poop catching product.” Whatever the hell that is.
Aidan’s listening. He smirks at my words, amused.
“We look forward to seeing you.” No, we don’t.
I hang up, slamming the phone a little too hard.
“Not impressed with Mr Abir, I take it,” he muses.
“Oh, for sure I am,” I retort sarcastically. “I think there are a thousand dog products on the market as it is, and I think all of them do the same thing as his. Catch shit, wasn’t it? How does that even work? Is it a scooper? Do you catch it straight out of the poor dog’s butthole?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
“Is that truly necessary?”
He puts a hand in a snack bowl Gaston left him on the entrance table beside the door and tosses a pistachio in his mouth. “Maybe this one will revolutionize the dog shit catching industry.”
I look at him blankly. “These are stupid, and you know it.”
“Still feel like I’m wasting my time?”
“Yes.”
He chuckles. The mood between us is lighter than it has been in hours. There’s only so much of being tense and irritable you can be with someone you’re spending the entire day with. We’re so up and down, I’m sure we appear crazy.
I sense he’s remorseful for what he said earlier this morning. He hasn’t been growling at me all day like normal. He’s been nicer than usual, and my poor heart needs it.
“You know all about revolutionary products,” I continue, eyeing him carefully. “You’re a tech god. You built S.P.P from the ground up, and now it’s a billion-dollar company.”
“And then I sold my share of it,” he says, but he doesn’t sound bitter. He’s simply confused. “Which means I was miserable working there. I must have moved on to better things.”
Now he glances at me, eyeing me. I think he’s trying to discern if I can back that up. Am I that readable?
I keep my eyes directed to the binder where the numbers are.
“It doesn’t feel like you have the same drive is all,” I explain cautiously.
“It would appear that way,” he agrees, surprising me. “I am passing the time on these godawful businesses, you’re right.”
His admission is surprising.
I look back at him. “But why?”
He closes the book and walks to the entrance table. He settles the book down, pondering. “I’m waiting for the right moment when I feel that itch to start again, to truly start again.”
“You’re not feeling it right now?”
“No,” he whispers. “I’m feeling the opposite. I’m feeling…angry.”
“Angry at what?”
“Everything. Fucking everything. I don’t know how to stop it.”
He closes his hands into fists. I feel concerned for him because I know he had an anger problem. He used to look for trouble, and oftentimes wound-up self-medicating with booze and drugs and smashing those fists into the nearest face. In fact, he already did smash his fist in a fit of anger and those bruises have long faded.
In this moment I wish I had his grandmother to talk to.
What did you do to help him? I would ask her. Please, Ruth, tell me. How did you help him? How did you talk him off the ledge?
“I wonder if I wasn’t so angry before I lost my mind,” he continues, thoughtfully. “What would that have been like? It’s too absurd to even consider.”
I know what he was like. I wish I could tell him. I’d say he had developed a way to silence that part of him, but at the cost of closing himself off.
When he took it slow with me, he did it to preserve his heart. He was frightened of opening that door. Rightfully so, too, because letting it down caused a flurry of unwanted emotions that ultimately drove him figuratively and physically into that wreck.
“What we’re doing here is necessary then,” I say just then, sounding encouraging. “Better to sink our time in this if it means not punishing ourselves in other ways.”
He gives me his attention, and he’s smiling softly. “Are we not punishing ourselves, Ivy?”
I chuckle. “It could be worse. You could have fired me that first night and been here alone. Better to suffer with a cool girl like me than have at it alone, wouldn’t you say?”
His expression sobers as he watches me. “Despite your uselessness in the office, I find your presence tolerable.”
There we go again with those godawful compliments, but this one doesn’t sting so much.
“Is that right?” I ask, trying to encourage him into telling me more.
He smiles softly at me, a warm look in his eye. “I find myself…tethered to your company, Miss Montcalm.”
He immediately turns away from me before I can look at him. He’s hiding himself from me. It’s okay. I take that moment to smile to myself. My heart beats a little harder.
He likes my company.
“I like it, too,” I whisper under my breath.
He doesn’t hear me.
The room is heavy with unspoken thoughts. Every time we make eye contact, we’re transported back to yesterday, to him cornering me against the wall, to him pushing me down on my knees as he unbuckled himself and used my mouth for his pleasure.
I feel my stomach tightening, feel the pulse between my legs gather. And then I stop looking into his eyes when it gets too much.
We ultimately carry on.
But as the day draws to an end, I find myself staring hesitantly at a spot on the desk, running his earlier words to me through my head. I can’t hold back. I can’t…because I feel he needs closure about this one thing.
I swallow hard and quietly say, “You weren’t angry. Not outwardly but…I think…I think now, looking back, you replaced your anger with pain, and you buried it deep.”
I can feel his stare. His body has gone completely still, but I can’t look at him. I can’t.
I quickly pack my side of the desk away and flee from the room.
Twenty-Two
Ivy
It’s another adjustment to sleep in a bed like this in a gargantuan bedroom overlooking a city that hardly goes to sleep. The windowsill is wide enough I can actually sit down on it, and I do for a long time, peering out through the blinds.
The apartment is silent as a tomb. There is no party to disturb me, no spider to chase around, I have all the reception in the world and yet I can’t be fucked to go on the phone to look anything up. Tilda isn’t around, Alex has gone quiet over on the east coast, and West might be roaming the floor, but I can’t hear him, and his bedroom isn’t next to mine, so I have no idea what he’s doing.
I’m feeling pretty lonely.
I have a quick shower and change into a pair of pajama shorts—this time cute pink ones from Victoria Secret I managed to dig out of my suitcase and throw on another baggy top. I poke my head out of the bedroom and look both ways, making sure the coast is clear because I’m terrified of bumping into Aidan in the night. I’m just…so out of my element right now. Plus, I have no make-up on, I look like a dump truck, and he doesn’t love me, so things just aren�
�t going my way these days.
I walk down the hallway and toward the kitchen, making sure to be extra quiet. My stomach is grumbling, and I need to eat something before I die of starvation. I mean, I’ve had like four small meals, but I’m moving around now—I’m a city girl now and that requires more calories.
The kitchen is a huge, dark wood open concept. It’s all marble and shit, and there’s a sensor on the wall that knows the time of day, and because it’s nighttime, the glow it gives me is warm and dim when I turn it on.
Just, you know, it’s rich people shit.
I open the fridge, feeling my heart bloom when I see it’s full. Just wow. When did that even happen? Was it Gaston’s doing? I can’t imagine West going to the grocery store. As I pull out an apple, I stifle a laugh just thinking about him with one of those green baskets, walking down an aisle, feeling around at the produce. Like, is this apple soft? Is it too hard? Should I get it with my millions and billions of dollars?
Okay, I’m really laughing now.
“What’s so funny?”
My heart jumps as I spin around. Aidan’s hovering outside the kitchen, dressed in a pair of sweats and a loose shirt. His hair is messy, there are headphones around his neck, and he’s wearing running shoes.
I take him in for a moment. “Did you just get in?”
He shakes his head. “About to go out for a run.”
“Like—now? Now you have to go out running?”
It’s eleven at night at least.
He gives me a faint smile. “I do.”
“Why now?”
“I have a lot of energy I need to release.”
“Isn’t there another way you can do that?” I immediately regret my words.
He pauses, a devilish smirk pulling at his lips now as he glances at me. “There is another way to release this energy, but it would require another active participant.”
Holy shit, he is flirting with me, right?
I shut the fridge and lean my shoulder against it, trying hard not to go bright red when I say, “What does the active participant get out of releasing such energies with you?”
His eyes are playful as he runs his tongue along his lower lip. “Nothing would ever come close to the level of satisfaction I’d be willing to give that participant.”