Tell Me To Stay

by Winters, Willow

  “We don’t have to put a label on it, Soph. Just let it be,” he tells me. It’s easy for him to let it be. He doesn’t understand how I feel. How could he?

  I should tell him, but I’m ashamed, and it’s easier to run away from your everything, than it is to know that you’ve lost it.

  Today

  Okay, so I got drunk and slept with Madox.

  And maybe it was more than sex.

  And maybe I’m having a hard time pretending like I don’t still have feelings for him even if it’s not the same to him. Yes, I know we’ll never be able to be together because we simply aren’t on equal footing. He’s so much more than I will ever be.

  So, should I have slept with him last night…? No.

  If I took a poll, I’m sure half of Manhattan would raise their hand and say they’ve done the same damn thing or something like it. Well, not with Madox, but with their exes or former lovers. It happens.

  I was only tipsy, not drunk, but I’m still going to blame it on Ryan and the shot he bought me. I’m going to kick him in the dick the next time I see him too, for leaving me alone with Madox the second he could. Figuratively, not literally.

  He knew what he was doing.

  My phone buzzes with yet another message from my nosy bestie who could have given me a heads-up about last night. She had to have known, although she keeps telling me she had no idea.

  So then what? Trisha’s text makes me roll my eyes. I only told her I ran into Ryan and Madox last night. She didn’t ask about her brother, so something tells me she already knew.

  All of her questions this morning have revolved around Madox. That whole crew seems to be seriously invested in knowing the details of what’s going on between us. It’s like we’re their only entertainment and the rest of them are just sitting in a circle, passing around the popcorn.

  We hooked up, I text her and then quickly add, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Would you like to order anything while you wait?” The waiter’s voice makes me jump in my seat and he apologizes, but I wave it off.

  “Just nervous for my first meeting on the job.” I shake my head, swallowing thickly before realizing what he asked and reply, “Just water for now, please.” As he nods and makes to leave, I’m quick to add, “And a coffee.” He smiles and nods.

  It’s not until he’s gone that I look back down at my phone.

  I never told you – but he asked about you all the time. I didn’t want you to feel guilty.

  My fingers hover over the keys, but I don’t write anything back. I can’t believe she never told me.

  I had no idea he ever even thought about me. A little hurt, along with a lot of betrayal stir inside of me, and I know I shouldn’t text her back right now. How could she never tell me?

  How could he never tell me either?

  Madox is good at telling people what to do, which made us bump heads a lot. It led to some awful moments. It led to some great moments too. He’s really good at giving demands; he’s shit at talking about how he feels though. At least with me. At least back then.

  Emotions swarm in my chest at the thought of him wondering what I was doing and if I would come back. I always walked away because he was so quiet and distant. There are only two times we were together when I felt like he let me in. Like he showed me a piece of him that was just for me. Which was so unfair, because he had all of my pieces. He knew everything about me and every vulnerability.

  In all four years we were together, there are only two times he dropped his guard and let me in.

  The second and last time was the night he came to my apartment, the night I left him. I sought him out because I knew he could make me feel better and then I ran away, hating myself for using him, hating myself for going back to someone who couldn’t give me a commitment. Every low moment I had, I ran to him, and I couldn’t keep doing it. Especially not with what had happened that week.

  I knew I shouldn’t have been with him that night the second he was done fucking me in the alley. By that point I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror, so I ran to my ex. The same ex who had never told me he loved me during the four years we were together, the ex who never once called me his girlfriend. The ex I let call me a whore as he fucked me in an alley. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know I was fucked in the head and needed help.

  I knew going to him because I was in pain was wrong. I was falling into an old pattern of behavior, relying on a bad habit simply because I felt a gaping hole in my heart I knew he could fill. And when I realized that, I knew it had to be the last time.

  So when he told me he’d enter the bar after me, and back to an old group of friends I’d missed so much since I’d last seen him nearly two weeks prior, I gave him a small smile and kissed the edge of his lips, noting how rough his stubble felt against the pads of my fingertips. He didn’t realize it was goodbye, or that I already missed him. I said I’d go to the bathroom first and he should go in before me.

  I liked being his whore, his submissive, his… whatever you’d call it. A lot of people called me a lot of things. Both to my face and behind my back. The sex was always amazing, whether it was sweet or dirty; slow and sensual, or hot and rough. But it crossed lines I didn’t know how to avoid. And that night, I felt dirty. I felt like I was beneath him in the way I always feared he saw me. I felt like I was only a poor girl he saved once, a pathetic girl who kept coming around because she had no one else. That’s how I felt, and although something deep inside my heart screamed it was more than that, there were no words to prove it to me.

  I didn’t expect anything at all from him when I escaped back to my place, but certainly not him banging on my door, demanding for me to tell him what happened. After all, I wasn’t his girlfriend and whenever we got into a fight and left, he didn’t follow me. So why follow me now, when we hadn’t seen each other in weeks and it was just a dirty fuck?

  I’d never seen him worried like that. Especially not over me.

  I didn’t expect him to search for me when I never went back to the bar; I didn’t expect him to be so angry, so hurt, since he never was before. He never came for me ever. And he never yelled at me like that either. Maybe that’s why I slammed the door in his face.

  I was going through so much, that having the one person I knew I loved scream at me was something I couldn’t take.

  Time changes a lot of things, but it’s never changed the way my heart feels when I think of the look in Madox’s eyes that night. When I told him I regretted being with him, and that I wished I hadn’t seen him that night. I pushed him away as hard as I could.

  I told him I wished I’d never opened my heart to him again, to a man who had no room or need for me in his life. It was my own fault, and I told him so. I’m not sure how much of that is the truth, and how much is a lie.

  I was a silly twenty-year-old girl, suffering through life and running back to my first love every time I felt alone. Since I was seventeen that’s what I’d done. Madox Reed was a hard habit to break, but I broke it that night, three years ago.

  I imagine he expected me to come back to him, like I always had for the four years I was with him, but I didn’t. A very large piece of me loved him for what he’d done for me when we first met, but what we craved from each other only led to pain.

  We didn’t speak love the same way. He barely spoke it at all, if he ever did.

  That was the second time that Madox showed me how he really felt. He didn’t hide behind a wall of armor and disinterest.

  The first time though, I thought there was a real shift between us. Even if we never spoke about it afterward, I know things changed, for me at least. We’d been seeing each other for only a few months when it happened. Maybe that’s why I stayed for four years, even though I never had what I needed to feel truly loved.

  He was always in control and private, but on the anniversary of his father’s death, Madox came and got me. When he told me his parents had gotten into a fight over the business and h
is dad killed himself a few years back, I cried for him while he didn’t respond. The pain in his eyes was obvious, but he didn’t show it. No tears, nothing but the absence of the man I knew he was. He went cold and silent. He told me he needed me to stay with him and I didn’t question it for a second, even though I knew something was wrong. It was the only time he told me he needed me like that.

  It wasn’t until we were in bed that he let his guard down, and he held me just a little tighter while he cried silently. He pretended not to, he said he had no right to be upset when there was so much in his life that other people didn’t have. That his father chose to do that and leave him, and at those words, his voice cracked. He tried to get up and leave, but I only hugged him harder, pulling him back into the sheets and against my body, and he let me comfort him.

  It didn’t matter that he was suffering, because he was so aware that many others had it worse than he did. I remember whispering quietly and gently in between soft kisses on his jaw, that if you’re having a bad day, you’re entitled to feel those emotions. It’s okay to have a bad day even if someone else is having a worse day. It doesn’t detract from what you feel inside. If it did, you couldn’t be happy for the good times, because someone else always has it better. I told him that it was okay to feel whatever it was he was feeling. That it wasn’t wrong to be upset or hurt. I don’t know that he believed me though.

  That was when I said I loved him. I told him I loved him, and that night he told me the same. Neither of us ever said those words again. Four years went by and I convinced myself that he said it back to me out of obligation. Out of pity.

  Just from that memory, the emotions cloud my judgment of today and where we stand now.

  I have to remind myself that I when I left three years ago, I gave Madox the chance to keep me. And he didn’t take it. The text message I sent him was marked read. He saw it, and still he let me leave.

  He never bothered to show me that he wanted me. Madox Reed couldn’t be bothered to show anyone at all that he needed them. It’s simply who he is.

  “Sophie!” I hear my name and turn in my seat to see the one and only Adrienne Hart walking toward me with a nude leather bag draped over her arm. “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you in person.”

  My fingers wrap around the edge of the chair as I stand up to greet her, but Adrienne keeps moving, not slowing her pace at all to sit across from me at the table.

  And here I was wondering if I should give her a hug or a handshake.

  She doesn’t look me in the eyes as she speaks, slipping off her tweed Chanel jacket. “I trust you found everything you needed last night?” she asks and as I begin to answer, the waiter comes to the table, digging in the black apron hung around his small hips for his pad of paper and pen.

  “Just a chai latte, no sweetener,” she orders before he says a word, and my lips slam shut so I don’t cut her off.

  Placing one forearm on the table, and the other on top of the first, Adrienne squares her shoulders, making her slender neck look even longer and letting her platinum blonde bob swing perfectly into place before questioning me, “So… last night?”

  I have to clear my throat and give her a fake-ass smile as I say, “It was wonderful. I missed the city.” I keep it professional and reach for the goblet of water the waiter left behind for me. There’s a dark ring on the black tablecloth from where it sat. The beads of condensation make my hand slip slightly, but she doesn’t notice.

  “I was going to recommend a bar around the corner to help with the jitters from traveling all day, but I forgot to write you… what is it?” She ponders as I take a sip, and I cough up the small bit of water when she says, “The Tipsy Room.”

  Fate just wants to fuck with me today.

  Luckily, the cruel joke goes unnoticed by Mrs. Hart as she greets two more people, waving them to the table to join us.

  This time I stay seated, and this time both of them offer their hands to me. Of course mine is cold and wet from the goblet and I feel the need to apologize awkwardly.

  “I’m thrilled to finally meet you; we’ve heard so much about you,” the woman tells me. She’s got to be in her late forties or older, judging by the wrinkles around her eyes, but overall she looks so young. If it weren’t for the crow’s feet, I’d have guessed she wasn’t even thirty. Maybe it’s Maybelline, or maybe it’s Botox.

  “Lara Bolton.” She tells me her name before I have to ask. I had no idea anyone else would be here, and I haven’t met anyone other than Adrienne. The second I hear her name, the butterflies in the pit of my belly morph into a hornet’s nest. “And this is Hugh North, he’ll be training you on all of the technical processes at work starting tomorrow.”

  “Pleasure,” Hugh says with a charming smile. As Lara takes her seat, she hands him her coat and he takes his time removing his navy bomber jacket, which complements his dark skin.

  “It’s wonderful to meet you both. I’ve heard,” I say and gesture with my hand toward Lara, “everything about you.” My pulse ramps up as I think about every article I’ve read. Lara is a restaurant stylist whose talent is to die for. Her designs aren’t just on trend – she makes the trends.

  “Same to you, Miss Miller,” Lara replies with a grin and then the waiter comes to the table, forcing me to be quiet. Which is probably best at the moment.

  Before Lara’s finished ordering, Hugh places a manila folder and a brand-new laptop in front of me. “Your first assignment.”

  I’m too eager to wait for anything more, and as I flip through the pages, most of them photographs, Hugh asks me, “What do you think?” There’s an air of curiosity from him I find exciting.

  I answer quickly, thumbing through the pictures, “This is an easy fix. It’s an Irish pub, judging by the name of the restaurant, but there isn’t an ounce of green in the branding; no dark woods, the menu is right though—beer-infused cheese dips and all sorts of burgers.” When no one says anything, I continue voicing my thoughts aloud.

  “The food appears to be on point, but everything else seems wrong.” All their heads nod, and I continue to skim through the pages. It’s all white, almost sterile and clinical in appearance, but it’s just about getting the aesthetic right. “I could rebrand this place in my sleep.”

  “Your budget is high too,” Hugh says, and I peek up to see all of them grinning at me.

  “What about the location?” I ask, not finding it easily in the pamphlet.

  “High competition, but if they could draw in the right people, they’d make it work,” Lara answers before Hugh can.

  “How much time do I have?”

  Lara and Hugh share a glance, and Lara offers me a wicked smile. “You’re hosting the client meeting tomorrow. But from the sound of your initial assessment, I’m confident you’ll have amazing ideas.”

  Hugh adds as my anxiety spikes, “It’s trial by fire here, but I’m sure you’ll do just fine with your presentation.”

  Holy shit. My heart’s pounding so fast, it feels like I at least earned one of the curtains in my expensive-ass dining room.

  With a feigned smile, I let the folder close and tell the table I’ll be ready.

  Chapter 9

  Madox

  Seven years ago

  I think she’s going to say it again, but she doesn’t.

  Instead, she offers me a small smile and I force one back.

  I’ve been waiting to hear those words again, but she hasn’t said them since that one time. I thought it would bring us closer, but all I can feel is distance. I should have known better than to lean on her like I did. I should have been on my own. I should have dealt with it myself.

  She said it to make me feel better. That’s all.

  “You okay?” she asks me.

  “Fine.” My answer is stern. I am fine. I’m her rock. I’ll keep being her rock. That’s what she needs. That’s what I’ll be.

  Today

  Everyone wants something. It’s fucking constant.

  I
f I had nothing, no one would message me. My inbox would be empty. No one would have to wait for an appointment to sit in the chair across from me.

  I know it’s true, because I was there at one point when I took over this failing company and worked tirelessly to bring it back to its former glory and then surpass it. I was only fifteen when my dad died, and eighteen when my mother shoved me into this role. I learned young that nothing comes without a price.

  The patter of rain has been a constant all day, hitting the glass wall behind me and lulling me into a false sense of peace.

  I keep staring at my phone, noting how only ten minutes pass each time I check. I’m waiting for a text, or an email… something from Sophie. As if she has any reason to want a damn thing from me.

  Of everyone who desires a piece of me, or something I have to offer, I just want one of them to be her.

  The rap of knuckles at my door breaks my thoughts of what used to be, and I’m grateful for it. Until it opens before I can answer, and Ryan strides into the room.

  “So?” Ryan’s smirk is cocky and confident as he settles into the seat across from me, tapping the tips of his fingers, eagerly waiting for details.

  “So, what?” I fuck with him, keeping my own smirk in check. “Did you get your notice?”

  “Notice?” he asks, and the smirk fades as his lips droop down.

  “You’re fucking fired for two reasons.” I keep my voice hard as I lean forward and tell him, “One: You put your manwhore hands on Sophie the other night. Two: You knew she was here, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “Oh fuck off, I only knew she was there for a minute more than you. Come on and tell me what happened.” Ryan brushes me off, but I don’t budge. He can suffer for a moment like I did. The exasperated sigh that leaves him is what gets me to show a little humor.

  “Tell me what happened,” he presses.