by Kate Hewitt
She could feel him standing in front of her, inhaled the scent of his aftershave. Breathed in deeply and let it out in a slow, measured breath. Finally willed herself to look up and meet his gaze.
The expression in his amber eyes jolted her.
Jaiven Rodriguez’s expression looked remarkably like remorse. Guilt, even, which Louise Jensen hadn’t been expecting. Although in all honesty she hadn’t known what to expect from Jaiven. He’d surprised her in so many ways, good and definitely bad. Now his face was serious, without even the hint of a smile, and all she could do was stare.
He spoke first. “I’d like to talk to you.”
She swallowed drily. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Jaiven.”
“I’d like to explain—”
“Explain?” she repeated disbelievingly, and regret flashed across Jaiven’s face.
“Apologize,” he amended quietly, and Louise felt the first crack in her armor. No, she would not cave. She wouldn’t accept his so-called apology.
“No.” She shook her head, slung her bag over her shoulder. “I don’t want to hear anything from you, Jaiven. Not even an apology.”
“Please, Louise.”
He’d said please before, and she’d crumbled, let him back into her home and her body, all under the guise of thinking she was actually being strong. As if. But she’d be strong now. She’d try. “How did you even get in here?” she demanded. “The academic buildings are all locked.”
He shrugged. “Someone held the door.”
“Just like you got into my building.” She shook her head, fumbling with the buckles on her bag. “This is why campuses aren’t safe for women,” she snapped. “Men like you can rely on your questionable charm to get in and force a confrontation.”
He flinched, but then composed himself, his expression ironing out. “The other night I actually wasn’t trying to force a confrontation.”
“Oh, really?” She gave him as scathing a look as she could muster. “Well, it sure as hell felt that way to me.”
And yet she’d been the one to return his kiss. To let him into her apartment. Into her bed. She’d allowed her own humiliation, and while she blamed him for instigating it, she also blamed herself. Classic victim behavior, and yet she didn’t even know if she could call herself a victim this time. She’d been trying to prove something, after all. She’d been using him, just as he’d been using her.
She’d just been the one to get hurt.
“Will you talk to me? Listen to me, at least?” he asked in a low voice.
She met his gaze directly. “If I do, will you leave me alone?”
“Yes.”
She believed him. She also felt a twist of disappointment because she still missed him, despite what he’d done. She missed what he’d made her feel, before it had all gone so wrong. The knowledge made her feel even worse.
“Fine,” she said. “What do you want to say?”
“Can we go somewhere? Grab a coffee?”
She shrugged her assent. She just felt tired now, tired and dispirited. Wordlessly she left the hall, and Jaiven followed her. She took him to a coffee shop near Columbia’s campus, an old-fashioned place with scarred tables and vinyl chairs, the coffee served thick and steaming in plain ceramic mugs.
“So.” She dumped a spoonful of sugar in hers even though she’d cut out sugar in coffee years ago. She needed the hit now. “What do you want to say to me?”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up, her anger and hurt like a lump of lead inside her, heavy and toxic. “For what exactly, Jaiven?”
Color slashed his cheekbones, surprising her. Jaiven Rodriguez could actually blush. “For—for the other night,” he clarified in a low voice. She didn’t answer, and he stared down at his coffee for a moment, his expression shadowed. Then he looked up, resolute. “I treated you badly, Louise, really badly, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have been so angry. Shouldn’t have made you admit—” He let out a low breath. “All of it.” The color on his cheeks deepened and Louise knew she should feel something. Gratified or vindicated, at least justified. Instead she just felt empty, and still so very tired.
“You might have pushed but I let you. I wanted you. You knew that without me even having to say it.” Bitterness spiked her words and she looked away.
“I know, and I used it to my advantage.” Jaiven turned his coffee mug around and around between his big hands. “I’ve never treated a woman that way before.”
Somehow this stung. She turned back to him with a humorless smile. “So you reserved that special honor for me?”
“I’ve never been so angry about a woman before.” His mouth quirked in a bleak smile that held no humor at all.
“So why were you so angry, Jaiven?” And suddenly her emptiness was filled; her tiredness swept aside as tears stung her eyes. She blinked rapidly. “Why did you want to…humiliate me?” Her throat thickened and she blinked again.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking clearly. That’s not an excuse, it’s not meant to be an excuse, but I didn’t come to your place intending…” He closed his eyes. “I know you won’t believe this, but I came over to tell you something else.”
“Something else?”
“That I…” He shook his head, his expression turning grimly resolute. “It doesn’t matter now. But when you called it off with no warning…as you know, I was angry. I wasn’t ready to—”
“Oh, so your ego was a little bruised, was it?” Louise cut him off, her voice hardening. Anger was so much better, so much stronger, than hurt or shame. “Couldn’t take a woman being the one to walk away? For once you were the who got loved and left.” She shook her head in disgust. “You’re such an ass.” She rose, filled with fury, and Jaiven reached over to grab her wrist. She glared at him, her body ramrod straight, and when she spoke her voice was icy.
“Get your hands off me.”
“Please, Louise. Just hear me out. This wasn’t just about who walked away first. Not for me.”
She just glared at him, her body nearly vibrating with tension, and after a second Jaiven released her wrist and sat back in his chair, palms up, reminding Louise of the way you’d back away from a wild animal.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. And sat down again. “Fine. What was it about then, Jaiven?” She folded her arms and stared at him.
Jaiven stared back, his expression resolute. “It was about starting to care. About you.” Louise’s mind reeled. He cared about her? Or was he just feeding her a line, trying to justify his pathetic actions?
You’ve been here before, Louise. You’ve been here before and it’s not pretty.
Wearily she shook her head. “You don’t even know me, Jaiven. Not really. And if that’s the way you treat people you care about…” She gave a hollow laugh, letting the sentence remain unfinished.
“I know more than you think. More than I even realized. The sex was just supposed to be sex but somehow it got to me. And I started knowing you through it, if that makes any sense.”
And amazingly, it did, because she’d started feeling the same way. Even if she hadn’t wanted to. “So why didn’t you tell me that the other night?”
“I tried—”
“Not very hard.”
“You ended it before I could say anything—”
“You were pissed off before I said anything,” Louise snapped. “You were angry about something before I even got back home, Jaiven. I could feel it.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then he let out a long, weary sigh of acknowledgment. “You’re right. Because I didn’t want to care about someone again, and I knew that I did.”
Louise’s heart seemed to still. “Again?”
Jaiven shrugged dismissively. “Who hasn’t had their heart broken?” Louise didn’t answer and he raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not claiming I’ve cornered the market on broken hearts. Just about anyone could give the same kind of sob story. It’s no big
deal, and it doesn’t excuse what I did. Nothing does.”
“Okay,” Louise said after a moment. She was still trying to absorb everything Jaiven had just told her. She’d never, ever expected this kind of emotion from him. This intimate, soul-baring honesty.
“What I’m trying to explain,” he continued, his teeth gritted because this soul-baring honesty clearly wasn’t easy, “is that I fell into feeling something I hadn’t expected, and it took me by surprise. I was working up the courage to say something to you when you called it off, and…” He shrugged. “I didn’t take that so well. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Louise repeated. She stared at him, searching his face, wondering just what he wasn’t saying, because she knew instinctively there was something. This wasn’t just about some broken relationship. She knew Jaiven enough—well, maybe—to feel that something more was going on behind his bleak expression. She just had no idea what it was.
He drained his coffee cup before pushing it away. “I acted like a complete asshole and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He gave her a bleak smile. “I won’t bother you again.”
Louise’s throat tightened and she stared down at her coffee. And while part of her wanted to accept his apology and walk away, another part knew she couldn’t leave it there. It wasn’t fair to either of them, and it wouldn’t be the whole truth. “You’re not the only one saddled with some sad history, Jaiven,” she said quietly. “That night brought up some ghosts from my past, too.” She took a deep breath. “Which is why I was so upset.”
He didn’t speak for a moment and she couldn’t look at him. “You want to tell me about it?” he asked eventually.
She shook her head. “Not particularly. You spared me your details and so I’ll spare you mine. It was a bad relationship, through and through, and I’m not proud of the way I acted. The way I let him treat me.” And that was all she’d ever say about that. She had no intention of telling Jaiven about Jack, or how she’d been with Jack. She never wanted to admit to so much humiliation.
“Then I’m sorrier than ever,” Jaiven said after a moment, “if I brought back bad memories by what I did.”
Louise just nodded jerkily; she didn’t trust herself to speak just then. She was afraid if she so much as blinked she’d start to cry. She’d tell Jaiven all sorts of things she couldn’t bear for him to know.
Jaiven leaned forward, his expression turning fierce. “Tell me,” he asked in a low, ragged voice, “how I can make it better. Make it right. I still care about you, Louise. I know I messed up but if you gave me a second chance, I’d take it. I wouldn’t blow it this time, I swear.”
He touched her hand, the weight of his own solid and comforting. She wanted to lean into that hand, into that body, and have him envelop her in his strength. And she wanted more than that; she wanted to learn more about this man and find out what could happen between them. She wanted it terribly and yet she knew too much had already happened. Too much sordid history. Too much pain.
She couldn’t go back to what they’d had, and there was no way forward.
So instead she blinked. A tear fell and tracked its way down her cheek as she slowly shook her head. “You can’t, Jaiven. I’m sorry, but you can’t.”
Chapter Nine
WHY DID DOING the right thing feel so awful, Louise wondered as she slung a week’s worth of washing into the machine in her basement. She swiped her card and leaned against the machine, exhausted since she hadn’t slept much in the week since she’d last seen Jaiven. Seen the desolation and remorse on his face when she’d told him he couldn’t fix it. Watched him walk away, that one tear still snaking its way down her cheek.
Felt her heart break. Again.
She shouldn’t care this much, she told herself over and over again. She barely knew the man. All right, the sex had been incredible, but that’s all it had been. Sex.
Liar. It was more for Jaiven and it was more for you, too.
A truth she couldn’t escape. A truth that tormented her because even though she was filled with both longing and regret she knew she’d meant what she’d said. Jaiven couldn’t make this right. There were some things you couldn’t go back from. And with her history, she couldn’t be with a man who had made her feel as sickened and humiliated as Jaiven had in that moment. Couldn’t move past it, couldn’t risk ever feeling it again. It was, unfortunately, as simple as that.
She just wished it were more complicated.
Her cell buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans, and she fished it out, half hoping and half dreading it was Jaiven. She shouldn’t want him to call, and he had no reason to call. She’d sent him away and Jaiven didn’t seem like the type to keep coming back for more.
In any case, as she glanced at the screen of her phone, she saw it was Chelsea.
“Hey.”
“Hi, can you meet me?”
“Today?”
“Yes, if possible. I’m at my place. How about we meet at the park, Ninety-Sixth Street entrance?”
It was Saturday morning, and Louise had no more plans than filling her fridge and doing her laundry. “Okay.” Trepidation fluttered inside her. “Have you found out something about Harlow?”
“Something,” Chelsea answered, and she sounded somber. “But not much. Meet me in an hour, okay?”
With her wash still spinning Louise headed back upstairs to her apartment. She took a copy of Harlow’s thesis from a file folder and started reading it yet again.
Since meeting with Chelsea, she’d read Harlow’s one-hundred-page treatise to end sex trafficking with something close to alarm. It was a finely argued, impassioned presentation, and she’d given it an A-last year. Now, however, she was reading it through a different lens, imagining Harlow taking matters into her own hands.
But how?
The thesis concerned the use of disadvantaged women to fuel Europe and North America’s sex trade. Had Harlow actually got mixed up in something like that while in London? Something that involved a crony of Treffen’s? It was terrible to contemplate, and yet Chelsea had obviously discovered something about Harlow’s disappearance.
An hour later Louise threw on some jeans and a sweatshirt and walked the few blocks to the park. Chelsea was already waiting, looking low-key glamorous in skinny jeans and a cashmere top and scarf, two coffees and a bag of bagels in her hand.
“Are those from Zabar’s?” Louise asked as she walked up to her sister, and Chelsea gave her a breezy smile.
“Of course.”
“And I thought you didn’t do carbs.”
“That was when I had to appear on TV. I’m not calorie counting anymore.”
“You’re still skinny as a rail,” Louise said without rancor. Chelsea had always been thinner than she was. Jaiven liked your curves, she reminded herself, then resolutely banished the thought.
“Drink up,” Chelsea said, and handed her a huge Americano.
They walked into the park, the trees providing a bright green canopy of leaves overhead. As soon as they stepped inside the gates, the noise of the city’s traffic fell away, replaced by birdsong and the distant laughter of children. Louise took a sip of her coffee.
“So, what did you find out? And how?”
“Alex used some of his connections through Diaz News. But I warn you, he didn’t discover all that much.”
“It’s obviously more than Nora or Addison could find out.”
“Who?”
“Her friends. They were both students at Columbia.”
Chelsea nodded. “Okay. Well, Alex discovered that Harlow was last seen three weeks ago, at an event hosted by the law firm.”
“How did he find that out?”
“I told you, he has connections.” Chelsea smiled faintly, although her eyes still looked shadowed with worry. “Also, it’s probably better not to ask.”
“Alex isn’t doing anything shady, is he?”
“I wouldn’t say shady. But there are gray areas in terms of accessing computer files.” She
took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Anyway, Alex believes she was last seen at this party. It took place on a yacht used by the firm.”
“And how does he know that was the last time she’d been seen?” Louise asked.
“Because she didn’t turn up for work the next day, according to the employee log. And her apartment wasn’t accessed again, either.”
“Addison and Nora said she hadn’t been back…”
Chelsea nodded. “Yes, but oddly enough, Alex discovered that her rent had been paid in advance. Six months in advance, actually, and by someone at Treffen, Howell, and Smith.”
Louise stilled. “Someone paid her rent? Why?”
Chelsea shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she had a fat-cat lawyer boyfriend. Or maybe someone was trying to keep anyone from being alerted to the fact that she was gone.”
Louise’s heart lurched. “And you don’t know where she went, or why?”
“No…”
Louise swung around sharply, her coffee sloshing from her cup. “No, but…?” she prompted, because there was clearly something Chelsea wasn’t saying.
“She wasn’t seen after that party,” Chelsea said slowly. “And Alex wondered if maybe…” She let out a breath, then turned a bleak gaze to Louise. “Maybe she didn’t actually get off the yacht.”
“Not get off?” Louise contemplated this for a few seconds. “But where is the yacht now?”
Chelsea shrugged. “Not in London. Maybe not anywhere around England. But really I have no idea. Alex can’t get that kind of information, unfortunately.”
Louis shivered despite the balmy spring air, the benevolent sunshine. She stopped walking and turned to face her sister. “Chelsea,” she asked quietly, “what if she’s dead?”
“You don’t know that,” Chelsea countered swiftly. “You can’t know that.”
“Yet we know that she’s been missing for three weeks, no word to her employer or her family, her rent paid up…”
“Maybe it’s time to involve the police,” Chelsea suggested. “Or at least her family. They can decide what steps to take.”