by M. S. Parker
I stopped in the middle of the path.
I didn’t know why I was here.
Other than to get away from Dominic.
He’d just sat there, staring at his mother. He’d barely even looked at me.
Sleeping with the help…
But that’s what I am.
Frustrated and hurting all over again, I stormed over to a bench and dropped down on it. She’d talked about me like I was next to nothing and he hadn’t said a word.
Yeah, I was his employee, but he could have said something. He hadn’t and that hurt was an ugly, vicious wound inside me. I didn’t know how to handle it, how to process it. Forcing myself to swallow past the knot in my throat, I leaned back and stared out across the park, watching the people without really seeing them.
I’d messed up.
Being attracted to Dominic as I’d been, I hadn’t let myself think things through and maybe that was understandable. It had put me where I was now and it wasn’t a good place.
I’d slept with my boss.
Worse, I cared about him.
The question now was, what was I going to do?
I had absolutely no idea.
* * *
I found myself at Molly’s.
Over the past few months, she’d become my best friend and there was little I couldn’t tell her, but after she’d ushered me inside and put a hot cup of coffee in my frozen hands, I just shook my head.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” she said, snuggled up on her ragged couch next to me. “I mean…I can guess it’s about Dominic. We were just talking earlier, but now you look like he told you that fairytales aren’t real.”
“What?” I managed a wan smile in her direction. “You mean they’re not? My Prince Charming isn’t coming?” My heart gave a painful thump.
“He got lost on the way to the ball, that’s all.” She gave me an affectionate smile.
It was a familiar joke between us, but I couldn’t make myself smile back at her this time.
Lifting my coffee to my lips, I sipped it. Its warmth was slowly seeping into my frozen hands and I thought that maybe, in a few more hours, they’d thaw out. “I just need to not think about it for a little while, Mol.”
“I think you need to talk about it,” she said, shaking her head. “You look terrible.”
“Gee, thanks.” I made a face at her. After one more sip of coffee, I rested my head on the back of the couch and stared up at the ceiling. There was an old water stain that had been there since she'd moved in. It was vaguely Iowa-shaped and looking at it filled me with foreboding. “I’m just…tired.”
I wasn’t lying. My body ached in the best of ways and if it hadn’t been for the interruption, I wanted to think that I could, even now, be lying in bed with Dominic. Maybe we could have—
I shoved the thought away.
It was for the best that his mother had interrupted.
Now I knew what I was dealing with.
“I know that look on your face.”
I shot Molly a look and immediately wished I hadn’t. She had a shrewd, knowing look in her eyes and I could imagine her seeing straight through my skull, finding the memory of what had happened earlier…
And then hunting down Dominic Snow and punching him in the nose.
Molly wasn’t the sort of girl who had problems standing up to people. She could stand up for herself and her friends. It didn't matter that he was more than a foot taller and she weighed about a hundred pounds dripping wet.
Abruptly, I stood up, moving so fast the coffee sloshed out and burned my hand. “Ouch!” Bobbling the cup to keep from spilling more, I headed over to the tiny kitchen area. Her apartment was even smaller than the one I’d shared with Emma, but in New York, that was to be expected. The eating, sleeping and living area was all in one area and if you’re having company in this place, it better be somebody you liked. I dumped the coffee down the drain and stood there, taking a minute to calm my breathing and make sure I wasn’t going to cry. It wouldn’t help. It definitely wouldn’t help.
“Do you mind if I just crash here for a while? I can sleep on the couch.”
I turned and gave her my best smile, hoping she couldn’t see how close I was to falling apart.
Molly was much better at being a friend than I was at acting. She gave me an easy smile and pretended not to notice how close I was to sobbing like a child. “Knock yourself out, Aleena. Just promise me you haven’t started snoring.”
Chapter Two
Dominic
Furious with both my mother and myself, I slammed the bedroom door and locked it, taking five seconds—just five—to turn the air blue before I grabbed a clean pair of jeans. After I dragged them on, I moved back out into the living room.
Ignoring my mother, I stared hard at the front door, almost willing it to open, but it didn’t.
When it didn’t, I stormed over and jerked it open, but the small hallway was empty.
Aleena was already gone.
Of course, the fact that she’d been pulling on her coat while I'd stood there like a statue should have been the first clue.
Swearing all over again, I came back in, not bothering to shut the door. Shoes…shoes…I saw my tennis shoes near the TV and shoved my feet in, sans socks. That was fine. Who needed socks?
My clothes were strewn on the floor, a clear sign of what we’d been doing when my mother decided to crash her way into my personal life—again. Snagging the steel gray dress shirt from the floor, I dragged it on and buttoned it. Now I had a shirt. Jeans, shirt, shoes. That covered it. And a coat because it was cold.
I jerked open the closet as my mother asked, “What are you doing, Dominic?”
“Going after Aleena.”
“Whatever for?” she asked, clearly baffled.
I ignored the question.
It was harder to ignore her hand on my arm.
I tried to shake her off but Jacqueline St. James-Snow doesn’t get shaken off. Her manicured hand didn’t precisely tighten, but I felt it close like a shackle around me. “Really, Dominic. What were you thinking?”
“What was I thinking?” I demanded. It took all the control I had not to just let her have it. “Mother, I’ll be honest—thought didn’t come into the equation at the time.”
She made a dismissive noise in her throat. “Don’t be so crude.”
Her hand fell away as I jammed my arms into my sleeves. I moved to the phone. I’d called downstairs, tell them to stop her. I could still catch her.
“Let her go, Dominic. Really. Please…sit. I came over here because we need to talk.”
“Next time, call first,” I suggested. I rubbed my hand over my chest. There was a dull ache there, one I wasn’t familiar with.
Aleena was angry and hurt. She could probably use a few minutes to calm down.
Maybe…I blew out a breath.
Okay, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to talk to her and she was probably mad and hurt.
So I’d let her have a few minutes, then call her. We could meet somewhere and I’d buy her dinner. I could make this right. Aware that my mother was still watching, I looked over at her. “I don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m pissed off at you.”
“Because of that woman?” My mother waved a hand. “Dominic, she’s hardly the first low-class girl I’ve caught you with. If you must bed them, so be it. But for it to be a girl you work with, it’s not wise. She could cause you a great deal of trouble.”
I waited until she was done. I even waited an extra few seconds, hoping it might calm the sharp edge of anger bubbling inside me. It didn’t work.
“Low-class,” I said, biting the words off. “That low-class girl is one of the sweetest, kindest women I’ve ever met. She doesn’t sit around and plan about how she can use the connections she’s made—”
“She doesn’t have connections,” Jacqueline said, laughing. “What kind of connections does a girl like that have?”
“Enough!”
Slashing a hand through the air, I snapped, “I am done with this. I’m tired of it. To you, people with money are the superior species. But have you forgotten…I was adopted! For all I know, I came from that low-class group you so despise.”
Jacqueline’s face went tight, her mouth taking on a pinched look. “Dominic, you are my son. That is all that matters.”
“It’s not all that matters to me!”
She stiffened, her face jerking back as though I’d slapped her. Slowly, like a queen rising from her throne, she came off the couch. “I see this isn’t the ideal time for us to talk.”
“What clued you in?”
She didn’t answer.
I stared at her rigid back as she walked to the door. She paused there momentarily as if expecting me to let her out...or apologize.
I stayed where I was.
After a few more seconds, she opened the door.
When it shut behind her, I moved into my bedroom. It was time to track down Aleena.
* * *
There was a problem with that idea and I figured it out less than ten minutes later.
Holding her cellphone in my hand, I slumped into the comfortable cushions of the couch and stared up at the ceiling.
She’d left her phone and I had no idea where she could have gone.
I’d slept with her twice now, had lived with her for weeks, and yet I knew so little about her. I knew the way her body responded to my touch. The way mine tightened every time she walked into the room. But I didn't know her.
What did she like to do?
Where would she go when she was upset?
I knew her friend’s name was Molly and I knew where Molly worked, but…what else did I know?
Aleena was from Iowa.
The first and only other guy she’d slept with was a piece of shit.
And I’d hurt her.
None of that would help me find her.
Chapter Three
Aleena
My situation called for drastic measures. It happens that way sometimes. Like yesterday, the situation had called for wine and whining on the phone with Molly.
This situation called for a different sort of coping.
The ice cream kind.
I spent most of Saturday curled up on Molly’s couch and slowly eating my way through a pint of ice cream. No, that was a lie. It was two pints.
It’s a good thing I didn’t get in this state often because I’d be as big as a house. By the time evening rolled around, my stomach ached and I was just as miserable as I had been earlier. Molly came in from work, took one look at me and shook her head.
She sat down across from me and fixed me with a determined look. “Girl, you are going to talk and you are going to talk now.”
“I don’t want to talk.” I glared at her sullenly.
Molly leaned back and stared right back.
She still wore her work uniform.
I sighed. That uniform meant only one thing. She was serious. One thing we both had in common was as soon as we got home, we liked to change out of work clothes. It was an odd sort of way of shedding the stress of the day.
She was giving up that habitual routine in favor of girl talk.
“You might as well talk,” she said. “You know I’m going to win this.”
The thing was, I did know that. But I felt foolish and I felt stupid and I felt miserable and I hurt. Talking about it wouldn’t help.
In fact, talking about it would make everything worse.
As though she was reading my mind, Molly leaned forward and took my hand.
“Whatever it is,” she said. “Hiding from it can’t help.”
The knot in my throat made it hard to breathe. Molly shifted over to sit down beside me and she reached up to brush my hair back. “What is it? Did you find out he’s engaged? For crying out loud, is it worse? Is he a total douchebag? He’s not married, is he?”
“No.” I looked away. My voice broke halfway through and I had to take a deep breath and wait for my voice to steady before I could say anything else. Flexing my hands in my lap, I lifted my gaze to the ceiling and willed away the tears. Then I looked at her. “I slept with him, Molly. Again. Last night.”
“Okay.” She drew the word out slowly, but she shook her head. “You’ve already done that once and we established it might not have been the best idea, but you weren’t reacting like this yesterday so what’s the problem?”
Unable to sit still, I stood up and started to pace. “I told you about that guy in high school, right?”
I wasn’t looking at her, but the dismissive sneer in her voice came through loud and clear. “That asshole? Yeah, you told me about him. Racist piece of scum. What’s that got to do with…?” Her voice trailed away.
I heard the floorboards creak under her feet as she stood up.
Arms around my middle, I stood staring out the small single window of her apartment. The view wasn’t much. It faced out over the narrow alley and into the brick of the next building, but least I wasn’t looking at her. At least she couldn’t see the expression on my face, couldn’t see how much of a fool I’d been.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice gentle but firm.
I took a deep breath. And then I told her. I didn’t go into the more intimate details. I’d promised that I would respect his privacy and I intended to keep that promise. But this wasn’t about his privacy as much as it was about his actions, and what his mother had said.
“She walked in on us. She didn’t seem embarrassed, she didn’t even seem to care about the fact that she’d walked in on her son having sex. What bothered her the most was the fact that she’d found her son having sex with the help.” My voice cracked and I gave Molly a disgusted look. “The help! And then she told him that if he had to get something more exotic, he could have gotten it without ‘bringing it home’.”
For a moment, Molly said nothing. Then she exploded.
I’ve known plenty of redheads who don’t have a temper. That’s just one stereotype among many.
Molly, though, she had a temper. She ranted and raved and stomped across her apartment. She stalked by the sofa on one of her passes and grabbed a pillow, sending it hurling across the room. It hit a pretty little vase that had been on an end table by the armchair she’d somehow crammed into a corner. The vase shattered when it hit the floor. She didn’t even pause.
She continued to rage and cuss and, bit-by-bit, I felt a little better. It was nice to have somebody angry on my behalf, to know that my hurt was justified.
Hey, what are girlfriends for?
I was twenty-one and I’d just now found a really good friend, but it had been worth the wait.
When she finally calmed down, she turned and looked at me. “I don’t know whom I’m madder at,” she said. “Him for standing there doing nothing or her for having the sheer nerve to say something like that. Did you slap her? Did you slap him?”
My despondency returned with a vengeance.
“No,” I said. I shook my head and looked away. “I didn’t know what to do. I think I said something.” I scowled and then shrugged. “I told her I was from Iowa—that didn’t really count as exotic. Then I got dressed and left.”
It had turned into one of those surreal sort of blurs. I could remember what she said—all of it. But I could remember what he hadn’t said—or done.
And I could remember that miserable, gut wrenching pain and the humiliation and the slap of shock.
If you’d never faced that kind of thing, then you couldn't understand it.
You also couldn't really explain it to someone who hadn't been there.
Being marginalized simply for not being enough of one race or another, or being poor, or being a woman, or being anything other is something you just don’t get until you’ve faced it. I’d been facing it all my life and it wasn't any easier.
After a moment, Molly came over and wrapped an arm around my waist and just stood there, leaning against me.
Sh
e got it, I knew.
Being bisexual, even in New York, wasn't easy. I'd heard plenty of homophobic slurs thrown her way when she was out with a girl, but it was still different than it was with me. People couldn't see it when she walked down the street. Mine was painted on my skin, my eyes. Not white. Not black. Never enough to be either one.
“I don't even exist to her,” I said softly. I swallowed the ache in my throat. “She talked like I wasn't even there.”
“She doesn’t matter.” Molly hugged me tighter.
“But he does…and he just stood there.”
Needing to move, I squeezed Molly back and then started to pace.
“What are you going to do?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Run back to Iowa.” I gave her a weak smile. “But is that really the answer?”
“I think you know it’s not,” she said softly. She came over and sat down on the coffee table, staring at me. Her bright hair fell into her face and she pushed it back. “You left Iowa because you weren’t happy. If you go back, is that likely to change?”
“No.” I dropped onto the couch and buried my face in my hands.
The one place I’d been happy had been here, for the past six weeks. Working for the Winter Corporation. And it hadn’t just been because of Dominic. Yes, I loved working with him, even when he drove me crazy, but I loved my job and what I did.
“I don’t know what to do, Molly.”
“I think you do.” She lifted a brow. “You have to face him. You have to deal with this. And you know it. Running away…Aleena, that’s not you.”
“And facing him is going to make me happy?” I muttered. I was grateful she didn't see me leaving Iowa to come here as running away.
Molly nibbled on her lower lip for a minute and I could tell she was thinking hard. Finally, she said, “I had a roommate for a little while not too long after I came out. I was still nervous about it. She didn’t know. I mean, I wasn’t telling everybody. She found out one night when she got home from work earlier than planned…I had a girlfriend with me. We were on the couch, messing around. She just kind of stared at us and then gave a little laugh like it was no big deal. After that, she started acting weird around me. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. I tried to let it go and try to act like it didn’t bother me, but it did. The longer I ignored it, the worse it got and the more it bothered me. And then I started noticing people treating me weird. I couldn’t figure out why. Then one day Mrs. Hagerty from upstairs said something to me. I didn’t know what she meant at first, but I wasn’t going to let it go, so I asked her.”