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Today, the very things I’d eschewed as superfluous made me hike the hood of my sweatshirt up, like I didn’t want to claim this sterile place as my own. That these bleached white walls and the metal beams that I used to think were edgy and quirky were now just...empty.
I trudged to the kitchen, tossing a glare over my shoulder when my phone made the melodic jingle that told me someone was attempting to gain access to the loft. Probably some asshole photographer that was pretending they had a delivery. Someone who snagged a Cox Technologies t-shirt and was savvy enough to fool the front desk and security guard.
Yesterday, two weasels had gotten as far as the private elevator before I realized that the only time a delivery wasn’t left downstairs was when I was roleplaying with a one night stand. The second giveaway was when one of them dropped the charade the moment they stepped into the elevator, reaching into their messenger bag for a massive camera that I definitely didn’t order.
I cracked open the fridge with a sigh. It was filled with takeout containers, IPA, and a full carton of eggs from God knows when. Exhaustion must have gone right to my head because I unwisely took a whiff of a carton of milk near the back.
I coughed, shuddering as the sour aroma filled the air around me and put it back on the shelf with a shrug.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I grumbled, opting for the beer.
It wasn’t like I had any pressing engagements. Once the bullshit story about me and Cassidy went viral, spreading through the blogosphere and tabloids like wildfire, the board suggested I take a brief leave of absence until things calmed down. For the past ten years, my day began at 5AM and ended after I found someone warm and beautiful that was mine for the night.
That is, until Scott’s wedding.
Until Natalee...
I threw back the beer, trying to dull the pangs in my chest. The physical reminder that this wasn’t just some run of the mill scandal that would go away and I’d carry on like usual in a few weeks. I had no interest in carrying on as usual. This was usual. An empty house. Paparazzi that hurled barbed comments about the man slut, Jason Cox. Jokes about the sounds the women made. How throughly I rocked their world before I moved on to the next.
But it was Natalee that rocked my world. And as easy as it would be to chalk all that up to our undeniable chemistry, how her body felt with my body, it was only a fraction of what this was. What set this apart.
It was the fact that I’d never noticed that green was everywhere; from the stoplight to the jasmine accents in the marble floor in the lobby downstairs. I caught glimmers of it, glimmering at me in the most unexpected ways, pulling me back to her green eyes.
Nothing was as brilliant as her eyes.
Eyes that haunted me in the best way. Defiant, like the rest of her soul wasn’t glittering there too. Eyes that dared me to take the leap. To risk it all. Warning me that if I did let go, if I dived in...I had to mean it.
And I’d done the opposite. I’d pulled her into my world. A world of sex and intrigue and a torrid past of women that I’d used and tossed aside, waiting to make me pay for my sins.
Women who’d caught my eye in passing, but their eyes had never even registered.
But it was more than the color green. I saw Natalee in the moon, too.
The moon, something that used to symbolize carnal escape and racking up notches for my bedpost was now a different kind of beast. I’d spent last night on the balcony just staring at it, remembering the way her skin glowed beneath it the last time we were together. Shining like hope, illuminating all the things I never thought I wanted.
With Natalee, I wouldn’t settle for anything less than forever.
Anything less than everything.
Anything less than love.
I was still holding the bottle even though I’d utterly drained it. I thought about grabbing a second, anything to dull that word. The ‘L’ word. I didn’t deserve that word in the face of the big, block letter ones in the tabloids that trumpeted, ‘A Billionaire In Love’.
They got that part right, but not with the fair haired woman they’d slapped beside my picture. Not Cassidy. Not the woman I’d packed away with all my other youthful indiscretions. Burying my skeletons deep.
The heart that I thought only beat for leaving my mark on the business world and chasing tail? It was all a lie. Me insulating myself from the thing that was impossible to deny in the silence. It shouted at the top of its lungs...louder, more powerful, and more real than anything I’d ever known.
I was in love with Natalee.
With the woman with the bold eyes and the sharp tongue. The woman who called me on my shit and made me work for her affections because I was the idiot that took them for granted. Who made me feel like I wasn’t Jason Cox at all because she tore down the walls and what was left was a man.
A man who was falling.
And it was fucking terrifying.
Love...all signs pointed to it being a bad idea. When I brought home my first valentine, my mother had snickered and warned me it was the beginning of the end. Love made you crazy. Weak. Weak enough that you give up all you are for someone else, she said.
I paused at the counter, suddenly regretting the sleek glass doors on my cabinets because I was getting a good look at myself.
