AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can read a calendar. You and I got stuck in the elevator in early May. I complained to you about how my sister is in massive debt and her life is ruined because lawyers suck and two weeks later, she gets hired by you to work as a professional chef for an exorbitant amount of money, and if she lasts a year, she’ll get a huge bonus. All of her financial problems disappear.” She kisses the tips of her fingers and blows. “Just like that.”
I don’t say anything in response. She continues to drum her fingers against her knee, glaring me down like she thinks she’s going to break me. When she doesn’t, she throws up her hands in frustration. “So, that’s it? You’re not gonna say anything else? You have no explanation for how you met and hired my sister?“
“Is it so hard to believe that I heard about your sister and just wanted to right a wrong? Her lawyer was borderline incompetent. He should have been disbarred. Instead, I found a way to improve her prospects.”
She blinks, clearly waiting for me to say more. Her lips part as she sucks in air through them before swallowing.
“And that’s it? That’s all it was for you? An act of charity?”
“No. I wouldn’t call it that.” Charity doesn’t even begin to describe the need I felt to do something, anything, to help Trinity after that elevator ride.
Not that it started in the elevator ride. It started the moment we met.
Before that maybe. The moment that alarm went off on the door of the memory care center and I looked up to see her walk in. Chaos and energy and joy and snickerdoodles. Everything good and perfect in the world.
And, yes, I know that’s bullshit. No one is perfect. I know that.
But I also know that some of us are better than others. Some people fuck up everything. Other people make everything just a little bit better.
And the first time I saw her, that’s what I felt. Like she was there to make everything a little better. A little more chaotic. A little louder. A little dirtier. And not just the fun way. Just a little more everything.
So, no. I didn’t do any of this out of charity.
I did it out of a desperate, senseless need to spend a little more time with her. To make her life a little better in any small way that I could. I did these small things because it kept me from doing the big things. The big things like dropping to my knees and begging her to marry me. Like abandoning everything else in my life and pledging allegiance to her and her alone.
I see that now. I understand what I didn’t understand then. If I let her, this woman could have me wrapped around her finger in no time at all. I could lose myself in her.
But I can’t do that. I can’t do it to Ian, who depends on me to be level-headed. I can’t do it to the other people and the other clients who depend on me.
And all of that is beside the point, because it’s not like Trinity has even asked that of me.
Yes, we slept together. We had one night of phenomenal sex. Sex that she walked away from the next morning.
Maybe she walked away because she legitimately thought I was blowing her off. Or maybe she walked away because it simply didn’t mean as much to her as it did to me.
Fuck, that’s a hard pill to swallow, but if I’m going to choke it down, I’d rather do it now than after I’ve screwed up my friendship with Ian.
“If you wouldn’t call it charity,” she says, bringing my attention back to the moment. “Then what would you call it?”
“I did what I thought was best for my client. Your sister happened to benefit. That’s not charity.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, but then snaps it closed, rolling in her lips to seal in whatever she was about to say.
She stands, and I think she’s going to walk out without saying anything else, but she doesn’t. She pauses at the door to glance back at me.
“You really are a frustrating man to argue with.”
God.
Her voice when she says it … the way it cracks, like she’s holding back tears. It guts me.
“Yes,” I say in reply. “I’ve been told that before.”
But by the time I choke the phrase out, she’s gone.
fourteen
TRINITY
