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Fucking asshole. My fingers tighten on the box and I look furiously up at him.
He meets my gaze. “That may have come out wrong.”
“Or right. Here. You go do you.” I hand him the keys.
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean I want to fuck other people. I meant if I did, I—”
“Ryder, stop. You’re making things worse.”
He looks down at the keys I pulled from the box. “I don’t understand.”
“The board’s decision is going to be made soon, but you can’t just snap back to the old Ryder. Not right away. That’s just begging for you to lose it all. I think they call it snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
I’m running on professional autopilot right here. Inside, I’m a mess, making running down inner me’s face, as I hide in a corner, doubled over in pain. But outside? I’m angry, but professional. I’ll do my job until the end.
“I didn’t…what are the keys?”
“As I said, go do you, Ryder. They’re to a place I have for clients in Murray Hill. It’s Tudor City Place between East Forty First and Second. Nothing much but rich people and the UN, but it’s private and not happening in the way you like.”
He glances at the keys and then at me. “Punishment?”
“No. It’s for clients to use on the downlow if they need to. Use it. Just…just don’t report in. I don’t need to hear about who you’re banging.”
Ryder nods tightly. “You want me to fuck other people?”
“Have orgies for all I care. Keep out of the papers for the next month and you’ll sail home free. That advice is for free. So use it. Fuck all the women you want.”
“Fine,” he says lowly. “I will.”
The words are a knife edge slicing through bone. “And we’re not friends. I can’t be friends with you, Ryder.”
“So if I do the noble thing and walk so I don’t screw things up—”
“Noble?” I hiss the word. “There’s nothing noble about this. About what you did, about what you said. It’s half assed, and it’s all for your precious cock. You want your cake and you want to eat it as well. But you can’t. And I’m not a cake.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t, Ryder. That’s the problem. You didn’t try. You give me a wonderful night and then decide you can’t change, so you go and deliberately flirt with someone you don’t want to send me a message—one I got, by the way—and then you come after me and offer me nothing but more half-assed words.”
Something wet is on my face and with rising horror, I swipe the tear away.
“Don’t—”
“It’s frustration, nothing more. Am I hurt? Yes. Of course I am. I’m not you. I don’t use my body as a trinket the way you do. I wanted you, I had…feelings…and you just trampled them down because you don’t know if you can keep your dick in your pants.”
Oh, God. I’m a fucking idiot.
I know what’s wrong with me.
I’ve gone and done the thing I didn’t think I would do with him. This isn’t a crush. This is unforgivable.
This is love.
And he’s not willing to be capable in the right way back.
“I think,” I say quietly, “you should go now. You’re never going to change, Ryder. We both know this.”
He’s pale. Very pale and he stares hard at me.
