Page 16 of Twisted Love

He didn’t have a meeting to get to, he just wanted out of the office. He stopped at a fast-food place and then went out to drive around the place he now called home. The views didn’t grab his attention, and all he could think about was Keily. With a frustrated sigh, he drove out to a park and ate his lunch in silence.

A love song played on the radio and he wondered if that’s what was wrong with him. Was he in love with the one woman he shouldn’t be? He had no idea what romantic love was, not really. He knew what the movies said it should be, he knew what a crush felt like, he’d had one whopper of a crush in high school, but was that love? He’d barely known the girl he’d had the crush on, so could that be love?

Was love needing to see someone? Be with them and hear them laugh? Or was it wanting them to be happy, even if that meant you weren’t in the picture? Was love mowing the grass and taking out the trash without being asked? Or was it candy and roses? The card writers of the world wrote about need and happiness, was that love? Or were all of those things rolled up into what love actually was?

He and Keily never talked about love and he steered the conversation away from anything that might end with the word ‘relationship’. He was having an affair with her; he’d insisted that to himself from the beginning. An affair wasn’t a relationship, it was purely sex. Right?

But it wasn’t just sex that they shared. They watched Netflix together and actually chilled. They discussed the shows they binge-watched, and news, politics, all the things that people in a relationship should talk about. Well, maybe not everything. They didn’t talk about their pasts, their families, or their hopes and dreams. Those were matters they both avoided.

He’d set her up as his mistress, the same way men had for countless generations. He gave her a home where he would be king, provided her with an income, and bought her gifts. She was his mistress and an exceptionally talented one. She could be a skilled courtesan in the world’s royal courts. Henry the Eighth wouldn’t have looked twice at Anne Boleyn, he knew, if Keily had been in his court.

That meant that Keily would lose her head, he thought with a frown. He didn’t want to behead her, at all. Now, getting head from her, that was a different matter. That made him smile, until he realized he was smiling idiotically. She’d turned him into some kind of soppy douchebag, which was another reason he’d avoided her this week.

No, he thought decisively, she was his mistress, and considering anything else would be a mistake. Keily might make a politician a good wife, and she was great with his clients, but he didn’t need a wife. He’d never thought about having one, or kids, and didn’t want to think about either now. He wanted to be able to focus on his business and get through his day without worrying about what some woman needed.

Which he did, despite himself.

“Fuck.” He spit out and started the car back up. He was on fire, burning up into ash, for a woman that would be no good for him.

Keily wasn’t the woman he needed in his life. She was exactly what he didn’t need. Selfish, greedy, morally ambiguous in many ways. But…was she really?

Perhaps in the past, but not so much lately. She’d become kind, caring, a thinker who obviously considered her past actions. She didn’t ask him for anything, except his company. Even that she only asked for in delicate ways.

This wasn’t how he’d planned any of this to go that day when he’d seen her application on his screen. None of it had gone as planned. Keily was a force to be reckoned with, even if she no longer had the greedy look in her eyes. Even if she didn’t even say she liked him.

She did, he heard it every time she said she hated him, the words that meant exactly the opposite hid in her eyes, in her voice. It was in those unguarded moments when she purred out those spiteful, hateful words that he found he needed her the most. Because she wasn’t telling him she hated him. Not at all.

She purred those words so beautifully, in their most heated moments, when they should be saying other words to each other. That’s when they both admitted what they still managed to keep hidden. The word love was never spoken, but hate was something they could both admit comfortably.

Maybe hate was just a word that meant love when you couldn’t actually say that word. When love had been rejected, hate was the only thing that could replace it, right? There was apathy, of course. He considered it for a moment, but knew apathy wasn’t right at all. Hate wasn’t either.

Was he truly capable of…that other thing?

His eyes narrowed as he drove back to work. He focused on the road, but his thoughts were still on Keily. She took all of his self-control, even if she didn’t know she did. He wondered if he did the same to her? Did he make it impossible for her to think? Were her nights filled with dreams of him? Were her days spent pining for the moment he came in her door?

Is that what that message really meant? Not that she would find something else to do if he wasn’t coming, but that she was on the edge of breaking down and demanding he come to her? She wasn’t the kind to do that, to admit she was so weak she needed his company. But was he her weakness?

It was a possibility.

And insane.

He walked back into his office but changed his mind. He walked over to the plant to have a look over operations. He talked to the employees, whether supervisors or packers, machine operators, or forklift drivers, and that took up the rest of his day. It kept his thoughts off the one thing he shouldn’t be thinking about at all.

As he was driving back home at the end of the day, he looked at his phone expecting more texts from Keily. There weren’t any and he hated to admit he was disappointed. The problem was, he was disappointed. She’d been a little distracted in their phone calls lately, as if she was troubled but didn’t want to talk about it.

He would never push her to talk, even if he wanted to. He wondered what was bothering her, but maybe it was just that business with her mother and her scholarships. She’d talked about it a little, told him that there were funds somewhere that she hadn’t touched and that her mom had stolen some of it from her. He’d wanted to ask why she hadn’t pressed charges against the woman for theft, but she was Keily’s mother. That was probably why. No need to ask when the answer was obvious.

Chinese food arrived at his house an hour later and he sat down in front of the television but couldn’t find anything he’d want to watch without Keily. Logan blew air out slowly between his lips and stared at the screensaver. He’d been sitting there so long that the screensaver had come on, but he didn’t care. He had a problem.

A huge one, even if she was a little bitty thing.

Was he in love with the woman?

He couldn’t be. Could he?

Maybe it was time to call this all off, to end it and get on with his life. He could go back to California now, put someone in charge of the place and get back to his real life. Find another mistress.

That idea revealed another truth he didn’t want to admit to. He only wanted Keily as his mistress. He couldn’t imagine coming home to anyone but her. He couldn’t imagine even going to sleep beside another woman that wasn’t her. Fuck.