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She licks her lips. “You really don’t even have to work to come up with those lines, do you? They just slip out.”
I shrug. “They’re the truth. I can’t lie to you, Cat. I’m in love with you. It’s that simple.”
“I love you too,” she says softly. “And no one exists for me in the way you do. Completely. Irrevocably. Head over heels.” She presses her hand to my heart.
“Completely. Irrevocably. Head over heels,” I repeat.
50
WARNING SIGN BY COLDPLAY
JAY
One more afternoon spent doing the opposite of what I’d like to be doing—Cat. I leave for the dreaded Christmas trip to London next month, and then she’s heading to Paris for her internship the first week of January. How is it that I already miss her, and I woke up beside her this morning? Hell, I woke up inside her mouth this morning. Not a fucking horrible way to start the day. Yet she’s not here, so it’s gone downhill quickly.
The buzzer on my phone summons me from my delicious memories.
“Yes?” I reply, waiting for my secretary to speak.
“A Ms. Alves is here to see you,” she says, her tone dripping with disapproval.
Mia? Here?
“Send her in,” I say with a sigh. Cat got home late last night, and then we got lost in one another and didn’t talk about her dinner with Mia. An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach, though, when Mia walks in with her chin jutted petulantly and her nose turned up.
She throws a thank-you to my secretary as she crosses the threshold, but her eyes remain on me, as if I’m somehow going to slither away when she’s not looking.
I don’t slither for anyone.
“Mia, to what do I owe the pleasure?” I ask, pointing at the guest chairs.
Still on her feet in front of my desk, she narrows her eyes as she purses her lips, clearly thinking she has the upper hand. And maybe she does, because I don’t have a clue what the issue is. Cat and I have been together for almost two months—longer if you count the inordinate amount of time it took to win her over. The last conversation that Mia and I had about Cat was before we made things official, and that feels like a lifetime ago if I’m being honest.
Life can be categorized into three parts for me. Before my mother’s affair, the time in which I sought revenge for a decade and subsisted on nothing but that, and the time since meeting Cat. I wouldn’t return to either of the previous chapters for anything.
“She’s fucking Catherine James,” she says, as if the information should shock me.
I steeple my fingers in front of me and wait for her to go on.
“Is this all a game to you?” she shouts. “Make her fall for you so you can take her down with the rest of them? I can’t believe I actually thought you cared about her.” She scoffs.
I shoot to my feet, sending my chair knocking into the wall behind me. “Wait a fucking minute. I do care about Cat.”
“More than your revenge?” she asks, her eyes wide.
I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. Mia doesn’t recognize the change in me, and that’s my fault, not hers. For years, I cursed the James family. She knew my plans. She knew why I made friends with Carter. She helped me when necessary.
But she didn’t know her best friend was a James then.
“Yes,” I breathe, letting my shoulders drop. “Cat means more to me than revenge.”
Mia finally drops to the chair like her legs can no longer hold her, her face etched with confusion. “Does she know?”
I shake my head. It’s the one secret I’ve kept. Maybe it’s more than one secret, but they’re all twisted in a malignant knot.
“She knows I hate her father. And that my relationship with Carter is complicated by that.”
Mia scoffs. “So she doesn’t know you used Carter to exact your revenge. How do you think she’ll take it when everything goes down? Do you even know what your father has planned?”
