Beautiful Bitch (Beautiful Bastard, #1.5)(11)

I shrugged, remembering the conversation I’d had with her earlier that day. Sara’s douchebag of a fiancé had been photographed kissing another woman, and it seemed Sara might really be seeing what the rest of us had suspected for years: Andy was a cheating dick.

“She’s okay, I guess. Andy still claims he was set up. The other woman’s name still pops up in the paper every week. You know Sara. She’s not going to show the world how she feels, but I can tell she’s completely shattered over this.”

He hummed, considering. “Think she’s finally done? No more taking him back?”

“Who knows? They’ve been together since she was twenty-one. If she hasn’t left him by now then maybe she’ll stay with him forever.”

“Wish I’d gone with my gut and knocked him on his ass at the Smith House event last month. What a miserable sleaze.”

“I’ve tried to talk her into coming to New York but . . . she’s so stubborn.”

“Stubborn? I can’t possibly see why the two of you are friends,” he deadpanned.

I threw a cherry tomato at him.



The rest of the meal was all talk about work, about getting the new office off the ground and all the pieces that still needed to be put into place before that could happen. We’d begun discussing whether his family would be going back to New York again before the new offices opened when I asked, “When did your dad get back in town?”

I waited a moment, but when Bennett didn’t answer, I looked up, surprised to see him pushing his food around his plate.

“Everything okay over there, Ryan?”

A few seconds of silence passed before he said, “I miss you working for me.”

I felt my eyes widen. “What?”

“I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. We were awful to each other, and it was an impossible situation.” Holy crap, what an understatement. The fact that we managed to survive working in the same office together for ten months without bloodshed or some sort of manslaughter stapler incident still surprised me. “But . . . ,” he continued, looking up at me from across the table, “I saw you every day. It was predictable. Consistent. I pushed and you pushed back. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at a job. And I took it for granted.”




We hadn’t even had time to pick where we would live in New York. We had identified the new location for RMG, made a map of where each of our offices would be, drawn up blueprints of the renovations and hired a designer . . . but Chloe and I didn’t have an apartment to go to.

Which was the greatest sign that old habits die hard, because in reality my relationship with her had completely altered my relationship to my job. Only a year ago I’d been committed to one thing: my career. Now, the thing that mattered most to me was Chloe, and every time my career got in the way of being with her it burned me up inside. I don’t even know specifically when that had happened, but I suspect the change had been effected long before I would have ever admitted it. Maybe it was the night Joel came to my parents’ house for dinner. Or maybe it was the next day, when I fell on my knees in front of her and apologized the only way I knew how. Most likely it was even earlier than all of that, on the first night I kissed her roughly in the conference room, in my darkest, weakest moment. Thank God I’d been such an idiot.

I glanced down at the clock on my dashboard and the date, backlit in red, hit me like a fist to the chest: May 5. Exactly one year ago, I’d watched Chloe walk off the plane from San Diego, her shoulders set in hurt and anger at how I’d essentially thrown her under the bus after she’d covered for me with a client. The next day she’d resigned; she’d left me. I blinked, trying to clear the memory from my mind. She came back, I reminded myself. We’d worked it out in the past eleven months, and despite all of my frustration with my work schedule, I’d never been happier. She was the only woman I’d ever want.

I thought back to my previous breakup, with Sylvie almost two years ago now. Our relationship started the way one climbs on an escalator: with a single step and then moving without effort along a single path. We started out friendly and easily slipped into physical intimacy. The situation worked perfectly for me because she provided companionship and sex, and she’d never asked for more than I offered. When we broke up, she admitted she knew I wouldn’t give her more, and for a while the sex and quasi-intimacy had been enough. Until, for her, they weren’t anymore.

After a long embrace and one final kiss, I’d let her go. I’d gone straight to my favorite restaurant for a quiet dinner alone, and then headed to bed early, where I slept the entire night without waking once. No drama. No heartbreak. It ended and I closed the door on that part of my life, completely ready to move on. Three months later, I was back in Chicago.

It was comical to compare that to the reaction I’d had to losing Chloe. I’d essentially turned into a filthy hobo, not eating, not showering, and surviving entirely on scotch and self-pity. I remembered clutching to the tiny details Sara would share with me about Chloe—how she was doing, how she looked—and trying to determine from these tidbits whether she missed me and could possibly be as miserable as I was.

The day Chloe returned to RMG was, coincidentally, Sara’s last day at the firm. Although we had made up, Chloe had insisted that she sleep at her place and I sleep at mine so that we would actually get some rest. After a chaotic morning, I walked into the break room to find Chloe snacking on a small pack of almonds, reading some marketing reports. Sara was heating up leftovers in the tiny microwave, having refused our entreaties to give her a big sendoff lunch. I came in to pour myself a cup of coffee, and the three of us stood together in loaded silence for what felt like fifteen minutes.