Dirty Headlines(45)

Célian bowed his head. His face was stoic, but his eyes bled pain. He looked like The Warrior, shredded into ribbons and tough as steel.

“The moment I confessed, she bolted. The hurt and rage I saw in her eyes… I ran after her when I saw her under the bus’s wheels. Dragged her out. At first I thought she was okay. There was no blood or anything. She died eight hours later of internal bleeding. My father can’t look me in the face anymore because I told her the truth, and I don’t exactly blame him. If it wasn’t for the other shit between us, I would actually understand.”

Silence hung in the air. I wanted to hug him, but knew better than to try. So I did the next best thing, the thing my mom used to do whenever I cried, which wasn’t that often. She’d kiss the tips of her fingers and press them against my heart.

He scowled. “The fuck you doing, Brooklyn girl?”

“Kissing your pain away,” I whispered, not wondering, even for a second, how he knew where I lived, “Manhattan prince.”

He turned around and headed for the building silently, and I followed suit. The entire elevator ride upstairs, I thought about Phoenix. About what it must be like for Célian to see him around after what happened. About the tattoo on Phoenix’s forearm, of the smiling girl. Of Camille. And how he, too, was still dealing with the aftermath of her death. About how it must feel for Célian to spend time with his father here every day, or even look at his fiancée’s face. August. My mind reeled. He said they were getting married in August. Less than three months away.

The elevator dinged, and we both rushed out. I didn’t dare look at his face after all he’d shared, after how he’d opened up to me. Then it occurred to me that my boss didn’t know anything about my personal life—not about Dad, not about Mom, and certainly not about Milton. I arrived at my desk, sat back, and stared at nothing for half an hour.

A message from Grayson in our company’s chatroom snapped me out of my reverie.

Grayson: Reminding you to call your insurance like you asked me to.

Grayson: Another friendly reminder: I’m not your PA.

Grayson: Mr. Laurent, I know you’re probably reading this, so let me just say I admire the suit you’re in today. Not that I’m checking you out. And not that you don’t normally deliver in the fashion sense. How do you undo a message? God, if you can’t send me an Abercrombie and Fitch model as a boyfriend, at least send me filters.

Oh, yes. I’d told Grayson I had an insurance issue so I wouldn’t forget. I’d lied.

I took my phone out and dialed the collection agency to talk about different payment plans. Now that I had a real job, I needed to start working through our debt.

I gave the representative on the other end of the line my name and details, then asked if she needed my credit card number. It was going to suck to see the money finally coming into my bank account just evaporating right back out.

She snapped her gum in my ear, her voice lethargic. “No need, ma’am. Says here the account’s been settled.”

I blinked, staring at all the yellows and oranges and reds on my screen, not really deciphering her words. “Excuse me?”

She sighed. “Says here a payment has been made. You no longer owe us anything, ma’am. Anything else you need help with today?”

I raised my head and looked into the conference room, where Célian sat with Mathias and a bunch of guys in suits he referred to as bigwigs. They were probably discussing money issues and ratings. Those were the meetings the staff wasn’t invited to. I’d once heard Mathias shouting at Célian that he was sheltering us from the bad stuff, and Célian had laughed and retorted, “As your son, let me assure you, you have a lot to learn about protecting what’s yours. Take a fucking seat, old man.” Célian was talking to one of the suits animatedly, then he smiled his patronizing smile and patted the back of his hand like he was the most adorable idiot he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.

Could he?

Did he…?

Mathias stared at him with a disdain that chilled my bones. All the other men and women in the room stared at him intently, listening to every word he said.

No.

Célian was too brutal, too callous to do something like this.

Besides, how would he even know?

Then, as if sensing my gaze, his face angled toward mine and he shot me a look I couldn’t decode. Anger? Annoyance? Desire? All three?

“Ma’am? Ma’am, is there anything else I can do for you today?”

I shook my head and got back to the woman on the phone. “No, everything is perfectly clear. Thank you very much.”





Jude never got a follow-up on that sex-a-thon invitation from this morning.

After spilling my guts all over her orange Chucks earlier in the afternoon, watching her eyes swim with emotions that had threatened to drown me into despair, I had decided it was in everyone’s best interest if we took the night to reevaluate the clusterfuck known as our office fling.

To say I wasn’t the oversharing type would be the understatement of the millennium. Yet somehow, in that kosher deli that smelled like death and looked like clinical depression, I’d talked about Camille in a way I never had before—not with Maman and not with Kate, and certainly not with my sorry excuse for a fiancée or deadbeat father.