Avoiding Temptation (Avoiding #3)(66)

“I was hoping you would be able to grow up for one night,” he shot back.

Chyna shrugged. “I guess not.”

Adam shook his head and took a seat next to her. “You’re insufferable. It’s a good thing I really f**king love you.”

“You mean that I really f**king love you,” she shot back, almost as a challenge.

“If you guys start making out, I’m leaving,” Lexi said, plopping down next to Chyna.

Chyna shrugged. “Where’s your boy toy tonight anyway?”

“I already told you that he had to work.”

The new medical wing was set to open in just two months’ time, and Ramsey was working around the clock. Considering that fact, Lexi was a little surprised that John was here at all. Lately, he had been in Atlanta nearly as often or maybe even more than he had been in New York.

“That blows. It would have been nice to sit here and watch Ramsey beat John for eye-f*cking you when we walked in,” Chyna said.

“He was not eye-f*cking me!”

Chyna rolled her eyes. “Whatever, chica.”

“Chyna, your phone is ringing,” Adam said, holding up the small clutch in his hand.

“Ugh! Who is calling me at this hour?” she demanded. She fished out the small phone and stared down at the number. “That’s strange.”

“What?” Lexi asked.

“It’s international.”

“Is your mom abroad or something?”

“My mother doesn’t call me,” Chyna said, staring down at the number curiously.

“Just answer it,” Adam told her.

Chyna shrugged and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

All of the color drained out of her face in the split second it took for the person on the other end of the phone to respond. Lexi had never seen Chyna look so mortified in her life. There might have been a twinge of green to her face in that moment.

“What the f**k do you want?” she demanded, her voice like ice.

Lexi and Adam both stared at her very carefully. Adam rested his hand on her thigh. Neither of them knew what was happening on the other end of that call.

“Are you f**king serious right now? It’s been a year! A motherf*cking year! And you have the audacity to call me after what you f**king did to me!” she nearly screamed into the line. Chyna stood up swiftly and started yelling louder, “You f**king blacklisted me, Marco! I haven’t had a goddamn modeling job in a year!”

Lexi’s and Adam’s eyebrows rose in equal proportion. Marco. Now that was a name Lexi had not heard in a long time. He was the illustrious fashion designer and photographer that Chyna had worked for and become lovers with during last summer when she had been in Milan. He had made her a supermodel and had taken it all away when she had left him high and dry, taking the million-dollar dress she had worn at her spotlight gala with her. Their falling-out had shaken Chyna’s world after he had blacklisted her from the modeling world for theft.

“No,” Chyna said icily. “You got the dress. I got the boxes of goodies you shipped me. I got everything! The answer is f**k no.”

Chyna had called Lexi one day last fall, crying her eyes out over a box from Marco that had shown up at her house. Apparently, it had every article of clothing she had ever worn at a shoot for him, every sex tape, all of the rolls of pictures, and then everything she had left in Milan. The only thing missing had been the million-dollar dress.

Two weeks later, a giant desk had shown up in her apartment. Chyna had thought that Frederick had it imported without her knowledge, but then she had realized that, in fact, it was from Milan. It was a desk from the dressing room in the opera house where she had been the star of a gala. Lexi didn’t want to know how much that had cost. The guy was f**king crazy.

Lexi hadn’t really wanted to know the next part, but a nude picture of Chyna had shown up at her doorstop every Friday for three months. But as far as Lexi knew, Chyna had never actually spoken with Marco. Then, in March, everything had just stopped, and Chyna hadn’t heard from him again…until now.

“I don’t give a shit about fashion week. I don’t give a shit about your f**king company. I left you, remember? And then, you f**ked me over. Even Corsa, who had already offered me a job, rescinded her offer…so f**k you, Marco. Go f**k with someone else’s life. It looks like Ravenna is enjoying it,” Chyna said, throwing out the name of the girl that Marco had replaced her with.

There was silence for another minute.

“No. I’m done with this conversation. I don’t care if you say you’ll lift the blacklist, you motherf*cker. I will never work for you again—not at fashion week, not in Milan, not anywhere. Get it through your head, and stop acting so desperate,” she growled out.

Then, she pressed the End button and tossed the phone back on the table. She was still standing…and she was shaking. Lexi didn’t know if she was shaking from rage or embarrassment or sadness because she’d had to give up her career a second time over the same man.

“Chyna,” Lexi said softly, reaching out to try to comfort her friend.

“What’s going on?” John asked, appearing at that moment with a wary expression on his face and the girls’ drinks in his hands.

“That motherf*cker messed with my buzz,” she growled. “Gimme.”