14. You’ll Regret This

Leonie

When he pulled out, he stood, slipped off the condom, tied it and walked out of the room.

Without a single word.

My heart was still beating a mile a minute and now it was beating with an echo of guilt, shame, fear that he’d done exactly what I had expected the whole time. Used me and now chucked me like that damn condom.

I needed my clothes. My socks.

It was when I stood up — the only things under the sofa were a few of Ghost’s toys — that I saw it on the TV stand. A framed photo of Dom and Mia, smiling. They were clearly at a wedding, he was in a black fitted suit and her a red, skin-tight midi dress.

He’d given up the models, the wild nights out, the bachelor life, for her. It boiled my blood.

They looked happy. She was grinning from ear to ear, he was looking down at her with an emotion some might confuse for love.

A facade. Dominic Belov only ever showed you what he wanted. Either he had been lying to Mia for a whole year, or he had lied to me last night.

I hoped it was me.

Tears were in my eyes, threatening to fall as I pulled my underwear on and shook out my jeans so they were no longer inside out. I wanted my bra. I wanted my top. I could only find one of those stupid white socks.

Pathetic, embarrassing Leonie. He calls asking for a favour, after hating me for over ten years, and I come running in an awkward waddle with my legs spread and my knickers at my ankles. Exactly how he expected and exactly who I thought I no longer was.

Where was this bloody sock?

He came back into the room, completely naked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I snapped and pushed past him to the hallway.

I retrieved my clothes, pocketing the bra and throwing on the top before running up the stairs to find my phone.

“Leo,” he called, his voice laced with concern.

At his bedroom door, his grip latched onto my arm and pulled me around to face him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. Everything is great,” I chirped, avoiding his gaze and looking at the rug on his bedroom floor for my phone.

He tugged to bring my attention to him, but he’d had enough of my attention. For years.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Fine! I sign myself up for being used, again and again, like it’s some secret kink I have,” I shouted. “It’s like I have a big ass sign on my head: Use little Leonie. She’s gagging for it.”

He was so silent that I finally looked up at him. His hazel eyes were narrowed, looking down at me with a frown. His hold on me slackened.

“You were gagging for it,” he said, his voice cold and I could have slapped him there and then. “But that’s the point. I wasn’t using you if you were using me, too. Did you not enjoy yourself? Because I’m sure I made you taste otherwise. I can pull down these jeans and show you on my fingers how much you—”

“I get it!”

He smirked and ran his finger across my skin, just along the waist of my jeans. “You wanted it. You begged for it. We’re using each other, Leo.” When I didn’t say anything, his hand slipped down my arm to my hand. “If you want me to beg this time around, I can. I will.”

“This time around?” I whispered and, looking down, sure enough, he was ready to go again. “Mia will be back—”

“Fuck Mia,” he mumbled into the skin of my neck.

He was only doing this so she would walk in and see. She’d tell Issy and my whole life would go up in flames. My best friend, the people I relied on like family. They would never see me the same way.

I pushed him away, hands on his chest. I was so easy. All he had to do was be the charming, handsome prince and save me from Jared for me to drop my panties.

“This was a mistake. The orgasmic haze is just about fading and, once your hard-on is gone, you’ll regret this, too.”

“You regret this?”

Yes. No.

His arrogant tone, the way he clearly believed it impossible for someone to not want him, balled my hands into fists.

“Yes,” I said, kneeling beside the bed to check if I’d thrown my phone under it.

My bra was tugged out of my back jeans pocket. He slid it out slowly and admired it, pulling on the tag to see my size. “Knew it,” he muttered to himself. “I’ll keep this until you realise the real mistake.”

“The real mistake?” I asked, absently crawling past the bed to look under a chest of drawers. I was hardly trying to find it, focusing on his voice.

“The real mistake is that we haven’t been doing this far longer.”

“This,” I repeated and rolled my eyes. Three beats passed. He hadn’t seen my eye roll. Or wasn’t going to punish me for it. “There is no this.”

“Why is Jack texting you?”

Damn it. He leaned over the drawers, my phone in his hand.

I used the knobs of the drawers to pull myself up and tried to snatch the phone back. He pulled it to his chest. “Why is Jack texting you?”

“We’re arranging our date.”

“Date?” he snorted. “You’re still going? On a date? With my friend?”

I’d never seen him so ineloquent. That was normally me.

“Yes.”

“After I made you come on my cock, you’re going to go and date my friend? You’re going to sleep with me at the same time?”

“I slept with you once!”

He gave a humourless laugh and stepped into my space, crowding me around the chest of drawers. “Like I said, you’ll come begging.”

I only shook my head.

Holding my phone out, he said, “Passcode.”

“No.”

“Tell me, type it in, before I guess and embarrass you.”

“So you can text Jack a picture of my bra like the child you were with Jared yesterday?”

He only lifted the phone higher before turning it and saying as he typed, “My birthday… your birthday… It’s a birthday, correct?”

“Correct.” I normally wouldn’t have given him anything, but I was slightly taken aback by how he remembered my birthday.

“Issy’s birthday…” Then he froze and glanced up through his lashes, his voice no longer playful. “Luís’ birthday.”

My father.

“Yes.”

He didn’t try — not necessarily because he didn’t know the date, the Belovs and I celebrated it together every year — and, instead, looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time in years.

“He’s getting out, you know,” I told him, all the anger and frustration in my body gone and replaced by a desire to cry pinching my eyes.

“Out?” he asked, frown deepening.

“Firdman. The man who killed my dad. He’s getting out.”

“Of prison?”

“Yes, dipshit.”

“Dipshit?”

He kept that startled expression, blinking.

“Are you okay?” I asked, questioning his judgement, his ability to even put together a rational thought.

“I didn’t know that,” he said as if he should know that. As if he knew anything about my life. “Does your mum know?”

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t do her any good in the state she’s in.”

I hadn’t gone to visit her at the unit in months.

If I rocked up with bad news, it would only reinforce the new nickname she’d given me in the last ten years: Bad Omen.

We’d never got on. But she never saw me as the villain when I was a child.

Since Dad’s death and her mental lapse, she blamed everything on the two of us, spouting poison to all who would hear.

“Have you spoken to Derek?”

“Of course,” I said. “But he’s up for parole. He’ll likely get it. He has some hotshot lawyers and Derek can’t do anything.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know—”

“You do,” he said, his voice heating as he stepped towards me. “Tell me.”

So with a sigh, I did. “What are you going to do?”

“Not your concern.”

I scoffed. “You really are a fucking dip—”

“If you call me dipshit one more time, I swear—”

“You’ll what, huh?” I asked, stepping closer to him now. My nipples skimmed his chest through my top.

“I won’t care about what you apparently regret,” he snapped but then handed me back my phone. His voice softened as he said, “Tell me how I can help.”

“You—you can’t,” I pressed. My father’s passing was what had ruined us. His incapability of emotion, of being able to comfort me. I couldn’t trust him anywhere near this. I couldn’t trust him at all.

“Please.”

“No,” I snapped. “I don’t need your help. This was a mistake.”

“Was it?” he asked with a sad smile. “I think you’ll be back soon enough. But if you want me to make you come again, cancel the date.”

“I can do a better job myself.”

“I’ll remember that,” he said and left me.