14. Olivier

Sobering up is hard without cocaine. And it's not like I have time to sleep, even though I think I probably could now that I've confirmed Drew is in the lobby. So, caffeine it is.

Three energy drinks later, and I might as well have snorted a few lines. My body is still sluggish, even if it's buzzing, but my brain is moving a thousand miles a second. Time, on the other hand is dragging.

I doubt whether my watch is even working. Maybe the artificial energy radiating from my veins has messed with its inner workings. I shower for what seems like an excessively long time, painstakingly exfoliating and shaving, but once the bathroom unfogs, only twenty-three minutes has passed.

I'm used to staying up all night—my life before tended toward nocturnal, but lately I've been keeping to a more typical schedule. I miss the parties. I miss my friends. I miss flirting and laughing for fuck's sake. I miss my freedom, and I miss my parents. Or maybe I just miss their attention.

However, every time I think about that conversation with my mother, I get a shiver of disgust. Whether it's self-directed or not, I haven't stopped long enough to examine. Still, there's a niggling feeling of wrongness in my head, something keeping my days dampened and dark beyond the heavy gray skies, and I'm pretty sure it was that little talking-to.

Tuesday night with Elodie felt like a manifestation of that conversation. Inevitability. Disgust. The inability to escape this fate on my own. The fear of being, in fact, alone.

I swallow hard as I wiggle on the couch, unable to sit still and too tired to accomplish anything productive, not to mention that I don't have anything to do that anyone else in the free world would consider productive.

I settle on listening to an audiobook while I clear colorful obstacles in a game on my phone. It's a self-help book I wonder if Drew's read. It's about sobriety. It feels fitting, and it's narrated by the author. My mind is blown a few times in the first few chapters, and I'm newly disgusted with myself for the amount of toxins I've pumped into my body during the course of the last eight years. Basically, when I turned sixteen, the wheels came off. Weed, pills, liquor—whatever was available. There was always a party, and there was never a shortage of the best drugs money could buy.

I wouldn't call myself an addict—more of an enthusiast. Still, "Sobriety" holds a certain appeal—at least the way this author talks about it. Like, I could go to yoga. I'm not sure I'd like it, but I could try it.

Six o'clock finally rolls around, and I place a breakfast order for delivery. I add a special instruction: Leave with doorman. I almost add: The hot one, but since Drew might see it, I don't.

I'm not sure I've kept it under wraps that I find Drew hot. He's caught me checking him out. He's also caught me trying to slide my hand up his abs while I'm sucking him, but he always slaps me before I get too far and says something like "Focus."

I want to tell him I'm just trying to figure this out, asshole, but we don't really talk. He has yet to touch me in any way that isn't violent or punishing.

Am I ready for that to change? I mean, yeah. I'm fucking lonely as fuck, and he's the only person besides Elodie who speaks to me.

But then again—what would we have to talk about?

I do want to tell him I think he's hot, though. That he got a raw deal in New York. But I can guarantee he doesn't want to hear that from me. I still get the sense he only barely tolerates me.

Just like everyone else.

Another entire eternity passes before his knock comes.

He's already untucked, undone tie and all, and he looks—fucking gorgeous.

A sight for sore eyes and all that cliché shit that causes my mouth to go dry at the sight of him. I'm a hot mess of nerves and loneliness and want, and I can safely say I now officially identify as bi.

Instead of handing me the delivery bag, he holds it away when I reach for it. "Say something so I know you're sober."

"I don't know if I'm completely sober," I tell him, "But I had four energy drinks and I sort of want to puke."

He hands over the bag. "Then you should eat something."

The last thing I want is food. "Did you miss the part about how I want to puke?"

His lips press into a grim line. "Are you up for this?"

I scowl at him. "I ordered breakfast, didn't I?"

He gives me a scan from head to toe and meets my eyes again. "You gonna get out of the way so I can come in, then?"

I stand aside. He enters, and I close the door behind him.

"You're a wreck," he notes.

"Yeah, thanks for noticing."

I turn my back on him and take the bagels I ordered into the kitchen. I pick off a few pieces, shove them in my mouth and try to chew.

Drew takes off his jacket, slides off his tie, and puts them on the back of one of the dining table chairs. He looks around the penthouse. It's not the tidiest it's ever been since the maid comes today, but aside from some empty energy drinks and unfolded blankets, it's not all that bad.

It's sort of dark, though. The morning is gray, and I only have the kitchen lights and a lamp in the living area on.

"Well, I'm dying to know," he says, facing me. "How was the big night?"

I almost choke on the next crumb of bagel. "Dying to know?"

"That's a common turn of phrase that means I'm curious."

"I ran through my standard repertoire, and she left satisfied."

"Define standard repertoire."

I swallow a few gulps of water. "Cunnilingus, intercourse, but I skipped the spooning. I wasn't feeling it."

"Did you get off?"

I frown. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Just curious. You said you didn't care much for her."

"She's a freak, but she has good tits and a functioning pussy." More than functioning, actually. The way she'd clenched on my cock made it feel like she's been working her cunt out with weights. At several points, I thought she'd snap my dick off.

"And she was satisfied?"

"Yes, Drew. She appeared to have an orgasm. I have no way of verifying if she was faking or not."

He stares hard at me, and I don't have a clue what he's thinking, only that I feel guilty.

"What?" I ask.

"How often is this gonna be happening?"

"I told her I'd do it once every two weeks."

"Hm."

"What?" I ask, more annoyed this time.

His expression remains bland, as does his voice, but his body language is stiff, his arms crossed, making his shirt have to work overtime to contain his shoulders. "Nothing." But he's still staring at me like he doesn't like what he sees.

Oh my God, it's disdain. Kind of the way my dad was looking at me at the last brunch we had.

"What am I supposed to do?" I ask, hating this moment with all my might.

He shrugs, dead silent, gaze still assessing.

I hate it so much I want to stamp my foot. Instead, in a fit, I shove the bagel back in the bag, crumple it up, and push it into the too-full trash bin. I'm shaking. I hated fucking Elodie. I hated all the dirty things she said to me. All the bizarro things she wanted me to do to her. The way I had to keep shoving my tongue into her mouth to shut her the fuck up.

I hated the way she liked tasting herself, sucking on my tongue like it was a popsicle, groaning extravagantly and humping up into me. I hated watching her come and the squeaky sounds she made. I hated the way she pawed at me all night for more. I'd pretended to be in a deep sleep, playing dead.

She'd lingered too long into the morning, and I'd finally been coerced into doing her again, but at least that time it wasn't face to face.

I hate that I feel as forced to fuck her as I'd felt forced to suck Drew's cock that time. But refusing him would have had no consequences. Who knew two weeks ago, I'd consider Drew safer than Elodie?

Not me.

But I don't feel like that now. I feel judged and dirty and weak. It hits me hard, the realization that if I didn't have him, I'd have nothing anymore that was mine.

Not that he's mine.

I've got him on loan at best.

"Stop looking at me like that," I say.

"How am I looking at you?"

"I can't read your fucking mind, Drew, I just know I don't like it."

He blinks, running his tongue over his lips, still…contemplating… Or whatever.

"Say something!" I shout.

"I don't get what's so bad about her," he finally says. "She seems like exactly your type. Rich, slutty socialite. Got a thing for you. What's not to want? You never thought you'd wind up with a wife like her? It's not like you've been out there looking for love."

"How do you know what I've been looking for?"

He barks out a harsh laugh. "I know you better than you think, Peach."

I still don't get what's with the Peach thing. Sometimes he says it sexy, and sometimes it comes out as a dig. Like when I call him Jack, but I admit I use Jack as more of a tease lately than the taunt it used to be. I promise I've always known his name. I'm actually good with names.

"Fine, I give. I never wanted to marry anyone. At least not in the foreseeable future. But if I did want to marry someone, it would not be someone like me—as you so kindly put it."

"Really."

It's not exactly a question, more of a request for more information. "People ‘like me' don't make the best partners."

"How's that?"

"Do you really want a lesson in the shallow, yet complex social maneuvers of Manhattan high society?"

"Maybe some other time. I'm pretty beat."

"Will you be having the usual before bedtime?"

His gaze narrows.

Shit, is he going to turn me down?

"I don't like this," he says, making my stomach flip in the most nauseating way possible.

"What?" I hate the way my voice cracks. The way I sound vulnerable.

"Sharing."

I stare back at him in confusion.

"I don't like sharing," he says, like stringing the sentence together will make it make sense.

I point at my chest. "Me?"

"Yeah. You."

"It's hardly sharing," I protest. We basically pinky-swore that what goes on between us means nothing.

He shrugs again.

"Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?" I ask, shrill and amped and afraid he's about to walk out on me for good.

He considers me a moment and does the worst thing in the world. He picks up his jacket and tie. "Guess you'll need to put some thought into it."

I'm around the island with my hands on his arms, gripping tight, as fast as my legs will carry me. "Wait." I physically turn him in the opposite direction of the door. "You can't leave."

"Sure I can. Trains run all day."

"I didn't want to fuck her, Drew."

"But you did, Peach."

"I had to."

"Or what?"

"Or she'd fuck this whole thing up, and I could get cut off."

He makes a series of disappointed tuts. "Poor little rich boy. The things you've been through."

"They're real. Just because they're different from your problems doesn't make them not valid. I'm so fucking unhappy."

"Is that a new sensation for you?"

I don't want to admit that yes, in fact, it's very new for me. And the shoes don't fit. I'm aching and blistering inside this new existence. I've literally never felt this alone. "What do you come here for?" I ask rather than answering his cold question.

"You know the answer to that."

"No. I really don't. Why me? Anyone in this town would suck your cock. And you have a girlfriend. Don't tell me she wouldn't be on her knees in a heartbeat if you asked."

He flinches, letting me know I'm right.

"So why me?"

"I haven't figured that out yet," he says, voice low. Nearly intimate. His gaze has softened some, though, and just having my hands on his solid arms is making me feel less frantic.

"Don't go."

"Did you think of me at all?" he asks. "When you were with her?"

I nod. No lie. I'd thought about him the whole time. About his heated gaze—his brutal hands, his flexing abs. When I slid my cock inside Elodie, I'd imagined putting my cock in Drew's mouth. Slick and wet and hot. I'd wished her high-pitched moans were his low growls, and I'd played them in my head like a track on repeat to try and drown her out. "I did."

"Then tell her she needs to find someone else to fuck."

I blink rapidly. In shock. "What?"

"You heard me."

"She can't. There's too much on the line. If she gets caught?—"

"You've got three bedrooms here, yes?"

"I—yeah."

"Move her into one. Pay off whoever she brings home. Make them sign an NDA or whatever you billionaires do and let her have her fun."

"She can't know about this, Drew."

He frowns. "Why not?"

"My parents… They wouldn't understand."

He shakes my hands off his arms. "So, you're telling me that you'd rather marry Elodie and be the only man she fucks forever so you can be sure to stay in your parents' good graces, than do what you want."

"I can't possibly make that choice right now—especially when I don't have a fucking clue what I want."

"Well, you don't want me to leave, do you?"

He's got me there. But he's also a lost cause. He's the sinking raft I'm clinging to.

"You don't even like me, Drew."

His jaw twitches and then he says quietly, "I like you enough to know I don't want you fucking her."

It's literally the nicest thing he's ever said to me. Without thinking, I lean in for a kiss, but his head rears back, and I immediately take a big step away. "I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know what that was."

He's gone back to staring hard at me, and once again, I'd give a small fortune to know what he's thinking.