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“That’s all right.” Cherrie patted Dylan’s arms, and that was when I realized we were still holding hands thirty minutes into this thing and that I wasn’t hating it at all. “I’d be happy to accommodate you either way. Any friend of the Marshalls is a friend of mine.”
Dylan turned to Cherrie. “Okay. What’s the damage?”
Cherrie slid her iPad pen over the screen. “For three times a week, nine a.m. drop-off and two thirty p.m. pickup, you are looking at twenty-two hundred dollars a month. That includes a hot lunch, snacks, and three sets of school uniforms a year.”
Dylan paled, and her jaw went slack. Yeah. This was…substantial as fuck. Welcome to the Upper East Side.
I got that she didn’t want Row to pay her way. I did. I even appreciated that. But couldn’t she suck it up and have him pick up the check while she studied for her future? This kind of money didn’t even register to Row. He probably paid more per month for his fucking white truffle honey habit.
“That won’t be a problem,” I drawled.
“That might be a problem.” Dylan shook off my touch, finally breaking our contact, and I hated that I already missed it—and hated even more that she wiped our joined sweat from her palm off on her dress. “I’ll need to look into my finances. Can I have a day or two?”
“You can even have a week or three.” Cherrie smiled at her with the infinite warmth of a mother who knew the struggles of expensive childcare. “I will need to know by the end of next month, though. Before summer camp begins.”
“That’s plenty of time,” Dylan said. “Thank you.”
The drive back to our apartment building was drenched in pensive silence. Gravity nodded off again as soon as we put her into her seat. I could hear the wheels in Dylan’s head churning.
Finally, when we were just about to turn toward the building’s garage, I said, “You need to bite your tongue and ask Row for a loan. If you don’t secure yourself a good job now, you’re going to regret it.”
“You have no idea what it feels like to be the loser sibling.”
“I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like to be the loser friend,” I countered dryly. “Think about it. My best friends are Row, multimillionaire, famous chef; Kieran, the second coming of Jesus in the soccer world with literal fucking movies made about him; and Tate, who is marginally more powerful than God himself. And here I am, pawning my goddamn watches to afford a fake girlfriend.”
“Fiancée,” she corrected. “And it’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same. We’re both the wild cards. The ones who took a bad turn and didn’t make it. But don’t double down on one bad choice.”
I hated that I sounded like a disapproving aunt, but I happened to know firsthand how cruising along where life took you could be dangerous. I bit down on my tongue.
Don’t open up more than you have to, idiot.
Oh, the hell with it.
“Look, three months ago, I got sexually assaulted by a client.” Bitterness exploded in my mouth. It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud. The first time I’d told anyone about it. My friends thought I quit because I couldn’t be bothered anymore.
Dylan sucked in an audible breath, turning to look at me. The car glided down the road to the parking garage.
“We were at a weekend-long engagement party in the Hamptons. Her ex’s. She wanted to pretend she’d moved on. She got drunk. I did too. We shared a room…” I felt my nostrils flareand my chokehold on the steering wheel tightening. A sheen of sweat was covering my forehead. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t stop oversharing with this woman.
“Rhy…” Dylan said softly, her hand palming my shoulder with a squeeze.
“I was taking a shower after a day of pickleball and mini golf with her pretentious friends and her awful ex. I was a hazy mess from the alcohol and the pot I’d snuck out to smoke when no one was looking. She slipped inside the shower.”
My throat worked around my next confession as the car slipped into my allotted parking spot. I cut off the engine.
“As soon as I saw her in the shower, naked, I told her to please get out. I was calm but firm. I explained I didn’t want her that way. That sex was not a part of our contract, and I wasn’t open to renegotiation. But she insisted her friend, who’d hired me the year before, got the so-called full treatment. I clarified that certain extra was a case-by-case issue. But she crowded me, cupping my cock, kissing down my chest…”
I closed my eyes. Fuck. I always felt violently mad when I heard about women getting sexually attacked, because typically, it was near impossible for them to fight off their attackers, size- and strength-wise.
But seeing as I was a hulky, muscular dude, I couldn’t stop thinking I could’ve prevented my assault somehow. Pushed her off. The victim guilt gnawed at me, chipping away at my self-worth and my pride.
“The worst part was that I let it happen,” I choked out, transported back to that moment.
By the time she was on her knees, my stupid cock was already hard, my back pressed against the granite wall. I just stood there and watched as she sucked me off.
“The entire time, I felt like I was trapped in my own head, desperate to break free—to tear the chains. It was the longest tenminutes of my entire life. And in them, I realized a lot of it was due to the decisions I’d made over the years. I wouldn’t say it was my fault, but…”