Page 42 of Dirty Hearts

Stay with me…

His words kept ringing through my head. Over and over again like a broken record, or one of those annoying infomercials that kept going throughout the night.

Stay with me…

I almost did. I didn’t know if I could even call myself foolish for considering it.

Was I foolish?

Was it foolish to go from Antarctic cold to hot like hell in just one night? Hours.

All the hours we’d spent together.

I couldn’t believe I’d slept with him again. All damn night like I truly had lost my mind.

I knew myself though. Sure, when it came to him, it was always difficult to separate what I should do and what my heart was telling me to do.

But… I never, ever did anything I didn’t want to do.

I’d slept with him because I wanted to. I’d slept with him and allowed him to own me because I craved it, craved him, and if I was honest, I missed him.

When Claudius had told me to stay, it was like he spoke directly to my heart.

Right now, I didn’t know what to do.

Nothing actually made sense. None of it. None of what I believed.

I thought he wanted Marissa and not me. Last night told me otherwise.

We’d felt like when we were together.Before.

It was wild and completely ecstatic. Of course, it would be. I’d been twenty-two when we broke up.

Having sex with the same man a little over ten years later would feel different. It felt different, and even now, I wanted him again.

That was why I was here, here at work organizing the inventory deep down in the wine cellar.

My favorite pastime of creating a distraction. The inventory list had grown substantially since the days when I’d worked here with Pa, but it was still a good medicine.

That section he used to keep the aged wine on now had two rows of shelves, and my wine from all over the world took up the whole back section. I’d had to knock out the back to get it all in. All that in a year.

I had done well for myself.

I’d spent the day down here, retreating out of human reach so I could go and lick my wounds in private. Or basically just figure things out.

The distraction kept me busy, but I was still as confused and conflicted as I’d been when I first got in.

It was done now. I had a full stock, enough to last a few months even if I suddenly got an influx of people that would be more than I could handle.

I made my way back upstairs to the restaurant floor. Ariel was ushering a family to their seats, and Kelly was behind the bar.

It was nearly lunchtime. She was prepping for that.

She stopped organizing the wine glasses when she saw me and gave me a little smile.

I hadn’t told her what happened last night. I think she guessed though.

“Are you okay?” she asked, eyes huge with concern.