Page 28 of Worth Every Moment

“Shit, Erica. What the fuck is going on? What happened back there?”

Her eyes are frantic as she takes me in. Her chest heaves with each breath, and the motion makes the silk of her gown ripple. “I can’t do this. I’m not like you.” She lifts a shaking hand. “I can’t—”

“Can’t what? What are you talking about?”

She presses her fingertips over her eyes, letting out a wavering breath before looking back at me. “I can’t beeasy. I can’t hook up like this.” Her voice sharpens, and then next three words out of her mouth are vicious. “Not withyou.”

My insides hollow out and a prickling heat spreads over my skin. “What?” I ask carefully.

A lumpy red rash spreads up her neck as she taps frantically at her temple. “You got inside my head with all your talk of being turned on when people fuck in the same room.” There's an unhinged look in her eye that wasn't there before, as though what's happened has caused chaos beneath the surface. With a wild arc of her arm, she points back to where we came from. “What happened in there wasn’t real. It was a mistake. It was madness.”

“Erica…” Quiet shock reverberates through my tone. “Youaskedme to touch you.”

“And I wish I hadn’t.” Tension lines her jaw. “I’d wipe every second of that encounter with you from my memory if I could.Erica Lefroydoes not hook up on gallery floors with men likeyou.”

My first instinct is to laugh. She’s talking about herself in the third fucking person, for Christ’s sake. But the look on her face—her lip curled in what looks like disgust—has me fixing her with a hard glare. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Emotion flickers over her face, a shifting landscape that I can’t pin down, but there’s a hardness that I don’t like. “You want the truth?” She tosses the question out like it's a dirty thing she doesn't want to touch but is keen to share.

“I can see you want to give it to me,” I throw back.

She squares her shoulders, but her breathing remains erratic. “No one takes you seriously. Everyone knows your brothers run the business while you’re out fucking a different woman every other night. You don’t even care who they are or know their names. You’re a joke, Seb.”

My chest burns like her words are acid dripped directly on my heart. I hold my features in neutral so it doesn’t show. Nico and Matt might be the backbone of our business in the UK, but that doesn’t make me fucking useless. I have never, until this moment, felt like an insignificant piece of the Hawkston Hotels Global Empire. In the last five years, I’ve completely turned the company’s marketing and PR around.

“What the fuck? What’s with the character assassination?”

“It’s the truth. I’ve stood by and watched you do it for years.” Her voice breaks, a mixture of anger and distress evident in the rupture. “A string of meaningless liaisons.”

“That has no bearing whatsoever on my ability to do my job.”

She presses a hand to her heart and pins her bottom lip with her teeth to stop it quivering. “I can’t be one of those women.”

“Fine,” I quip, biting the word out so aggressively that the delivery undermines the meaning.None of this is fine. In fact, this whole scenario is a fucking car crash. I can't get my head around it.How the fuck did we get here?“But there’s no need to attack me.”

“I’m not attacking you.” Her voice is calmer, but not enough for her words to ring true.This is a fucking homicide. “It hurts me to see it. I care about you. I care about our friendship.”

I can’t hold back my eye roll. “Seems like it.”

“I do.Deeply. I wouldn’t say this unless I did. No one takes you seriously because you don’t take anything or anyone seriously. Not even the people you date.”

“That’s not true. I’m always respectful.”

She gapes, gesturing to the atrium far below us, the pitch of her voice escalating. “You have a date waiting for you downstairs right now.”

“Harriet? I ended it with her before I came up here with you,” I blurt.

Erica’s eyes widen. “Why? Why would you do that? God, did you… did you plan this?” She bends forward a little, her hand still splayed against her chest. The pitch of her voice escalates as she speaks. “Is that why you brought me up here? Did you want to start the evening with her and end it with me?”

“Shit. No.” I slam a hand to my forehead. “That’s not it. Harriet and I aren’t a thing. It was never exclusive.”

A dry laugh rasps in her throat. “Of course it wasn’t. When have you ever cared enough about anyone to be exclusive? You can’t even do it for one evening. You move from woman to woman like none of us matter.” She gestures at me with rigid hands. “Wake up, Seb. Maybe no one has said this to you because of who you are, or how much money you have in your bank account, or because nobody cares enough to be honest with you, but your sex life is a mess.” Erica nods her head as though she’s agreeing with her own arguments. “You’re a total manwhore.”

There’s every chance that Erica Lefroy might be the love of my life, but this is too fucking much.

“Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that?” Anger burns through the words, and the colour drains from Erica’s cheeks.

She takes a small breath. “I’m Erica—”