Because He Breaks Me (4 page)

“You’re texting,” she said, nodding toward my phone. “I just thought maybe it was with the mystery man who sent you those flowers yesterday.”

“Oh,” I said, shoving my phone back into my bag. “No, it was my roommate. And there’s no mystery man. I told you, those flowers were from my mom.”

“Riiiight,” Bailey said, but not in an unfriendly way. “Anyway, if those flowers did happen to be from some hot guy, I’d definitely take your chance to spend time with him while you can. Rumor has it Kiersten was somehow able to steal Dean Bellingham away from Royal House.” She shook her head in awe, then slipped a hair tie from around her wrist and gathered her long red hair into a loose ponytail. “Shit is about to get crazy busy.”

The elevator doors opened and Bailey stepped out and into the lobby before I could ask any more questions. But for some reason, there was a queasy feeling in my stomach. How had Kiersten stolen Dean from Royal House? Had she slept with him?
Whatever,
I told myself as I passed through the revolving doors.
This isn’t any of your business, Adriana. It’s above your pay grade and responsibility. Your job is to just keep your mouth shut, follow orders, and try not to screw up.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the Times Square Sephora, under the fluorescent track lights, the bass line of the pop music remix that was blaring over the speakers helping to drown out my tangled thoughts as I tried to avoid the made-up Scary Barbie sales staff who wanted to sell me mascara that cost almost as much as my rent. Nessa was high on her newfound romance with Isaac, and you could see it on her face and in her body language. Her shoulders were relaxed and her tone was giddy.

“He’s just so different than what I expected,” she said as she picked up a sample bottle of Daisy perfume by Marc Jacobs and sprayed it liberally on her body. I wrinkled my nose and tried not to choke. It wasn’t that the perfume smelled bad, it was just that she’d sprayed so many of them already that they’d morphed into a cloud of scents that had never been intended to go together.

“How so?” I asked, turning away from her cloud of perfume toward a display of lip glosses. I selected a pale peach one and pulled it out, testing it on the back of my hand.

“He’s just… I don’t know,
sensual
I guess,” she said. “And good at making me feel relaxed. Like after we had sex, you know, he made me feel like he really wanted me to be there with him, made me total secure in the fact that he wanted me to stay. And then last night, he took me to dinner and then asked me to spend the night.”

A frisson of jealousy moved through my body as I slid the lip gloss back into its place in the display. It wasn’t that I wanted to be with Isaac. He was cute enough, but not my type. No, what I wanted was that security, the idea that the person you were with wanted to be with you in exactly the same way you wanted to be with them.

On other hand, I was also a little suspicious. I wasn’t sure if it was my newfound cynicism about romance and men, but I found it odd that Isaac was suddenly so enamored with Nessa. They’d lived near each other all this time, and now he’d decided to not only take an interest in her, but to spend all his time with her?

“What do you think of this one?” Nessa asked, puffing her newly-lined lips out in a duck face. “It’s called Rose Petal Pink. Do you think Isaac would like Rose Petal Pink?”

“Do
you
like Rose Petal pink?” I asked pointedly, which was really ironic coming from me, since I’d just been considering signing a contract which would have given a man complete control over my body. For me to encourage anyone to value their own thoughts and opinions over what a man wanted was laughable.

“I think so,” she said, studying herself critically in the mirror. “Do you think I should get collagen injections? I get a discount at work.”

“In your
lips?”
I picked up a soft bronzer and used a disposable cotton pad to brush it across my cheeks.

“Yes.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You’ll look fake.” I hope that working in a dermatologist’s office wasn’t going to cause Nessa to start injecting her skin with all kinds of chemicals.

“Yeah,” she said, making another duck face in the mirror. She placed the Rose Petal Pink lip gloss into the small mesh shopping basket that was slung over her arm. “Anyway, tell me about you and Callum!” she said. “I can’t believe he showed up at Aubrey Zane’s party like that. Did anyone from work see you guys together?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I looked like a clown with all this makeup on my face, so I reached up and started wiping it off with some of the disposable wipes they provided for when people inevitably got overzealous with the samples. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be seeing him again.”

“What?” Nessa asked, glancing up at me sharply, her hand around the Naked 3 eye shadow palette. “Why not?”

“I just don’t think it’s going to work out.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to ask more questions, then clamped it shut, obviously thinking better of it. “I’m sorry,” she said after another second. “That really sucks.”

“Yeah, well, live and learn.” I gave a little shrug. “It was fun, at least.” I knew I sounded glib, even though glib was the last thing I felt. What I felt was gutted. But I didn’t want Nessa to know that. It was one thing if she was going to be miserable with me. It was quite another if she was happy in a relationship, and I was all alone.

“I’m sure it was,” Nessa said, obviously buying my whole I-don’t-care routine. “I mean, Isaac’s hot, but Callum…” She shivered. “You don’t end up with a guy like that. He’s the guy you fuck and then forget about.”

I laughed, but a pit was forming in my stomach.

“Did he – ” Nessa started to say, but her phone trilled with a text message, and she reached into her bag and pulled it out. “Isaac,” she said, reading the text. “He wants to take me to dinner again.”

She glanced up at me, an anxious look crossing her face. I knew what she was thinking – Nessa and I hadn’t had any kind of dinner plans, at least not officially, but we might have gone to dinner after this if she hadn’t gotten that text.

Now she was worried that she was going to be ditching me for her new boyfriend. She was probably even more worried now that she knew Callum and I were done.

“You should go.” I tossed the used wipe into a sleek black trash basket. “I mean, don’t stay on account of me. I have work to do anyway.” It was a half-truth. I didn’t really have any work to do, but I was determined to say ahead of Kiersten and anticipate any demand she might have of me.

Which meant heading over to Barnes and Noble to finally buy Aubrey Zane’s book and to see if there had been anything written about Dean Bellingham. I knew I had just as good, if not a better, chance of finding things out about him on the internet, but I wasn’t quite ready to face my empty apartment just yet.

“Are you sure?” Nessa asked, but she was already putting back the stuff in her basket, the anticipation of a date with Isaac trumping her need to buy overpriced beauty products that would do nothing they promised.

“Yeah, I’m sure, go ahead.”

I wandered around the store a little longer, but I couldn’t justify spending eighteen dollars on an eye liner or a lip gloss, especially when I hadn’t even gotten my first paycheck yet. I’d checked with HR, and my thirty-two thousand dollar-a-year salary in New York City definitely didn’t justify designer lip glosses.

I left the store with a sigh.

Maybe I’d sell some of the clothes Callum had gotten me, I thought.

I could buy a thousand lip glosses then.

T
hirty minutes
later I arrived in Union Square, a super cool area of the city that always had something going on -- art festivals with homemade jewelry and abstract paintings, farmers markets with heirloom tomatoes and leafy greens in bright, vibrant colors that made you convince yourself that you actually wanted to eat healthy, street performers and sidewalk artists.

The Barnes and Noble was across the street from the square, and it took up an entire three-story building that was always busy and teeming with shoppers. I headed for the café, which was on the top floor, and treated myself to a venti hazelnut cappuccino with whipped cream before heading back downstairs, drink in hand.

I found Aubrey Zane’s book right away, on a cardboard end cap in the middle of the biography section. It was a nice end cap, with a picture of Aubrey on it, wearing a sparkly white crop top and a pair of white hot pants.

Her long hair hung in beachy waves around her shoulders, her smoky eye makeup making her look sexy and mysterious. Her six-pack was brushed with glitter, and I wondered what it would feel like to be that beautiful, to have men stare at you as you walked by, to not be able to go a whole day without someone commenting on how good you looked.

Although obviously it hadn’t made her happy, since she’d developed an eating disorder and a penchant for cutting herself.

I grabbed a copy of the book and then wandered into the romance section. If I couldn’t have my own real life happy ending, then at least I could read about someone else’s.

I was trying to find a good series to get into, nothing with BDSM, thank you very much, when I felt someone’s eyes on the back of my neck, watching me. I’d always thought when people in books or movies said they could sense someone watching them, it was kind of crap – how could you
sense
someone watching you? It was impossible.

And yet, I could – I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my back arch instinctively, a strange alertness brush over my shoulders.

I turned around.

There was a man standing at the end of the aisle, and I instantly felt trepidation. You didn’t see many men hanging out in the romance section. This one looked nice enough – he was good-looking, actually, with sandy blond hair and a wide face. He was wearing khakis and a blue and white striped sweater. In fact, he looked kind of looked familiar. Was he someone I worked with at Archway?

He gave me a smile, and I smiled back at him, but that same feeling of uneasiness skittered up my spine.

I grabbed the book I was looking at and began heading toward the registers, anxious to put as much distance between this man and me as I could.

“Excuse me!” the man called, his voice friendly. “Adriana, right?”

I turned. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?” I didn’t want to have a conversation with him, but if he was someone from Archway, I couldn’t afford to be short with him, either. I could just imagine Kiersten calling me into her office first thing in the morning, lambasting me for being rude to someone we worked with.

“Jason,” the man said, pointing at himself with his thumb jauntily. “We met in Florida, remember? At Callum’s house.”

“Oh,” I said, as the pieces clicked into place. “Right.”

“What a coincidence!” he said, sounding pleased. “Are you here with Callum?” He glanced around behind me, searching for Callum.

“No.” I reached back in my brain, grasping for what Callum had told me about this guy. From what I could remember it was that Callum had taken over Jason’s company and fired him, and Jason had been trying to get a meeting with Callum ever since?

I was a little hazy on the particulars, but whatever they were, it didn’t matter. It was none of my business. Callum was none of my business, and this Jason was just another reminder of Callum that I didn’t want (or have) to deal with. “Well, it was nice to see you,” I lied and started back down the aisle toward the registers.

“Wait,” Jason said, rushing to catch up to me. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Callum, but I think I lost his cell phone number, or maybe he got a new one.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, and opened up his contacts screen. “Can you give me his number?”

My throat went dry. He was obviously lying. Callum was staying away from him for a reason. “I’m sorry,” I said politely. “I don’t have it.”

The smile stayed on Jason’s face, but I saw the annoyance and anger flash in his eyes. “Oh, come on,” he said lightly. “I’m sure you have his number.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I really don’t. I haven’t talked to Callum since that weekend in Florida.” I rolled my eyes in what I hoped was a believable, easy way that would diffuse some of the tension that had begun to creep into our interaction. If I had to lead Jason to believe that I was some kind of paid whore who’d spent a weekend with Callum and never heard from him again rather than someone who might have Callum’s contact info, well, then so be it.

“Bullshit,” Jason said. His tone was a little more menacing now, and I quickened my pace, still heading for the end of the aisle. Suddenly he was next to me, reaching out, grabbing my bag and using it to pull me toward him. “I just need his number,” he said, and then he reached into my bag and began rooting around in there for my phone.

“Hey!” I said. “Stop!” I tried to wrench the bag out of his hands, but he was too strong.

He grabbed my arm, the pressure increasing as I tried to struggle against him, his thumb pressing into my bicep so hard I yelped.

“I just need to talk to him,” he said. “I just need his number.”

I pulled back and stomped on his foot, so hard that it must have hurt or at least surprised him, because his grip on me loosened. I took the opportunity to wrench out of his grasp and run.

“You fucking bitch!” he yelled after me, but I didn’t turn around.

Once I was out in Union Square, I blended into the crowd as fast as I could and crossed the street quickly, finally looking over my shoulder to make sure Jason wasn’t following me. He wasn’t, but the fact did nothing to diminish the adrenaline that was coursing through my body.

When I was safely on the other side of the street, I stepped under an awning of a dark bar and took a couple of deep, shaky breaths.

“What the fuck was that?” I whispered out loud. Now that the shock of what had just happened was beginning to wear off, my mind was wandering, whirling its thoughts into a hurricane of dark questions. Like what was Jason doing in NYC if he lived in Florida? How had he just happened to be at the same Barnes and Noble I was? Had he followed me? And if so, how had he known where I was?