The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (41 page)

“Good.” He nodded. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Good,” I echoed him. My head told me to go now, to run, to get the hell away from him. But my heel-clad feet didn’t move. I didn’t yell at him and tell him to fuck off, even though part of me wanted to.
Destroy him. He destroyed you.
I simply stood there staring at him, waiting. For what? I didn’t know.

“Would you reconsider?”

I frowned. “Reconsider what?”

“Dinner with me.”

“I—”

“Just to talk. Catch up. That’s all. It’s been a long time, Faye.” The way he said my name, the way the single syllable rolled off his tongue. It sent an unwelcome shiver down my spine.

“Six years,” I said quietly.

He nodded. His eyes staring intently at my face. “Too long.”

I could say no. The word was there on my tongue again, ready to pass between my lips. It was the right thing to do. Dinner with Rhett was wrong for me for so many reasons. He hurt me. He ruined me more than he would ever know. But there was something in his eyes that drew me in. I recognized it. It was the same thing that had always drawn me in. I didn’t know what to call it. “Okay,” I heard myself say.

His eyes widened as if he couldn’t believe it.

“I’ll meet you somewhere.” The words came out of my mouth on their own accord.

He nodded and reached into his pocket. “Here, write your number.” He carried a business card over to me. Like a zombie I did as he said. The whole time my brain screamed at me to stop this charade. To go home, to do something, anything but what I was doing, but the rest of me didn’t listen.

By the time he walked out of the classroom he had a card with my cell number on it, and I was holding his business card in my hand with his cell number scribbled on the back. The door closed behind him with a click and I looked down at the card. It had become crushed between my fingers. The blue ink smearing across the glossy white surface.

A drop of liquid on the card surprised me and I looked up at the ceiling before I realized that it was coming from me. I was crying. The tears were hot and heavy on my cheeks. I hadn’t cried in a long time. The last tears I shed for Rhett had dripped into my ear and onto the cold ground six years ago. I had been sad about him for years after, but I never allowed myself to cry after that. It made everything real. It made it hurt worse. But now I was. After all this time. His messy handwriting was smeared in blue ink in my hand and I was crying.

I was real. He was real.

This
was real.

And I didn’t know how to feel about it.

FIVE

I flexed my hands at my sides and glanced at the digital clock on the side table of my couch. It was only five o’clock. I wasn’t supposed to meet her until seven. Two hours. Two hours until I saw her again.

Faye.

My heart pounded in my chest threatening to explode. It’d been doing that all day, since the moment she walked into that classroom.

I never thought I would see her again. It was that simple. I had set her free six years ago. I let her go. I made a choice back then, and no matter how many times, how many moments I had wanted to go after her in the following years. I hadn’t.

I’d made sure that she was okay. I checked up on her once a year. Just once. It was pathetic how I counted down the days until I would get to look into her life, to see how she was doing. I both anticipated and dreaded it. I was afraid I would look and find that she was married, that someone loved her in all the ways I wasn’t able to.

But she hadn’t married. I’d been nervous about it today when I first laid eyes on her. I hadn’t known that she would be the teacher. But when she walked in, her dark hair curled, her body curvier and sexier than I remembered, I’d been certain there was no way she could be single after all this time. But her answer to my question said it all.
“I don’t need to be swept off my feet by a man to be happy.”
And I had never been more fucking thankful in my life.

I knew she’d started going to school. I could remember when I first found out. I’d been sitting at my computer, back in my old apartment. The one I’d shared with Sarah and Faye. I was laying in her old bed, Faye’s bed, looking at records and other classified information I had no business viewing. But it was all there. Her enrollment into college, the amount of money she was getting for financial aid. It was all there in black on my computer screen. I could remember the way my heart swelled in my chest with pride, with love. She was incredible, even from afar.

“Hey man—woah, looking fancy.”

I glanced up at Cayden as he walked in the front door of my house, the sound of his voice accompanied by Badger, my dog, barking happily at him. This was a common occurrence around here. Cayden had his jogging shorts on and a Nike t-shirt. His hair was still styled from court this morning.

“Nothing.” I coughed into my hand and adjusted my watch.

Cayden glanced around at my turned-off television. “Thought we were gonna hit Hadley’s tonight for some drinks and wings. I’ve been dying to have a night away from Katie, man. She’s driving me bat shit crazy.” He plopped down on the other recliner. This was normal for us, though six years ago I just thought Cayden was a punk kid who had lucked into his job at the Firm because his daddy was the owner. I got along with him fine back then, sure, but it was just tolerance. Roger had become fond of the kid more than me, in spite of his good intentions. I had always found him to be a slacker who spent too much time jacking around on his phone and watching YouTube videos to be taken seriously.

But that wasn’t the case anymore. Cayden had become my best friend. It sounded sappy for a thirty-six year old man like myself to talk about having a best friend, but that’s what Cayden was. He had helped me more in the last six years than anyone on the planet. It was why I lived across the street from him and his fiancé Katie. He was the reason I finally drug myself out of the tomb that had become my apartment.

“I can’t go tonight.” I adjusted my suit pants.

Cayden quirk his eyebrows. “You got a date?”

I’d tried dating. Cayden and Katie had tried over and over to hook me up with women they thought I would be compatible with, but I always ended the dates just wanting to go the fuck home—desperate and seeking a different kind of release.

“Not really.” I didn’t know what to call tonight. I couldn’t believe that Faye had actually agreed to this. To dinner with me.

“Not really? Not fucking really?” Cayden bounced in his chair, a toothy grin spreading across his face while Badger slobbered all over him in his lap. “That sounds like you do have one, man.” He leaned over and clapped me on the back. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to even begin to talk about her. What would I even say? I saw her, Faye. My fucking Faye. I let her go and she was gone, but now she was back and we were having dinner. I’d pined for her for all these years. I’d craved her. And now we were having fucking dinner. Dinner, just food, just meals on plates cooked by strangers, but it meant everything to me. Tonight meant everything.

Cayden frowned. “This is the first woman you’re going out with that Katie and I haven’t had to twist your arm over.” He paused and leaned forward on his knees. “Who is this chick?”

I shook my head.

Cayden frowned, eying me. His hand slowing on Badger’s back. “Oh, fuck. It’s her isn’t it?”

I glanced up at him.

“Faye,” he said with wide eyes.

All I could do was nod. He knew Faye. Knew of all the fucked up things my father had done to her. He had been there right alongside me trying to put that motherfucker away. He sat in the room and watched those videos of my father fucking her, making her cum, and then ultimately abusing her, making her bleed. He knew all of the dirty secrets, the bloody sickening truths.

“It’s really her? How? When?”

I took a deep breath and told him about how I’d run into her. He didn’t say a word the entire time, just listened.

“So, yeah. Now we’re meeting tonight at Bochelli’s.”

He nodded. I could tell he wanted to say more, to give his input. I’d come to learn a lot about Cayden. He was one of those careful people. He didn’t always say what he thought. He kept everything inside and thought long and hard before he said something. When he came out and talked about something serious, his words were thoughtful and decided. He didn’t take things lightly, and didn’t blow smoke up asses either.

“Just go ahead and say it.” I reached forward and grabbed my beer off the table.

He glanced between me and my beer. “Drinking before dinner?”

“Just the one. No liquor.” If it had been anyone else, I would have kicked them out of my house. But Cayden knew. Cayden had seen me at my fucking worst. He was the one who found me in Faye’s room, naked, drunk off whiskey, and crying like a little fucking bitch months after she’d left. I hadn’t been to work in weeks, and the times I had gone in before that I had reeked of liquor and slept at my desk. My clients had been dropping like flies, but I hadn’t had it in me to care. I had done the right thing for Faye. I had let her go. Freed her. The alcohol was the only thing that kept me from running after her. It was the only thing that kept me docile enough to roll around in my own selfish wants. It was the only thing that drowned out the burn in my chest, replacing it with something else.

Cayden’s dad had been on the verge of kicking me out of the partnership at the firm, but Cayden changed all that.

“She’s gone, man. She’s fucking gone. And I don’t know how to deal with that.” The words were like mush in my head fumbling through sloppy lips.

Cayden stood over me, at least I thought that’s where he was, things were spinning and I couldn’t pin myself down to anything besides the hole in my heart. I closed my eyes against the strain, the churning in my belly. But closing my eyes was the worst part. Because that’s where she was. There, behind my eyes. That’s where she lived.

“You’re right, Rhett. She’s gone. It’s over. But your life isn’t. Get out of bed.”

I hadn’t though. I hadn’t listened, instead I laid there in that bed. The bed that was Faye’s, and cried. I fucking cried like a little girl, the tears leaking out, soaking the sheets she had slept in. I hadn’t had the heart to wash them. To remove her from them forever.

“You’re gonna lose your job. Is that what you fucking want?” Cayden’s voice pounded against my ear drums. “You’re gonna lose everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish.”

“I don’t give a shit!” I rolled over, but instead of emphasizing my anger, I miscalculated and rolled out of bed onto the floor in heap. “Just get the fuck out!” My body shook, my face hot, wet with tears, while my world spun round and round out of control, until there was nothing. Nothing but her.

She’s gone.

Rough hands grabbed my shoulders, jerking me up off the floor. “You may not care, but I do.”

He dragged me from the room. I wanted to fight him, to kick him out, to ask him how even got inside my apartment, but I didn’t. I didn’t have any fight left in me.
Funny, you should have a lot left, considering you didn’t fight for Faye.

“Just fuck off!”

“All of this over a woman you just let walk away.”

“Screw—”

But my words were lost in gasp when freezing cold water poured down on me. I blinked at my surroundings, but my eyes were too bleary, things were too out of control.

“Why are you doing this?” I blinked up at Cayden.

“Because I’m not gonna let you fuck up your life.”

And he hadn’t.

“You know I don’t drink liquor.”

He studied me for a second. “You sure you want to do this?”

Am I sure?

I wasn’t. I was scared to fucking death of facing Faye, truly facing her after all this time, but it didn’t change anything.

I looked him right in the eye. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

SIX

I couldn’t believe I was here—standing in the waiting area at a fancy restaurant in Dallas—waiting for Rhett Hale. I never thought something like that was in my future. It hadn’t been in my past. I hadn’t spent time alone with Rhett before. Not when Sarah was around, not unless it involved case studies or a drive to work.