CHAPTER FIVE: Zoe

Mark’s voice was cold as ice when he answered the phone. It sent a chill down my spine when he said, “What?”

I cleared my throat and tried to force the nervousness out of my voice. “Hi, it’s me. I was hoping you’d have time to meet up for a few minutes tomorrow.”

“I think I said everything I needed to say the other night,” Mark said, sighing like he was bored. “So why don’t you just fuck off?”

I held out the phone and stared at the screen in awe. It would have been so easy to go ballistic on his ass at that moment, given the number of times he’d lied to me and jerked me around. But I knew that wouldn’t do anything but make a bad situation worse. I took a deep breath and forced myself to be calm. “Look, Mark, I know I shouldn’t have called you. And maybe I should have given you notice about the trip, but… well, I just thought maybe—”

“Maybe what, Zoe? Maybe I’d be over being lied to and hurt? Maybe I’d have calmed the fuck down enough to listen to your bullshit reasons and excuses? Give me a fucking break! Do you know how many times we’ve talked and how many chances you had to tell me that you were leaving New York for fucking Costa Rico for a month? Maybe you don’t, but I sure do!”

“I didn’t call to argue,” I said, my voice cracking despite my best efforts to be strong. “I just wanted to see you Mark. To explain and to apologize.”

“Fuck you and your apology,” he growled. “You never meant anything to me anyway. You were just some bitch I fucked.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said, my eyes welling with tears. I wasn’t sure what I expected from Mark, but it wasn’t this. I never expected this.

“I do mean it,” he said. He breathed heavy in my ear for a moment. “Goddammit, Zoe, why didn’t you just tell me? Why did I have to learn that you were leaving town in the goddamn literary column of the newspaper?”

“The publisher wasn’t supposed to issue a press release until next week,” I said, my voice pleading for understanding. “There was a mix-up in the PR department and the release went out early. I’m sorry, Mark, really, I was going to tell you. I would never hurt you that way. You must know that”

“Well, you did,” he huffed, sounding more and more like a hurt child than a scorned lover. “You hurt me more than you will ever know.”

Even though my eyes were full of tears, they rolled at that comment. I wiped a knuckle under my nose and sniffed back the tears. “Look, I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”

“Yeah, well, whatever,” he said. “What do you have to say for yourself now, you fucking cunt? I just wish that I’d had the good sense to videotape that fuck-fest in the bathroom. Miss hotshot bestselling author getting her cunt banged to shit in a hotel bathroom. The world would finally see you for who you really are, Zoe Maxell, you fucking skank!”

“Mark…” I held the phone up to my mouth and screamed at the top of my lungs. “FUCK YOU!!!!”

I hung up the phone and tossed it on the couch beside me. The tears came quickly and angrily, red hot as they flowed down my cheeks. What a low-life piece of shit cocksucker he was. I couldn’t believe there was a time when I actually thought I loved that man. If I never saw him again that would be just fine with me.

The really sad part was that I felt like I had wasted months of my life having an affair with Mark. I knew he would never leave his wife. Hell, that was part of the attraction. I wasn’t looking for love and neither was he. I just wanted to fuck him and he readily complied. Then we kept on fucking and it turned into a thing: a thing I was starting to regret more by the moment.

Mark wasn’t even that good in bed. He rarely made me cum. All he cared about was getting his rocks off and being on his way. There was rarely foreplay before and never cuddling after. It was almost like I was his whore. He’d drop by unannounced, fuck me without ever taking his shoes off, and he’d be gone. The only difference was that he didn’t leave money on the dresser for covering me with his sweat and goo.

I can’t explain why, but I was suddenly overcome with a strong feeling of remorse, as if I’d lost someone truly dear to me. I wasn’t crying for Mark. I cried for myself. I wrapped my arms around my knees and pulled them to my chest and sobbed like a brokenhearted child.

At that moment, I felt completely alone, totally unloved, and without hope. How could my professional life be so fucking fantastic while my personal life felt so fucking miserable? Someone once said that a writer’s life was the loneliest because there just the writer and the blank page and no one else. I had never agreed with that old saying until now.

* * *

After my self-pity party, I went into the bathroom to dry my tears and blow my nose. I splashed cold water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. My phone was on the counter and it buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize. Another telemarketer, no doubt. They hung up when the call went to voicemail.

“Graham is right,” I said to the woman staring back at me through red eyes. “You do not know how great your life can be.” I hung the towel over the rack and leaned in close to the mirror. “Maybe it’s time you take control of your life rather than letting your life control you.”

I turned off the light and went into the living room. Graham had sent over two-hundred books for me to sign in advance of the Good Morning Manhattan appearance. The producers agreed to let me give away books, but didn’t have time for me to sign them onset, so I was doing it head of time. I sat down at the coffee table and opened the first box, calculating in my head how long it would take me to sign two hundred copies.

My mind wandered as I opened the first book and scribbled my name across the page. I tried to remember the first book I’d ever signed. It had been so many years now, so many books.

I had started my career ghostwriting sweet romances for a publisher who put them out under another name. Gradually I went from writing sweet romances to risqué to all out erotica. When I saw my dirtiest books regularly selling thousands of copies for the publisher, I started writing and self-publishing my own books under my name. After a few books, I started hitting the Amazon charts. That’s when Graham found me and the rest is history.

That’s when I started calling on my own sexual memories for inspiration. It wasn’t until I wrote Pleasing Him that my relationship with Chad Walters ended up in a book. Only his name wasn’t Chad. It was Brad. Brad Wallace. And the heroine’s name was Chloe Manning. I know, pretty close, but I seriously doubted Chad would ever read the book, much less make the connection.

Pleasing Him was my hottest, steamiest, filthiest book yet. And readers loved it. Little did they know that every sex act in the book was based on a real memory of sex with Chad.

There was nothing made up in this book.

Every fuck and suck and probe and tuck were real.

I had to sit on a towel when I wrote the book because my cunt would simply overflow.

Maybe that’s why the book was climbing the bestseller lists and the crowds at the book signings got bigger every week.

It was all so real , one critic wrote, like it really happened .

Sister, if only you knew.