Again.
I dropped my suitcase and cracked my neck, walking straight to the bar. Luckily, we’d broken things off before I’d had the chance to become a full-blown alcoholic. Lily certainly looked better behind the mist of hard liquor.
“Are you officially a nudist? I haven’t seen you with clothes on in a while,” I pondered, unbuttoning the first two buttons of my shirt.
“You’re funny,” she hissed in what I assumed was meant to be a seductive way.
“And you’re naked. For a rich girl, you could sure use a new wardrobe. How did you get my keys?”
Part of me wanted to know, and the other dreaded killing the person who’d given them to her—not that there was a long list to choose from. But if it was someone from the management, they could kiss their job goodbye.
“Your father let me into your sister’s apartment. She had a spare key, and when the concierge saw me with it, I told him we got back together.”
Something dropped somewhere in the room, but fuck if I knew what it was. Maybe my heart. I heard the thud of it meeting the floor.
Camille was the only person I’d let into my apartment freely, and her place was still standing vacant, because none of us had the guts to touch it. Lily had been inside it. Moving things. Taking things. Breathing the same air Camille had. Anger bubbled beneath my skin, and I clutched the glass so hard I heard it cracking softly.
I stared down as small rivers of blood began paving their way inside my palm.
“What do you want?”
“I told your father about your affair with the little blond bitch. He’s really happy for you.”
“Bet he is, and she’s not a bitch. If you need a point of reference about who is, just look in the mirror. I’ll ask again, before I call security to escort your ass out of here, butt naked. Why. Are. You. Here?”
“I want us to get back together,” she said after a beat of silence.
I didn’t even have it in me to laugh. Whatever she was smoking, that shit was made solely of rat poison, laundry detergent, and laxatives.
“No. Anything else?”
“I have a case,” she said. “Hear me out.”
I turned around to face her. The first drip of blood from my cut palm hit my loafer. I ignored it. “A case? Do you even know how to spell the word?”
She took a step toward me. Funny, for all her nakedness, Lily never forgot to keep her red-soled heels on. I raised a hand, letting her know there was an invisible line between us, and it was not to be crossed. She leaned a hip against my TV stand, unfazed by my bloody palm.
“I had a long chat with your old man.” She licked her upper lip.
Interesting choice of words from a woman who’d let him give her mouth-to-mouth with his dick. I raised an eyebrow.
“He was away this weekend, but he sent someone to open Camille’s apartment for me. We ended up having quite the lengthy conversation, in which he made some interesting points. The first one being that you are exploiting your employee by sleeping with her. And before you say it’s consensual, please try and think of how it would look in the eyes of every single competing network, that the person who pushed the #MeToo movement—that would be you, Célian—is not only sleeping with his reporter, but has actually…” She gasped theatrically, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Paid all of her debt off. And yes, I went through your trash to find your bank statements—for a man who advocates to save the environment, you should really go paperless—and it was totally worth it.”
A satisfied grin graced her lips. “So what do we have here? A boss sleeping with his poor employee and paying her way out of trouble. To make matters worse, she’s been promoted from the shitty beauty blog to the newsroom, and then promoted as a reporter. You actually fired someone to make room for her. Oopsie daisy—Steve is my mom’s best friend’s son. He told me all about how you looked at her when you had your meeting.”
Should have known Steve had a few more fuckups in his disaster bag before he left my newsroom. He had a face begging to be punched, and I’d let him walk away with his nose intact. I had no one to blame but myself, really. I ran my red-tainted fingers over my jaw.
“I’m sure that’s how people are going to see it.” She clucked her tongue, stretching, and she was naked, too naked. I wanted to cover her up with something. A casket, maybe. Lily would look damn good in it.
“I don’t care how people will see it. I employ Judith Humphry because she is a gifted, hardworking reporter, and I fuck her because she is an excellent lay. Those two have nothing to do with each another.” I was downplaying my entire arrangement with Jude, but I didn’t want Lily to pin this breakup on my employee. It wasn’t fair to Judith, and it was far from being the truth.
“Is she worth everything you’ve ever worked for?” She pinched her lower lip between her fingers nervously.
Yes. Yes she is.
The thought struck me like lightning. Judith was worthy, and I hated that her value kept going up the more the people around me were letting me down. She was hardworking, funny, quirky, and sex on Chucks. She kept up with my sharp tongue, and gave it to me just as good. She brought donuts to work when she knew her colleagues were facing a long, challenging day, and sneaked mini Jack Daniels bottles to Brianna in times I was particularly shitty. When Jessica needed help with her workload, Jude always volunteered, but never made a fuss about it or made sure that I knew. She was so fucking graceful and unassuming, and I knew that even if I lost LBC tomorrow, got kicked out of my apartment, stripped out of my inheritance, and sued for every penny I’d ever earned, it still wouldn’t change my value in her eyes. And that was invaluable.