For seconds on end we stare at each other. Me from my seat on the closed toilet, him looming a few inches away from me, his back up against the door. Both of us seeming stunned to find ourselves here together in a cramped restaurant bathroom.

Finally, I ask him the most logical question. “Holt, what you are doing in here?”

His expression becomes incensed. “What am I doing here?” he asks me. “What are you doing here?”

“Is it not obvious? I’m on a date just like you!” I reply, coming to my feet. “I may not be able to pay for everyone’s meals and shut the place down for privacy…but it is a date. Plain and simple.”

“You think I’m on a date?” he hisses back, practically sneering the question at me. “That’s nothing more than a photo op! Something I’m doing for work. Which is a hell of a lot more than you can say. After only two months of working for me inside the bedroom and out, you’re already on a date with another man!”

“With another man?” I repeat. “Hold on. Did I miss something? Because last time I checked, you and I are not dating, Holt. What we do together in your bedroom does not remotely qualify as dating in my book. I’m a free agent just like you, right?”

This is a perfectly valid question, but Holt sucks in a breath as if I have hit him below the belt. I watch him reset, his expression turning mean. “Does your date know when you’re done giving him a chaste goodnight kiss, you’ll go back to my room, strip, and wait for me to fuck your wet pussy?”

His words are so crass that for a moment I am speechless with outrage. “Why are you like this? Why do you want to ruin everything good in my life?” I suddenly yell, so furious I can no longer keep my voice down.

“Because you ruined everything good in my life!” he roars back as if he has been holding the words inside him all this time. “Because you left me to die. Because when I tried to forgive you for leaving me to die, you ripped my heart out. Because ten years later you still make me feel all this shit I do not want to feel—”

He cuts himself off with a vicious swipe of his head to the left. And when he turns his face back to mine it’s no longer twisted with rage. Nonetheless his words are just as hate-filled. “You didn’t give a fuck about what I wanted ten years ago. Now I have the chance to return the favor. Our deal is off, Sylvie. Either stay at your well-paid job as Wes’s nanny, or live on the street. I don’t care. But those are the options I’m leaving you with.”

“Are you kidding me?” I ask, my mind exploding with indignation. “I am not going to be continuously punished for things that happened ten years ago!”

“They aren’t things,” he points out. “For leaving me to die in my apartment.”

“I didn’t—”

Oh mercy, I am so furious with him right now I almost say it out loud. But then I remind myself how much I stand to lose if I tell him the truth. So instead, I stutter, “I…I’m sorry for what I did. I truly am, but—”

“Now,” he bites out.

I blink, not understanding his meaning.

“Now you are sorry,” he clarifies, his voice guttural and low. “Now, when I am in a position to destroy all your dreams, like you destroyed mine.”

I blink rapidly at him, unable to believe what I am hearing. “Oh, come on, mon, tell me exactly how I destroyed your dreams?” I demand, my Jamaican accent deepening with my anger and frustration. “You are the CEO of Cal-Mart for mercy’s sake! You are a big-time billionaire with a string of beautiful girlfriends you can change out every month, according to your son! Maybe I bruised your ego, but I did not destroy your dreams. This is overstating things and you know it!”

“Do you think any of the things I had back then mattered as much to me as you did? All I wanted was you. You were my dream!”

For a moment, I fall into his wounded eyes. Remembering how he used to stare at me so intently that I would believe, sometimes for hours, I really was, as he’d tell me time and again, the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

Then I remember something else. That those were the good times he spoke of…good times overshadowed by the things he really loved the most.

“No,” I remind him, my voice quiet and low. “I was just another of your addictions. I wasn’t the only thing you wanted, Holt. You wanted the drugs and the alcohol. And in the end, you wanted them more than you wanted me. You OD’d, Holt. You OD’d! Then you came to my home reeking of alcohol, like no lessons learned at all. Claiming to want me back with breath that reeked of all your bad decisions.

“What did you expect me to do? Say ‘Yes, Holt, let us go on like we were before you overdosed and almost died. I will continue to pick up the pieces when you break things and clean up all your vomit. I will also run your baths when you accidentally piss yourself because you are often too wasted to stand in the shower. I will leave my dying father so I can prove my love to you by making sure you do not overdose again. I am so very sorry for ever thinking I should choose my parents over a boy who says he loves me but not nearly as much as he loves his drugs and alcohol.’ Is this what you think I should have done?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stands there, looking at me thunderstruck.

Leaving me to press on, “You think you have suffered these last ten years? I lost a father and a sister. And my mother still refuses to speak to me because of the things I did that summer with you! And now you are here with me in this bathroom telling me a sad story of everything you lost? What you lost??!? You lost nothing, mon! You are still here. Still alive and breathing. You were fine without me, but then you found me and made me return here, to Connecticut…”

I am nearly overcome with emotion and have to pause. Ever since returning to the place where I lost everything, I have been afraid. Afraid of all the secrets I must keep. Afraid of Holt. Afraid for the child I swore to protect after my sister’s horrible death. I am all Barron has. He is all I have…

“I did not ask you to bring me back to Connecticut,” I tell Holt, my voice hoarse and low. “I did not ask you for this job or these jealous feelings or this confusion. You hate me now, but you have all the power between us and you are using it to rip out my heart. And you know I would have fulfilled my part of our bargain, even if doing so feels like I am losing my soul every night I come to your bed. But I would have continued on with our arrangement if not for tonight. You…”

I point at him with a shaking finger, choking on my own rage. “You are a spoiled demon of a man! You do not believe I have suffered enough. You treat me like dirt, while you treat this other woman-not-a-date like gold! So now let me tell you something, Holt. I HATE you! Yes. It is true. I hate you right back, and mon, I hate you far more than you could ever hate me!”

I am breathing hard by the time I have finished. Every word I have said is true. But it is a truth I did not know I’d been keeping pent up inside myself, imprisoned in the same cage as my memories of that summer, and waiting to break out.

Holt is also breathing hard. Even though I am the one who has finally told him how it is. He stares down at me, his eyes glittering with unchecked rage. Then…

…his lips crash down on mine.

I hate him…I hate him…I truly do. Yet I return his kiss hungrily. The animal inside me finally as ravenous as the beast inside him.

The next thing I know, he is lifting me onto the edge of the sink. And I am unbuttoning and pulling open his tuxedo jacket and shirt because I want his skin. I want him more than I have ever wanted anything or anyone before.

It would seem Holt wants me, too. His rough hands push up the skirt of my dress before retreating to fumble with the buckle of his trousers. I feel him long and heavy against my now bare thighs. Then he breaks off the kiss just as suddenly as it began, and his hand reaches into the side pocket of his tux, eventually coming back out with a condom.

This would be the time. The time for me to tell him to stop. The time to realize how crazy this whole situation has become. But I am mute with all-consuming need. Unable to utter a single word as I watch Holt sheathe himself in thin rubber latex. And then my throat goes even more dry when he reaches between my legs and pulls the crotch of my panties aside…to push a thick finger into my canal.

However, this is not foreplay. I soon realize this when he swirls the digit around inside me instead of pushing it in and out. No, this is a test to see if I am ready for him.

And I pass it easily, lubricating even more at just the pressure of his wide knuckle scraping against my vaginal walls.

“Sylvie,” he whispers my name like a prayer. But a prayer for what? I don’t know.

Then I feel the heat of him, thick and heavy against my crotch. Familiar, but also not. It has been so long since he took me face to face that I was beginning to wonder if I only imagined us doing it that way when we were young. But this time is not like all the other times we have shared in his mansion bedroom. This time, instead of him motioning for me to turn around, he pulls my hips forward.

And this time, I moan his name loud and long when he pushes into me. My sex receives him with a hungry clench. Remembering how it used to feel between us. Like nothing I had ever known. Before or after.

Maybe this is how it feels for him, too, because he drops his forehead to mine and with a wounded growl, his hips start circling hard between my legs. The bathroom soon fills with the sound of his body slapping into mine. Faster and faster, his breaths becoming coarser and coarser until…I cry out and he yells as we explode together. Really together for the first time since we started this arrangement. Us again for the first time in ten years.

We stare at one another in tender wonder. And for one moment, things are good between us…like it used to be. But only for a moment. Because eventually, my ears stop ringing and the lovely euphoria fades. Eventually, I realize exactly where I am. Who I am. And why we both came to this restaurant in the first place.

Holt must be coming down with a similar case of reality check because his tender look vanishes. Then he pulls out of me and begins putting himself back together in a blur of tucking and buttoning. All I have to do is hop off the sink and pull my skirt down, but I still feel strange and uncomfortable as we emerge from the bathroom.

As I should.

Waiting right outside the door is the manager, who went out of his way to clear out the restaurant for Holt and his date, Glen, and Holt’s stunning date.

They are all staring at us, aghast.