have a future unless you understand my past. Cricket is only half the story.”
With his eyes on the ocean, he nods and says, “As long as you understand that anything you say changes nothing for me.”
“Why are you so willing to put your livelihood on the line for a prostitute you never asked for?”
“Prostitution is what you do, it’s not who you are, Lydia,” he says, squinting against the sunlight. “I do business with worse people than someone who sells sex to get by. At least you’re fucking honest about it.”
“It will only be a matter of time before someone you work with recognizes me, Talent. I’ve done my best to keep my identity a secret, but no one forgets the face of the woman they pay two-thousand dollars for an hour of sex. And when they realize you’re not paying me for my time, they might not say anything to your face, but you better believe they’re saying it behind your back.”
A menacing smirk curves his lips. “Let me worry about that, baby.”
“I visit six different clients, in six different offices, six days a week, three weeks a month. I’ve kept this schedule for eight years, Talent. I’m not like the sluts picking up drunks in bars, because I’m high-end. My clients have much more to lose should their arrangement with me get out. These are the men you run with, and the consequence will follow us forever.”
Slate-gray eyes find mine, and his menacing smirk turns charming. “So, you admit we’ll be together forever?”
I throw sand at him and cover my face with my hands. “Why are you okay with this? You’re Talent-fucking-Ridge. There’s not a single person in this entire city—in the entire world—you can’t have. Why me? Why can’t you let me go?”
Talent suddenly rolls on top of me, blocking the sunlight with his whole body. He holds my wrists above my head and slowly, passionately kisses me with the taste of the ocean on his lips. The weight of our bodies sinks into the sand, and our blanket bunches under our knees and elbows, filling the dips with warm sand.
“I love you,” Talent whispers against my lips. “I won’t let you go because I love you, and I think you’re in love with me, too.”
He says it, and I sound it out.
Because that’s what the word was all along.
On the tip of my tongue.
“I love you,” I say with a sigh of relief. But most of all: “I trust you.”
“Tell me more about the person who tried to hit you with her car.” Talent unboxes our breakfast to serve on glass plates, dressed in nothing but a pair of cotton boxers.
The black midi dress was ruined between our time spent in Talent’s office and after our trip to the beach yesterday evening. Clothes weren’t required once we returned to the penthouse, and Talent likes me in his shirts during the moments we come up for air. I still don’t have any underwear on, but that won’t be an issue until it’s time to go back to my place.
“I don’t know if she intentionally tried to hit me with the car,” I clarify, popping a sliced strawberry into my mouth. “Her name is Naomi. She started with Hush before I did, but she was fired a couple of months ago. We exchanged heated words, but I haven’t heard from her since. As far as I was concerned, I never had to see her again.”
To rationalize her exit from Hush as workplace termination is a gross understatement and a wild stretch of the imagination. It’s not like she was let go from a nine-to-five for insubordination and can find a new job or collect unemployment. Hush girls are welcome to go if they leave on good terms, but Naomi was blacklisted. She won’t find sex work in the state of California again unless she works truck stops or dive bars.
“Talent, she’s the reason why you and I are about to share this French toast,” I say, dipping my pinky finger into the powdered sugar. “She and your friend Phillip Vogel made the arrangement to put a hooker in your office, planning for it to be her, but Inez sent me instead. Our lives would be vastly different had you fucked Naomi instead.”
Talent rolls his eyes and takes our plates to the dining room table and pulls out a chair for me. “I’ll make a few calls and see what I can find out about her.”