guest room was the best thing for both of us. Because all that kink from last night? It had nothing to do with how I felt about Claudia, and everything to do with how I felt about Emzee. I wished she was the one who’d left her mark all over my apartment. That the stories I’d been telling had been about her instead.
I didn’t like any of the memories that Claudia had left behind. When I looked at that fucking Sri Lankan vase, all I thought about was how Claudia had spent half our trip bitching about the poverty there. How everything and everyone was so filthy and disgusting. Emzee never would have said that—she wouldn’t have even thought it. If we’d been on that trip together, Emzee would have focused on observing the culture and people around her. She probably would have spent the whole trip taking photographs of everything: good, bad, or ugly.
To her, though, there would have been beauty in all of it.
And another thing—Emzee would never call all the miserable marriages in my family “traditional.” Nor would she ever aspire to have a similar one for herself.
And that painting in the den? Emzee wouldn’t have needed a fucking painting to remind her to communicate with her partner. She would just do it. Like she was doing now. Instead of pouting and acting passive-aggressive, the way Claudia always did when she was pissed at me for some reason or another.
And that desk. I knew for a fact that Em most assuredly would have been a lot more fun over drinks in Paris. All Claudia had wanted to do was shop on the Champs-Élysées and buy things that she could brag about to her friends. That was always all she ever cared about.
Not that it mattered anymore.
But even if Emzee and I did go to Paris or any of those other places now, it wouldn’t change the fact that she didn’t love me. That if I let her get inside me any more than she already had, I was going to break. Which was why I should agree to her terms. Call off the sex and let her move into the guest room.
Problem was, I couldn’t do it. I was too selfish for that.
“I think it’s for the best,” Emzee was saying. “I can move all my stuff down the hall today. No one will have to know.”
“No,” I said.
She looked surprised. “No?”
“I can be respectful,” I told her. “But as long as we’re in this arrangement, you are my wife and you will sleep in my bed. Understood?”
Emzee scowled at me, but in the end, she didn’t disagree.
I had to believe there was a part of her that didn’t actually want to move into the guest room. Or that simply didn’t want to give up our intense physical connection.
Either way, we’d reached a truce.
Emzee
Chapter 10
It could get exhausting, trying to keep up the schedule for See Yourself. I loved the work I did—loved working with the ex-models, loved the classes I taught, loved knowing I was making a difference—but for the most part, all the behind-the-scenes logistics that went into making a nonprofit function tended to wear me out completely.
My main goal for the day had been to schedule the new guest instructors and classes for the next few months, but every time I called some rich and/or successful person who had expressed interest in volunteering with us, I was met with the exact same response.
“Oh, Emzee, it’s such a great cause, and you know I truly, truly want to be involved, cross my heart, but it’s just that I am so busy these days and…” Blah, blah, blah.
I nodded, even though I knew that Kendra couldn’t see me. She was the latest socialite I’d called, who’d sworn just a few months ago that she’d be thrilled to give a presentation on how to perform well during job interviews—a life skill my students would obviously benefit from learning. And now this.
More excuses, more rejections, and a lot more panic on my part.
“Are you sure you can’t make the time?” I asked, feeling a little desperate. “It’s just a one-day seminar. Two to three hours, max.”
“Let me see…”
I could practically hear her tapping her way through her calendar app.
“Maybe I could do something next month?” she said.
I pumped my fist with excitement. Kendra was one of the people I’d been counting on. She was a part-time recruiter for the most renowned makeup and fashion companies in the world,