woman lives, which makes these partings awkward. “You traveling anywhere interesting before the holidays roll around?”
I think for a moment. “Indonesia in a few weeks.”
“Ooooh! Where to? Bali?” She performs a shimmy. “We connect out there to Denpasar. No non-stops, though.”
This is weird, making me suck in a breath, trying to be polite. “Not Bali.”
“Oh. You just seem like a Bali guy.”
Sade, sweetie, you don’t know me…
“I’ve been once with friends.” Old family is more like it. “I’ll be visiting Kamigu. It’s a small island—”
“Holy shit!” She sucks in a breath. “I knew you had money, but goddamn?” Her eyes are wide; mouth, too. Sade’s expression isn’t dissimilar to the one she makes when she’s coming on my dick. “Ash! Are you taking someone special there?”
So she does have an ounce of decorum and morality?
“It’s a business excursion.” I quell her growing suppositions.
“We don’t fly out there.” She gasps.
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Then Sade begins to nod, internally calculating my wealth and vocation. We discuss none of that. I’m not in the habit of telling a woman how I earn a living unless I’m actively pursuing them, and even that is scaled. I don’t pursue women for more than their sexual feminine wilds. And on that rare occasion, I’ll share my career in journalism. But my income and wealth aren’t up for common knowledge. Sade here has zero idea what I do besides travel extensively under the guise of work…which is entirely true.
“How long will you be there?” A nervous giggle pushes through her cords. “Just wondering when we’ll meet up again.”
I have no idea how long this piece on Tori will take. I know what I need to abound a solid story, but have no clue how forthcoming she or her team will be.
My face folds. “That’s a good question, yet one I can’t answer,” I mumble more to myself. Then I peer over to her again. “But you know how to contact me when you’re in my neck of the woods.”
There’s a delay as she beams my way. “I know this sounds crazy, but work with me, old bearded one.”
A chuckle pushes from my nostrils. “Okay.”
“I know we don’t discuss personal shit, but I bet you went to college.”
I nod when she pauses. “I did.”
“You probably went to a good one, but anyway. I wonder—just for a moment—what if we met back then on campus.”
My brows meet. “Why?”
“Because I’d have you before your first heartbreak.”
“What makes you think I’ve had my heart broken?”
Her dark eyes rove around the small hotel suite as she holds her purse and jacket behind her back with a twinkled smirk on her glossed lips. “A man too converse with this meeting space is either one without the ability to give love a try, or one who has and vows to never do it again.”
“Well, damn…” I blink, shocked as hell. “I don’t know if I should be shook or properly offended.”
Sade’s little shoulders shrug as she takes a step back. “Be neither. I grew up poor, on a small dirt road in the middle of nowhere. College was never in the cards for me.”
She turns and leaves for the door. I hear the click once it’s closed. I decide to be offended. Just because she was poor doesn’t mean we couldn’t have dated or had something real. That’s fucked up.
Exhaling, I stretch my arms and prepare to shower four hours of fucking off before resuming to my real world. Walking to the bathroom, I mutter, “Poor girls are just as dangerous, if not more. Shit. One was my fuckin’ kryptonite.” I scoff, recollecting. “In college!”
After rinsing my face in the shell-shaped bowl, my head comes up and I see myself in the mirror. The face is familiar, but the eyes are from a weary stranger. It’s late, been a long day, and I’m exhausted, but this is beyond being spent and I know it. Thank God I’m finally home, in my own space. I turn off the water and grab a hand towel. I know I need to deal with it before this fight, and more so before training. Taking a deep breath, I make a muted promise to myself to do just that.
My vibrating phone on the vanity snatches my attention. I grab it and sit my naked frame wrapped in a towel on the bench. Once I’m in the text thread from Trent, my eyes burn from unwilled tears. I pinch my nose to chase away the burn there, too. Life can