I’d felt mine shooting an arrow of poison straight to Milton’s glistening chest, then heard it crack, threatening to split in two.
We’d been together for five years. Met at Columbia University. He was the son of a retired NBC anchor. I was on full scholarship. The only reason we hadn’t lived together was because Dad was sick and I didn’t want to leave his side. But that didn’t stop Milton and me from crocheting our plans into the same colors and patterns, entwining our lives one dream at a time.
Visit Africa.
Get assigned to the Middle East.
Watch the sunset in Key West.
Eat one perfect macaron in Paris.
Our bucket list was etched in a notebook I’d keenly named Kipling, and it was burning a hole through my bag right now.
I hadn’t meant to throw up on Milton’s doorstep, but it was not a big surprise, considering what I’d just walked into. The bastard had skidded on my breakfast as he chased me down the hall, but I’d pushed the emergency stairway door open and taken the stairs two at a time. Milton had been very much naked, with a condom still dangling from his half-mast dick, and at some point he’d decided bursting into the street in his birthday suit was not a good plan.
I’d run until my lungs burned and my Chucks were wet and muddy.
Bumping into shoulders, and umbrellas, and street vendors in the pounding rain.
I was angry, desperate and shocked—but I wasn’t devastated. My heart was cracked, but not broken.
“The heart is a lonely hunter, Jude.”
I’d needed to forget—forget about Milton, the stacks of bills, and my unfortunate lack of employment the past few months. I’d needed to drown in alcohol and hot skin.
The stranger in the suite had given me exactly that, and now he was about to give me something we had never agreed on.
Judging by this place, though, he won’t have trouble paying for the cab to the airport.
A curved, wrought-iron staircase that cost more than my entire apartment stared back at me, leading to a Jacuzzi the size of my room. Plush, red-tufted velvet couches taunted me. Floor-to-ceiling windows dared me to drink in the view of well-heeled Manhattan with my poor eyes. And the teardrop chandelier looked eerily similar to little sperm.
And to make it through next week, Judith Penelope Humphry, you will stop thinking about jizz and move on with your plan.
I reached for the back pocket of his Tom Ford dress pants, where he’d tucked his wallet shortly after sliding out a chain of condoms, and examined it in my shaking hands. A Bottega Veneta leather creation, black and unwrinkled. My throat bobbed, but I still couldn’t swallow my nerves.
I flipped the wallet open and slipped out the stack of cash. Turned out Stranger Junior wasn’t the only thing thick about this one. I counted hurriedly, my eyes flaring as they took in all the cash.
I could practically hear Jesus scolding me. “Don’t thank me. Pretty sure thou shalt not steal was way up there on my not-to-do list.”
Yanking my phone out of my shoulder bag, I searched the brand of the wallet in my hand. Turns out it cost a little less than seven hundred bucks. My dysfunctional, albeit heavy heart pounded as I began to toss out plastic cards without giving them a second glance. The wallet was sellable, and as it turned out, so were my morals.
My gut knotted in shame, and I felt my face growing hot. He was going to wake up and hate me, regret the minute he’d approached me at the bar. I wasn’t supposed to care. He was going to leave New York come morning, and I would never see him again.
Once his wallet was empty, and all his cards and IDs neatly arranged on his nightstand, I slipped back into my dress and electric pink—although crusted in mud—Chucks and chanced one last look at him.
He was completely naked, his groin haphazardly covered by the sheet. With every breath he took, his six pack tightened. Even in sleep, he didn’t look vulnerable. Like a Greek god, he rose above susceptibility. Men like him were too conceited to be played. I was glad there was going to be an ocean between us soon.
I opened the door and hugged its frame.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, kissing the tips of my fingers and brushing them over the air between us.