My mood worsened as the day progressed.
I told Nash to go to hell, and by the time I cleaned up, changed, dropped my bags off in my closet, and arrived to work two hours late, Nash was typing away at his laptop with the rest of my coworkers.
Apparently, hell was my office.
He cocked a brow as if to say, and where have you been?
I had been joking when I accused him of stalking me, but maybe he actually was. He had made himself at home in the office, replacing one of the computers with his own laptop, taking up the entire desk as if he owned it.
He does own it, Emery. Given the state of your trust fund and how desperate you are for work, he basically owns you, too.
God, trying to screw Nash had been a horrible idea, like taking on the Avengers armed with an unloaded gun. I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Ben.
Durga: Newsflash—you give horrible advice.
I deleted the text without sending. Guilt gnawed at my stomach. A—Ben usually nailed every piece of advice he delivered. B—screwing Nash out of my system would have worked if he were anyone else but Nash, the one guy on Earth to take more pleasure in turning down a no-strings-attached hook up than wild sex.
Pocketing my phone, I eyed everyone. Cayden’s desk was too messy for anyone to justify booting him from it, so Chantilly sat on the couch I normally shared with Ida Marie and Hannah.
No one explained why Nash was here as I entered, the silence so opposite of what this place resembled sans dictator Nash.
I dropped my Jana Sport at the foot of the couch and leaned down to hug Ida Marie. “Sorry that I’m late, y’all. Some asshole wouldn’t let me into the elevator, and then I had to stop by the, um, restroom.”
Lame as far as excuses went.
I was off my A-game, stealing glances at Nash every few seconds and trying not to be obvious about it. He didn’t look up at me. In fact, he typed away at his laptop as if nothing had happened.
“Pay dock.” Chantilly pointed to the coffee table with her chewed-up pen, not bothering to offer me her attention.
I took a seat on the floor, wondering if I had stepped into the Twilight zone. I pulled out my sketchbook to begin drawing portrait ideas for the C-level suites. As soon as my sketchbook hit the coffee table, a stack of folders fell above it like Jenga pieces collapsing.
I counted down from ten, bit my tongue until it bled, and finally looked up at the jackass who had thrown the papers down. “Yes?”
Nash wore the same bespoke suit. His hair no longer stuck up in several directions, but his eyes remained wild, caged by a thinning veneer. I studied him for signs I had company in this lust.
How easy it had been for him to leave me etched doubt into my brain.
His tongue against my collarbone.
His fingers curled inside me.
His cock pressed against the back of my throat.
None of it seemed to faze him.
But to me, touching him was a song on repeat you couldn’t forget. Each touch—the beat. Each orgasm—the bass. Each demand of his—the lyrics.
Beg for me.
Suck my cock.
Swallow my cum.
A song that never got old.
“I need copies of these.” His eyes snapped to the Bvlgari watch he never would have been caught dead wearing four years ago. “Two each.”
I skimmed the papers. Half of them had been typed in a foreign language. The word Singapore stood out to me, along with Delilah and Nash’s names.
“I’m not your assistant.” When I swiped them off the table, the papers floated to the carpet like dead leaves. I wanted to step on them and watch them crumble. “Do it yourself.”
“Check your contract.”
Nash didn’t bother to pick up the papers. He pulled out his phone, and I just knew he was playing Candy Crush. I doubted he played for the game, but for the pleasure of pissing people off. Another tool in an arsenal that resembled the U.S. Army’s.
He continued with his game, adding, “You’ll notice clause forty-two, subsection C clearly states each employee may have added job responsibility in the company’s time of need. I am the company, and I am in need.”
I waited for a sign he was bluffing.
Wishful thinking.
He could bluff, but he’d never break.
The contract had been ridiculously long, and it would have taken me a month to go through it in detail. I skimmed it as best as I could, but it had been lawyer-speak, and Reed assured me it was a standard form every employee had to sign.
Fuck. Me.
We didn’t have printers in this temp office. Where did he expect me to go? Did Kinko’s still exist?
Nash continued, “There’s a coffee shop next to the printing center on third street.” Fishing out his all-black credit card from my wallet with fingers that had just been inside me, he tossed it onto the stack of papers. “I’ll make it easy for you this time, seeing as your level of competency sits somewhere between a lobotomized pigeon and the dip-shits who wrote Disaster Movie. Dark roast. Black. Largest size.”
Picturing his torture, I collected the papers from the floor and the company credit card, taking my sweet time. I used his company card to buy everyone at the tent city Chipotle, myself new jeans to replace the pair I’d left in his room, his damn paper copies, and the coffee (decaf because he didn’t deserve to be caffeinated).
I shot a text to Ben on my way back.
Durga: Does North Carolina have the death penalty for murder?
Benkinersophobia: Yes, but you can take out your aggression through angry phone sex tonight. My balls are bluer than a whale’s.
Durga: Whales have pink balls, and they weigh, like, one ton. At the very least, I hope you’re proportional.
Benkinersophobia: Durga?
Durga: Yes?
Benkinersophobia: Shut up and fuck me tonight.
Nash was still in the office when I returned after changing into the new jeans and dropping my sweats off in my closet. Except this time, he had begun a meeting without me.
I snuck in and sat next to Ida Marie, resisting the temptation to crawl my way there on the zero-point-zero-zero-zero-one-percent chance he wouldn’t see me.
No such luck.
Nash glanced at his watch before ignoring me. I set his copies and coffee down on the table, took my seat, and whispered—in my defense, discreetly—to Ida Marie, “What is he doing here? I thought he wasn’t supposed to show up until we had the 3D renderings done and ready for his approval.”
That should have given me at least a week without seeing him.
Ida Marie scribbled across her notepad in indecipherable strokes. “Chantilly just announced that he’ll be helping with the workload.”
“Couldn’t he hire someone local for this project?”
My notebook sat at the bottom of my Jana Sport. Rather than fetch it, I leaned back and studied Nash. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. Fifteen years of knowing him, and that was the single habit I ever noticed.
Ida Marie dipped her shoulders and fidgeted with the notes she’d been taking. “Maybe he’s one of those involved C.E.O.s?” Even she didn’t sound convinced, and a felon dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit could swindle her out of her wallet. “I’m sure there’s a good reason. You don’t think we’re in trouble or anything, right?”
“No.”
But there had to be a reason. I remained on high alert. Nash plowed through request after request, ordering us around like a drill sergeant. He held up the fabric swatches and sorted through them before settling on the one I liked the least.
I mean, I disliked all of them. I thought this make-the-hotel-as-bland-as-possible thing was a huge mistake, but what did I know? I only had a major in fashion design and a minor in interior.
“This color contrasts with the flooring.” He seemed hollow as he spoke, almost detached in a way that made me question why he had chosen the hotel business in the first place. “We had a similar color scheme in our Beijing location, which was featured in an hour-long Hotels Digest film. It’s also a AAA Five Diamond Award recipient.”
Somewhere in the past four years, the passion had seeped out of him, a leaky faucet of enthusiasm. This wasn’t the Nash Prescott who walked around with bruised knuckles and a look in his eye that suggested he knew something I didn’t.
Working at Prescott Hotels bored him. A daily chore. I never thought Nash Prescott would be the type to sell out.
I must have been making a face, because he asked, “Is there something you’d like to say, Miss Rhodes?”
I mulled over an answer before settling with, “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Translation: you’re not gonna like it, so let’s not continue this war in public. Blood is a bitch to get off low pile, polypropylene carpet.
Say it. I dare you, his eyes challenged me.
Chantilly’s eyes, on the other hand, screamed with warning, and if she could have strangled me without ending up in a six-by-eight cell, I was sure she would have… but because I had never been one to pass up a good dare, I spoke my mind.
“Your ‘vision’—and I use that term loosely—feels like a sell-out. Yeah, your company’s brand is this bougie, ritzy bullshit, but you’ve never been.” Fuck. That sounded like I knew him. “I mean, your brand originally wasn’t,” I corrected, my voice sharper than an ice crusher. “Your first location in Bentley, South Carolina had style. It screamed class without the side of boring. Haling Cove is a college tourist trap. Your clientele may be wealthy, but they’re also young. This is your opportunity to finally do something that isn’t total Arnault-Koch-and-Mercer-style bullshit.”
Silence.
Would have been blissful had my heart not been pounding so hard, I swore I was seconds away from a heart attack. Horrible figure of speech, given the audience, but I felt no sympathy as Nash stared at me like he wanted to storm over here and…
I didn’t know.
Strangle me?
Bend me over his knee?
Seems legit.
“You’re right,” he began, his eyes finally, finally alive. It thrilled me to bring the spark there, which should have been a sign to back off. He’d already made me beg him to fuck me then left me hanging. What more could he do? “This is North Carolina. Maybe hotel guests will be turned off by the aesthetic. We want less Winthrop Scandal and more friendly neighborhood billionaire. Any suggestions?”
I could have killed him, picked apart his eyes, and fed them to the coyotes. “We need a focal piece for the lobby. It needs to be large enough to take up the entire center of the lobby. It also needs to be something that draws attention to justify the minimalistic design points. We want it to be a conversation starter, too. It’s the only thing that will save this hotel from being a total snooze fest.”
Chantilly raised her hand before speaking. “We can’t afford a focal piece. We have to stay on budget. We already bought some of the fixtures, flooring, and paint in the current color scheme,” she slanted her gaze my way, “so I strongly suggest we ignore Emery’s idea.”
Nash twirled a pen in his fingers, so uncaring about this hotel, it bothered me. “I guess Winthrop Scandal it is.”
Chantilly droned on about her overpriced ideas.
Ida Marie leaned into me and whispered, “What’s the Winthrop Scandal?”
“Just another case of an asshole stealing from the little guy,” I replied, thankful none of my coworkers came from the South or had picked up a Financial Times article ever.
Not that I had been the face of the scandal.
Dad had.
Still.
I couldn’t control my heartbeats. They consumed my poor chest, thudding a fierce rhythm worthy of a Carnegie Hall drum solo. It felt like Big Foot had laced up his Nikes and started running a marathon inside me.
Keep your shit together, Emery. Small minds come attached to big mouths. Look at Chantilly’s flapper go. Does someone who spent a chunk of the dwindling budget on cabinet knobs that resemble butt plugs seem like the type of person who could piece together your identity?
“Oh.” Ida Marie doodled on the margins of her notebook as Chantilly wrapped up her bullshit defense of her design. “I hope he went to jail.”
Nope, just living in a beach-side cottage in a small North Carolina town. Dad emailed me postcards once a week. I never replied, but sometimes, when I felt particularly masochistic, I would stare at the pictures and wonder how he fared living somewhere that couldn’t fill a high school gymnasium. Eastridge’s population nearly doubled Blithe Beach, and still, gossip in town moved like a cheetah prowling for prey.
I wondered how far Nash would take terrorizing me. I had figured out his game. Reed hated Nash, but Nash didn’t hate Reed. That had to be the reason I still had this job. I threaded Reed and Nash together, and to cut me would be to cut their already strenuous relationship.
Nash continued, ignoring me, “I expect the 3D renderings to be done by the end of the weekend, so we can begin finalizing purchases and move on to the artwork for the suites. This is not some cookie-dough-latte and chocolate-jalapeño-croissant-serving coffee shop you can smoke a joint behind. Slow and mediocre work will not be tolerated.”
“Chocolate jalapeño croissants. So gross, am I right?” Chantilly stepped beside him, her knee bumping into the back of my head as she scrambled off the couch. Two palms clapped together, rally girl style. “We’ll begin with your penthouse suite first, Mister Prescott, then the presidential suite Mrs. Lowell is currently staying in. Do you have any requests?”
“Keep the same color palette for the penthouse and presidential suites. The presidential suite should stay in line with the aesthetic of the hotel, since it will be booked by guests.” Nash pulled out his phone, his wandering attention further confirmation he gave no fucks about this project.
“I think I have a good idea of your tastes.” Chantilly crept closer to Nash and tried to peek at his phone. “I was on the team that designed your New York City penthouse. Mary-Kate let me lead that project.”
“Right.” The light of the screen lit up his bored features. “My least favorite penthouse. Actually, second. The one in Kuala Lumpur looks like Barney threw up in it, hosted an orgy inside the bedroom, then jizzed all over to reclaim his dignity.”
Accurate.
If I liked Nash, I would have fallen back into the couch, laughter tickling my stomach. The pictures of Kuala Lumpur in the online design archives showed a magenta-themed living room and a bedroom with streaks of cum-like white in the bay oak flooring, milk wall paint, and brocade sheets.
“I didn’t lead that one in Koala Limper.” Chantilly toyed with her hair.
When she smiled, the makeup caked on her face crumbled around the eyes. For a moment, I wanted to draw her in for a hug and tell her she’s unbelievably gorgeous where it matters… but then I remembered she had put me on actual time out yesterday for trying to share the elevator with her while she talked on the phone, and the best condolence I could offer her was that she’s pretty on the outside.
(For the record, eavesdropping on Chantilly gossiping sat on my to-do list somewhere between skydiving with a broken parachute and swallowing a brain-eating amoeba.)
“Kuala Lumpur,” Nash enunciated, lashing us all with his irritation. “It’s a city, not some cane-wielding marsupial, Chartreuse. For what I pay you, I expect competence.”
So this was what blue balls did to you. Turned you into an insufferable bastard. Nash wore impatience like a second skin sheathed around him. He hadn’t glanced at Chantilly once, but she jumped back at the scorch of his wrath.
Maybe after this, she would finally stop whining to Hannah about how much she wanted to be the next Mrs. Prescott. Her dreams included marrying Nash, having his babies, and swapping her design job for a life spent in spas and country clubs.
“Right.” Chantilly nodded once and mouthed the city name. “I’ll get it next time. Second time’s the charm.”
“Romanticizing failure.” He slid his eyes my way. “The hallmark of the participation trophy generation.”
Anyone else, and I would have stood up for her. Even Hannah and her general disdain for poor people would earn my defense. I bit my tongue. Chantilly glanced between us and Nash, her lips downturned. She read the room and swallowed her retort.
Nash pocketed his phone. “If we’re done with today’s attention-seeking antics, I’m continuing with the aesthetic. The penthouse will not be rented out, so there’s more leeway there. I want earth tones in the living room and suite, minimalist furnishings, and a sculpture against the North-facing wall.”
Chantilly fidgeted with the hem of her dress and pulled it away from her body. The sequins caught the lighting, reflecting a kaleidoscope of reds across Nash’s face, yet he didn’t look at her as she asked, “Of?”
“Sisyphus.”
“Sisyphus?” It escaped my lips as less of a question and more of a gasp.
Nash’s head snapped to mine. He studied me, a dip in between his brows as if he had tried and failed to figure me out. “Yes, Sisyphus. The thief.”
“The king,” I corrected, feeling defensive for Ben, who for some reason saw a part of himself in Sisyphus.
“No.” His face didn’t budge. He stood there, an immovable boulder, much like the one Sisyphus had been forced to carry for eternity. I wanted to be the one that chipped at its edges until it cracked and crumbled to dust. “The liar. The grifter. The con.”
My dad was a liar.
A grifter.
A con.
He had hurt people. Most importantly, he hurt Nash’s dad, and I would always suffer the guilt. Was that what Nash wanted me to know? He saw me the same way as he saw my dad? Was my punishment to search for a sculpture that had somehow become a slur against me?
Worse—the knowledge that Nash considered me a liar, too, chipped away at my sanity.
I raised my chin and didn’t waver as I argued, “Sisyphus is a king. A human who rules the winds. Cunning. Intelligent. Brave. A savior, who captured Death and freed humans from his clutches. All things you are not. I can understand why you’d want him as the focal piece of your penthouse, seeing as he is a reminder of the areas in which you are lacking.”
I’d gone too far. Broaching the subject of death reached a level of taboo that exceeded the idea of screwing him at eighteen while he’d been nearly thirty. It even surpassed the wrongness of showering in front of my boss and skipping work to fuck him.
“Sisyphus is a symbol of punishment,” Nash said easily, fixing his collar. Always adjusting his collar around me. I wondered if he smelled me on his fingertips or if he had washed me away the first chance he had gotten. “Of penance. Some people would do well to remember that, especially before stabbing others in the back.”
The dig hit harder than perhaps he had even intended. I had learned long ago that there was no such thing as a truly selfless act. People are hardwired to believe charity is selfless. In reality, charity is giving to yourself by giving to others. That’s not selfless. That’s penance.
I could make coats for the homeless, spend my free time volunteering, and give every inch of myself until I had nothing left, but there would always be a motive.
To feel better about myself.
To not hurt so much.
To right my wrongs.
To ease the guilt.
I wasn’t a good person, and I had fooled myself for too long, trying so desperately to be something my father and mother weren’t.
Nash waited for me to answer.
When I didn’t, he added, “Sisyphus will be your task. Find me the sculpture and have it placed against my wall. I want Sisyphus carrying the boulder on his back, pushing it up the wall, his expression anguished and the task Sisyphean.”
I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me, but his eyes showed me all I needed to know.
You are beneath me, they screamed.
And for once, I didn’t argue.
Not because I agreed, but because I saw beyond the scathing veneer. Nash was so broken, it was almost beautiful how he had erected walls of thorns and poison ivy around himself.
A haunted castle armed with insults as cannons; two staggering, hate-filled eyes as guards; and a lonely king who never abandoned his throne for fear it would collapse.
And me? I was the fallen princess destined to never step inside his fortress.
For some stupid, foolish, self-destructive reason, I ached at the thought.
