Page 77 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Barnaby trots into the hallway, meowing a greeting. He sniffs my leg, then recoils, his ears flattening.
Even my cat can smell him on me.
“I know,” I whisper, pulling my knees to my chest. “I know, Barnaby. I’m an idiot.”
I sit there for a long time. Ten minutes. Twenty.
My eyes wander around the apartment. It’s small. It’s cluttered. And it’s painfully, expensively quiet.
I look down the short hallway to the second bedroom. The door is open. The room is dark and empty.
Three months ago, my roommate, Daniella, moved out to live with her boyfriend in Dallas. She gave me two days’ notice. I remember the panic of staring at the lease renewal, realizing I couldn’t afford the rent on my own. I was freelancing, scraping by on uneven paychecks, eating ramen three nights a week. I was two weeks away from having to move back into my parents’ basement in Ohio.
Then the recruiter called.
It was life-changing. It was enough to wipe out the private student loan that was drowning me in 12% interest and cover the rent on the whole apartment.
I took the job because I needed the cash.
I dumped the entire bonus into that debt the day it cleared.
I walk into the living room and pick up a stack of mail from the coffee table.
The rent bill is on top. $2,400.
I stare at the number.
If I quit tomorrow, I have enough savings to last… maybe three weeks. Then I’m homeless. Or I’m calling my dad and admitting I failed.
Ethan knows this. He signed the offer letter and ran my background checks. He knows exactly how much leverage he has.
I drop the bill on the table.
“I hate him,” I whisper.
I walk to the bathroom. I strip off the ruined black dress and throw it in the trash. I don’t want to wash it. I never want to see it again.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror.
My neck is marked. Hickey. A dark, purple bruise is forming right over my pulse point where he sucked the skin. My chest is flushed.
I turn on the shower, cranking the heat up as high as it will go.
I step in. I scrub my skin until it’s raw and pink. I wash my hair three times, trying to scrub the scent of him out of me.
I scrub until I hurt, but the sensation of him persists. The bruise of his grip on my hips. The cold bite of the marble against my back.
He didn’t want me. He wanted to win. He wanted to prove that he could break me.
And maybe I wanted him to, a dark voice whispers in my head.
Maybe I didn’t just sleep with Owen because of the champagne. Maybe I didn’t just let Ethan take me on that desk because of the heat. Maybe I’m spiraling on purpose.
Maybe, deep down, I’m trying to light a fire big enough to burn this whole contract to the ground so they have to fire me.
Because if they fire me, I don’t have to choose. If they fire me, I’m free.
I turn off the water, shaking the thought away. It’s too twisted. Too desperate.
