I sigh, dropping into the seat opposite and massaging my pulsating jaw.
“What’s this motherfucker’s surname? Philips, right?”
“Dad,” Caitlin says, glaring at me. “You don’t need to know his surname. I didn’t call you so you could hunt him down or whatever the hell you’re implying. I just wanted somebody to talk to. That’s all. Please don’t make this a big deal.”
I fight the urge to snap at her that it is a big deal.
But Sophia is giving me one of her looks again.
“At least let me put some security on you for the time being,” I tell her.
“And make me stand out more than I already do as your daughter? No thanks.”
“Cait,” Sophia murmurs. “It might be a good idea. Just for a little while. What if he goes further next time?”
Caitlin looks up at Sophia and then back at me.
Again, the deranged certainty spirals into me that she knows, and she’s angry.
“Do you think so?” she says, returning her gaze to Sophia.
“Yeah,” Sophia says. “Just think what you’d say to me if the positions were reversed.”
“Damn you, Soph,” Caitlin laughs. “Damn you and your logic. Fine. But only until things blow over.”
I glance at Sophia, offering her a silent thank you with my eyes. She smiles, her eyes alight and full of emotion, and I know that I’m going to be with this woman for the rest of my life.
It’s complicated. It’s messy as hell.
But it’s inevitable.
She’s mine, only mine.
And nothing will ever change that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sophia
This is all so surreal.
I sit in the back of Solomon’s car next to Caitlin, the same way we used to as kids on the rare occasions when he picked us up from school. Usually, he was too busy and would send one of his staff, but sometimes he’d come by himself and I’d sit in the back, gazing at him in the rearview mirror, imagining what it would be like to be his wife.
They were silly, girlish fantasies, nothing more.
And yet now my panties are damp from what we did in the underground parking lot, my body still tantalizingly alive to the closeness we shared. I ache to feel it again, but I know we’re playing a dangerous game by even considering it.
“Do you want to hang at mine for a while?” Caitlin asks, talking to me but staring out the window, watching the city flit by.
I can tell by the repressed quiver in her voice she wants the answer to be yes. She doesn’t want to be alone right now.
“Phew,” I say, laughing.
She turns to me with a shaky smile.
“Phew?”
“I’m just glad you asked,” I tell her. “I was going to beg and beg to hang at yours and order some takeout, so I’m glad you made the first move.”
She laughs, giving me a playful shove on the shoulder.
“You’re the best, Soph. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I return her smile, but something wicked and cruel twists its way into my belly. She wouldn’t be saying that if she knew what I did with her father less than an hour ago.
She’d slap me, reject me, never speak to me again.
She turns back to the city and I glance at the rearview, the same way I did when I was just a girl.
Solomon’s jaw is tight, his grip firm on the steering wheel. He must be thinking the same thing I am, how wrong this is, how we can never do it again.
And yet there’s a deep part of me that yearns to know what he was going to tell me before Caitlin’s call interrupted us.
He said he’s the only man who’s ever going to sleep with me.
What does that mean?
Is this more than a fling?
But that could never work. Surely he knows that.
Even as I think that – this will never work – a violent instinct rises inside of me. It almost feels like my womb, like some vital piece of me rebelling against this doubt.
My mind flurries with a thousand vignettes of what life with Solomon could be like, with a house full of laughter and children darting all over the place. I imagine us standing in the doorway to our children’s bedroom, looking at them from behind as they lose themselves in their current art project, jotting at canvases with precocious precision.
“Sophia,” Caitlin says, calling me from my reverie.
I turn to her, realizing we’ve stopped.
“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I was off in the—”
“Clouds?” she finishes, grinning.
“Okay, maybe I say that too much,” I laugh. “Shall we head up?”
“Yeah,” Caitlin says. “Thanks for the ride, Dad. And thanks for, you know, not sending some hired goons after Kenny. Even if he deserves it.”
“He does deserve it,” Solomon growls. “But you know me, Caitie-kins. I’m a picture of self-control.”
Caitlin rolls her eyes and climbs from the car.
I glance over at Solomon briefly, trying to read the message in his face. I wonder if he feels the same as me, this warring certainty and uncertainty like everything’s going to work out and everything’s going to combust at the same time.
How can I be so sure of both outcomes?
“Thanks for the ride, sir,” I say.
I can’t help adding the sir.
His jaw tenses and a smirk touches his lips. Hunger flares visibly inside of him, making his body tense. His eyes are twin green flames in the rearview mirror.
“No problem, Miss Clarkson,” he says.
I climb from the car, my heart pounding a beat, traitorous thoughts whispering through my mind.
“What do you feel like this evening?” Caitlin asks, looping her arm through mine as we head toward her apartment building.
It’s one of the fanciest high rises in town, the lobby all pristine marble. A doorman in a suit – Alonso, the same man who’s been stationed at the door since she moved in – tips his hat and opens the glass door for us.
“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “I’ll have whatever you like.”
Whatever you want, Caitlin, I feel like screaming. I’ll do whatever it takes so you don’t hate
