Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 65939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
His blue-gray eyes glint with steel as he confirms my hunch. “Why did you ghost me?”
Chapter 22
Ashton
She steps back. “Is now really a good time to talk about this?”
I gesture around us. “We’re not going anywhere anytime soon. When would it be a better time?”
She sighs. “We might be stuck here for a while, and discussing this will only make us more at odds with each other.”
“We’re already at odds with each other,” I say. “Especially you with me for some unfathomable reason.”
“Fine.” She bites her lower lip, making my cock twitch. “The morning after we first… met, I learned how much you cat around.”
I furrow my eyebrows. “Cat around?”
She scowls. “I learned how much you fuck different women. Is that clearer?”
Shit. That was one of my leading theories. But… “How?”
She shrugs. “Spoke to one of your ‘conquests.’ Her reviews were glowing, by the way. Five stars all around.”
Fuck. Must be someone from college. “I wish you’d talked to me instead of just disappearing.”
“Oh?” She lifts her chin. “Why is that?”
“Because I would’ve told you that it’s all long behind me.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “Yeah, right.”
I put my hand over my heart. “After that time with you, I haven’t been with anyone else.”
She gapes at me, then snorts. “Bullshit. There’s no way.”
I grit my teeth. “Why would I lie?”
She shrugs. “To make me feel safer about having slept with you?”
I blow out a breath. “You should feel perfectly safe. Hell, I’ll show you my clean bill of sexual health as soon as there’s internet.”
She waves that away. “Just because you never caught an STD doesn’t mean you didn’t stick a condom-shielded cock into every hole in Manhattan.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “If you had bothered to get to know me, you wouldn’t be saying all this.”
Is that a glimmer of doubt in her eyes?
“Listen,” she says. “Who you sleep with—or not—isn’t any of my business. It was just… I felt like there was something between us that day, and when that woman told me about your ‘situation’, I felt—”
“But again,” I say insistently. “What she told you is something that’s in the past.”
She scoffs. “How would you have felt if our roles were reversed? If some guy had told you I—”
“Short of learning that you were a sex worker or something, I would’ve spoken to you.”
Her expression reminds me of the recent storm. “So… sleeping with a training client, you don’t consider that sex work? More importantly, if I were a sex worker, you would’ve ghosted me?”
Why do women like to trap men with such hypotheticals? This is just like when an ex-girlfriend asked if I would’ve slept with Marilyn Monroe—and then started a huge fight with me because I said yes.
“If some guy told me such a thing about you, I’d give you the benefit of the doubt,” I say carefully.
More like I would’ve beaten the truth out of the fucker, but we don’t need to get into that.
Her eyes turn into slits. “And if you knew that I was, without any doubt?”
Deeper into hypotheticals? What’s next: If we got married and I suffocated as I was giving you the best blow job in history, would you remarry? “I guess in such a scenario, I would have a problem with your job,” I tell her.
“Is that so?”
“If you were mine, I would not share you with anyone else,” I say with finality.
She narrows her eyes. “What if I needed the money?”
Seriously? “There are other hypothetical ways to make money.”
“You sound just like a pampered Vancroft,” she says, words dripping with disdain. “You’ve clearly never had to work for anything in your life. Everything’s been handed to you on a silver platter.”
I glare at her. “I’ve worked my ass off for what I have.”
“Ass? Are you sure it wasn’t your dick?”
My jaw ticks. “I think you’ve gotten so used to hating me that you’re just looking for any excuse to do so.”
“More like someone doesn’t like the truth.”
I blow out a frustrated breath. “What truth?”
“That your family is old money,” she states. “And didn’t you complain about the ‘revenue growth’ of your business—like it’s a bad thing?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I say.
My family cut me off when I dropped out of business school and chose my own path in life. What I’ve made of my business I’ve done on my own. If it were up to my parents, I’d be married to Gwyneth and working for my father. Do I hate it that my choice inadvertently led to riches? Yes, I do—because it’s made my parents far too happy and proud of me.
Money is how they measure a person’s worth in life, and I’ve finally become worthy in their eyes. But that’s neither here nor there.
“I looked up the Bryces, you know,” I tell Kendall. “Your family is doing far too well for you to have a chip on your shoulder.”