“I think I’m going to take a cab home.”
He stands up to his full height, his eyes casting about my face, wracked in misery and indecision. “I’ll take you.”
“No. Stay and have fun with your friends. You deserve it. I need to pack, and I have a million things to get ready before we leave.”
“Maia—”
“Please, Keith. I want you to stay, but I need to go.”
He runs his hands through his hair before grasping my arm and leading me over to Marsellus. “Can you make sure she gets home okay? I don’t want her in a cab. Can one of the guys take her?”
“Of course, sir.”
Marsellus speaks into his earpiece and Keith spins back around. His eyes pierce mine like he as a million things on the tip of his tongue that are dying to break free. He’ll never say them. I already know that. “I won’t be out late.”
I shake my head, beyond incensed with this man. “I’m not your mother, your wife, or your girlfriend. Stay out as late as you want.”
“So fucking stubborn,” I hear him growl under his breath before he marches off but what does he expect from me? I left the ball in his court weeks ago and he did nothing with it. Suddenly because I’m dressed up and catching a few stares, he thinks he can spin this all back around? That I’ll be here waiting for him no matter what?
Doesn’t he see how wrong that is?
My job is all I have right now, and I won’t let his mind games get in the way of that.
* * *
I wake with a small jolt. A feeling of someone standing there in the darkness. I start to roll over only feel a hand on my shoulder pushing me back onto my side. A scream starts to lurch past my lungs only to be shuddered to a halt when Keith whispers, “Shhh. It’s just me. Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?” I rasp out.
“About two.”
“What are you doing?”
“Checking on you. Watching you sleep. Thinking.”
My eyes open, staring toward the window that is free of curtains but still not offering much in the way of light seeping in. “How long have you been doing that?”
“A while,” he admits, and that shouldn’t affect me the way it does.
“What is it you’re thinking about?”
“How much I want to sleep in here tonight holding you.”
Fuck. Just fuck.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I scoot closer to the window side of the bed, giving him the silent invitation. I clench my eyes shut and sink my teeth into my bottom lip as I hear him take off his shoes, shirt, and pants. I’m wearing a T-shirt and boy shorts, but that’s it. I don’t even have panties on beneath.
Not that it matters.
He said he wants to sleep holding me. That’s it. That’s all I’ll let happen between us anyway.
I feel the blankets pull back and the cool blast of air that accompanies it only to have it quickly replaced with the blissful heat of his chest against my back. His right arm slides under my head along my neck and his other arm drifts around my stomach. He fingers the material of my shirt for a second and then slides me back into him.
Burying his face in my hair, he takes a deep inhale, and I start to tremble.
Something I know he feels as he holds me tighter.
But what he can’t feel are the tears I’m fighting with everything inside of me. I’ve never laid like this with anyone before. Never spooned or been held.
It’s everything I ever imagined it would be and then a whole lot more. Or maybe it’s just the man doing the spooning and holding.
“I’m sorry, Maia.” He plants a kiss on my shoulder, and I just about break. “I’m not trying to play games with you. I care about you so much and I never want to hurt you, though I know I am. I don’t mean to be such a mess. I’m working on it. Now go to sleep, sweet darlin’. Tomorrow I’m gonna take you to get that cast off and then out for lunch. Anywhere you want to go, I’ll take you.”
I can’t say anything. If I do, I’ll cry for sure, or I’ll turn around and kiss him. I’m not sure which, and I can’t take the risk of doing either. So I close my eyes and allow myself to seek refuge in his comfort. In his scent and the way he feels against me.
And just as I start to drift, I hear him whisper something into my hair. Something I can’t make out. Something feather-light as it floats away, my consciousness along with it.
* * *
Maia
* * *
“Only rich people would buy shit like this,” I grumble under my breath, staring bewilderedly at a canvas that is taller than I am painted entirely in black lacquer. I could have done this with a two-ninety-nine can of spray paint that I purchased from Home Depot. Then again, I’d bet that’s what this ‘artist’ did. “I’m in the wrong profession.”
“You don’t consider this art?” A voice out of nowhere startles me. I pivot to find a handsome, slightly older man with dark eyes and equally dark hair holding two glasses of champagne. He’s polished. I’ll say that much. His clothes openly cost a small fortune if the various brand-named logos scattered across them are any indication.
He hands me one of the glasses of champagne, and though I won’t drink it, I accept it anyway.
“Um. Is it wrong if I say no?” I shrug a shoulder, resting my injured arm against my chest. My cast came off yesterday morning. I have a brace I’m supposed to wear at night to sleep and as much during the day as I can tolerate. I’m also supposed to start physical therapy on Monday. Only tomorrow we leave for ten days for the guys’ tour, so my physical therapy will have to wait till we get back.
It feels both equally amazing and strange to have it off.
“What about it don’t you find striking?”
Striking? Is he for real?
“It just seems… I don’t know. Basic, I guess. There isn’t much to it. Not even any bold brush strokes to suggest and provoke emotion. To me, it appears it was purchased because some big-name artist created it. Only it looks like he or she bought a can of spray paint and had a go with it on a large canvas. Then again, I don’t pretend to know a whole lot about art. I was always more into modern or renaissance than contemporary.”
“And yet for someone who claims not to know a lot about art, you understand the distinction between modern and contemporary,” he challenges with a cock of his perfectly coiffed eyebrow.
“I guess. But I’ve always found difficulty clumping Andy Warhol and Monet in the same boat. So maybe I’m the problem and not art if you know what I mean.”
“I can say you are absolutely not the problem. How much do you think this was purchased for?”
“Twenty grand?” I speculate, over-inflating the number given the caliber of mansion we’re in.
“Thirty-two.”
Oh fuck.
My face heats like an oven coming up to temperature. “This is your home, isn’t it? Your painting?”
“Yup.”
“And I just completely insulted your very expensive art. I’m so—”
“Refreshingly honest? Yes, you’re most certainly that.”
“Yet somehow, in this moment, I feel nothing short of humiliated. Is there a hole somewhere in this place I can crawl in to?” I’m sure there must be. This mansion and the surrounding grounds are larger than the town I grew up in. Seriously.