Ready to head to the apartment whenever you are. How did last night go?
I’ll text when I’m leaving Penn’s place.
I take that to mean…very well? ;)
Oh, yeah!
How’d he take the news?
Pray for me. I’m about to tell him.
Fuck. You need more than prayers.
I laughed and set the phone back down on the nightstand. She wasn’t wrong.
With a sigh, I pushed myself to my feet. My body was sore in all the best ways. I stretched my arms overhead and then stole a pair of sweats and a gray-and-blue Columbia T-shirt from Penn’s drawers before heading into the bathroom. I was just pulling the tee on when Penn came back into the bedroom. I could hear Totle eating in the other room.
“This was not what I told you. Those are clothes.” He wrapped his arms around my waist. “And you should not be in them.”
“Busy day, Dr. Kensington. I’m going to need to borrow these.”
“And where exactly are you going?”
I took a deep breath and then slowly released it. “I have to empty out my apartment.”
His jaw tightened. “Because of Lewis? Did he force you out?”
“No, but I don’t feel comfortable, let alone safe, there any longer. I don’t like the idea that he can see when I get to my apartment. That he knows my every move.” I shuddered as real fear licked down my spine. “I haven’t even been back. I’ve been staying with Amy at Enzo’s place. She’s meeting me there to help.”
“I can go, too,” he said quickly.
“All right. I’m just glad that I got out of my lease. Who knew that threatening to expose the security footage would be enough for a broken lease?”
“Jesus, Nat. You didn’t have to do this on your own. Why didn’t you let me deal with Lewis?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head before looking back up at him. “I don’t know. I just…had to do all of this. I was still so mad after what happened. Mad at Lewis and Katherine and this world …” I bit my lip again before admitting, “You.”
“Me?” he asked softly. “But I was trying to help.”
I nodded. “This time.” I think. Though I didn’t say it.
I didn’t say that Lewis’s words had gotten in my head. That I didn’t know Penn’s true motivations behind getting that file that had revealed Lewis’s actions. I didn’t know if he’d manufactured any of it. And I hated having those feelings, but the truth was that Penn had brought me into this world. He’d put the bet on me. He’d tried to break up my relationship with Lewis, no matter what I’d said. Those pesky trust issues couldn’t just disintegrate.
“Nat, you do know that I was trying to help, right?”
“Look, we have history, Penn. While I want to think you had all the best intentions, the truth is…no one in this society has perfectly pure intentions. And I didn’t know who to believe or what to think. So, it wasn’t even possible for me to accept help. Not from you. Not from anyone.”
“Okay,” he said after a minute. His hands were still balled into fists at his sides. “While that’s all true, I want you to know that you are not alone. And you should not have to single-handedly deal with your stalker.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “about that.”
“What?” His blue eyes searched mine in earnest as if he could see the deep lines of hurt inside me. “What did he do?”
And the fact that he’d automatically known that Lewis had done something worse, something else to destroy me, only made my vehemence solidify. These people. These fucking mongrels ruling from their gilded thrones. I would pull them down piece by piece, so they could never hurt me or anyone else. Ever again.
“Because it always escalates, doesn’t it?” I muttered with my jaw clenched.
“Unfortunately.”
“He put his weight behind Warren Publishing. They rejected my manuscript and in so many words said I was blacklisted. Because, even though Bet On It has been selling like hotcakes since my name was revealed in the paper, the tell-all looks bad for them. Oh, and my literary fiction is fucked because I’m a whore, thanks to Katherine.”
“Jesus Christ, Natalie. When did this happen?” Penn looked like he was on the verge of marching down to Lewis’s apartment and finishing what he’d started the night of Katherine’s wedding.
“Thursday,” I whispered hoarsely.
Penn paced away from me, cursing violently under his breath. “I’m going to murder him.”
“I don’t think even you can get away with that.”
“He’s fucking with your life, Natalie. How are you so calm?”
I laughed a soft, brittle thing. “You think this is calm? This is the reason I didn’t want to talk last night, because I knew how you’d react. That you’d storm out of here and beat the shit out of Lewis. Not to say that he doesn’t deserve it. But it’ll hurt you and not him. So, it’s kind of pointless.”
His beautiful features were contorted in pain and anger when he looked back at me again. “He shouldn’t get away with this.”
“But he has.”
“Fuck,” he spat.
“They all get away with it. All of you,” I said pointedly. “You always have. You always will. It’s how it fucking works.”
“Natalie, this is not how it’s supposed to work.”
“Tell me about it,” I said bitterly.
“Let me talk to him. Maybe I can make him see his error.”
I rolled my eyes. “Talking doesn’t work. And he’s not going to listen to you after we fucked in his hotel room. That’s seared into his mind. You might be linked by history and secrets, but I don’t think that applies here.”
“It might.” I could see him scheming. “If I get the crew together…”
“Penn, that’s not going to be enough. The only way it’ll be enough is if there are consequences to actions,” I told him flatly. “If the people that the Upper East Side stomps on don’t scurry into the shadows and disappear.”
His gaze shifted back to mine, clarity forming there. “That’s why you’re back.”
“Lewis once told me that, if I walked away every time Katherine wanted me to, then she won. How is this any different?”
“You’re choosing this.”
“What I’m choosing is to stop running. I want the people of the Upper East Side to stop hurting others,” I told him. “And I want you to help me. You helped build this world. You helped create the rules. And you said that you’d help me learn them.”
Penn looked skeptical. “You can’t want to actually be in this world.”
“It’s too late, Penn. I’m already in.” I kept my eyes leveled on him. My head held aloft. “You dragged me in it, and then Lewis dragged me back.”
Penn’s face only darkened further at the mention of Lewis. Or maybe at what he’d done. “This isn’t what I meant with that offer to help you.”