Julian's Pursuit (25 page)

“Bitch.’ His voice distilled to a rough whisper. “You didn’t deserve that promotion.”

“And what?” I raised my chin in defiance. “You did? For the record, I have a ninety-nine point nine percent referral rate from past clients. That speaks to the quality of
my
work. That and I’ve gone out and actively made pitches, winning new clients for this agency. What did you bring to the table? Nothing. That’s why I got the job.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” His smile was dark, dangerous, and I wondered if I had somehow stepped into something I didn’t have a chance of handling. “You got the job because you fucked Heinrich’s son.”

His mocking tone set my teeth on edge. “Simon only got my foot in the door.” I began backing away from him, keeping my steps slow and measured. “I did the rest.”

“Sure you did,” he said scornfully. “By sleeping your way to the top. Did you fuck my uncle, too?” His tone was harder now, slipping from curiosity to demand.

“Fuck you.” The vicious snarl that left my lips surprised me, as did the tears I was forced to blink back as I turned from him.

Squaring my shoulders, I picked up my pace, lengthening my stride, putting as much distance as I could between us.

“Fuck
you
—you crazy bitch! You can suck my dick!” he shouted after my retreating back.

Whipping my head around, I lifted one mocking brow. “I don’t do
small
favors. And even if I did, I can’t raise the dead.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Thanks, Brian.” After I hung up the phone with our head of security, I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated on breathing.

How tired I was. I let my shoulders slump and rested my face in my hands as I massaged my temples.

Now Simon was back. Simon
fucking
Heinrich.

What the hell did he want?

Squeezing my eyes shut, I let the rush of painful memories settle over me like a black veil. I could remember every detail, every scene, as if I were watching a movie in slow motion, frame by frame.

Freshman year at college. Late August. Shiny wooden seminar tables. The smell of new textbooks. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshmen. Fun elective courses. The inevitable frisson of making eye contact with the hot teaching assistant.

Ancient Greek and Roman Studies was that fun elective course for me, and Simon Heinrich was that hot teaching assistant every girl in class had a crush on. He was a pillar of perfection. Over six feet two, built and lean with dark hair, flawless bone structure, and dreamy features, he looked like a steely-eyed, purse-lipped model hiding something dark—or perhaps just constipated.

“The Greeks had no holy text of divine commandments to live by.” Simon began, guiding the class discussion section. “Instead, they looked to the example of mythical heroes. These myths were not set in stone. Each generation reinvented the old myths, telling the same old story from a new perspective or with a different emphasis. This constant reinterpretation kept the Greek myths fresh and relevant. In short, it brought myths to life. The Greeks called this process the theatre. And they divided it into three different genres: satyr plays, comedies, and tragedies.”

Simon paused and surveyed the classroom. “Now, I’d like you to split into three groups. If comedies are your thing, gather over there.” He pointed to the left of the classroom. “If it’s satyr plays that interest you, gather over there.” He gestured to the right. “And for those of you who enjoy tragedies, remain seated right here—in the middle.”

Chair legs scraped across the floor. Before long, I realized I was the only person in the room who had remained seated. I guess I was a sucker for Greek tragedies.

No surprise since my life was one big fucking tragedy.

As I shifted awkwardly in my seat, I caught Simon watching me. He was leaning against the desk in front of me with a smile playing across his lips.

Not exactly a friendly smile, more like a curious one. “So tell me, why tragedies? And not comedies or satire?”

Unexpectedly, I felt self-conscious and sensitive to his opinion of me. “Catharsis,” I told him.

“Explain,” he said.

“We can’t learn without pain. Aristotle argued that tragedy cleanses the heart through pity and terror, purging us of our petty concerns and worries by making us aware that there can be nobility in suffering.”

“Ah, yes.” Simon nodded once. “He called this experience catharsis.”

“And what about you?” I asked him because he seemed to expect it. “You’re still here. You haven’t moved to a different group. Why tragedies?”

Folding his arms across his chest, he silently appraised me. I understood that look and gave him time to indulge it. “Because,” he said at last, “I enjoy saying:
I told you so
.”

Lifting my eyebrows, I merely waited.

He gave in. “In every Greek tragedy, the chorus acts as the moral compass, telling the hero his beliefs are wrong, begging him to refrain from some disastrous action, yet they are ignored. At the climax, the misguided beliefs and actions of the hero lead him to catastrophe. As he bemoans his fate, the chorus sings, ‘I told you so!’ and hammers home the moral. Now the morals might vary from play to play, but they mostly follow the same basic formula:
Remember so-and-so? Remember how awesome he was? In his pride, he did such-and-such, and it destroyed him. Don’t be like so-and-so. Don’t do such-and-such. And finally, I told you so.”

At once I liked him, his dry humor, his certainty.

College was an uncertain time for me, and Simon Heinrich embodied passion and certainty. Two things I desperately wanted.

And I fell for him. Hard.

I was a young impressionable seventeen-year-old and Simon was in his mid-twenties, secure and centered in himself.

He was a far cry from the boys in my dorm who burped out the alphabet and played videogames twenty-four seven.

And I enjoyed attending class discussion sections because Simon made them fun, interesting, and thought provoking. I could listen to him talk for hours, and he seemed to enjoy engaging me in discourse. He was confident, knowledgeable, sexy, and he was teaching in a field I had a profound interest in.

I was actively learning about stuff I cared about, and I felt like he respected me when I asked questions and expressed myself.

Now looking back, perhaps when I was crushing on him, I was confusing the messenger with the message.

But at the time, it felt like they were one and the same.

Try as I might, I couldn’t deny that pull, the underlying sexual tension, the intellectual charge whenever I was around him.

And while there are so many clichés about relationships between students and their TAs, ours didn’t feel that way.

There wasn’t that heady thrill of transgression. It wasn’t seedy or predatory, and I certainly didn’t wear a plaid miniskirt or seduce him by eating an apple on his desk.

It was all pretty normal actually. We started having lunch often. We discussed things we were reading. We discussed things we were thinking about. We never discussed our personal lives, which suited me just fine. And when the course was finally over and he was no longer my TA, he asked me out to dinner.

I guess I wasn’t surprised. Deep down, I was half-expecting it, even hoping for it.

Later that night, when we went back to his apartment for coffee, we ‘mingled’ between the sheets. For a time, we continued sharing weekends, meals, our minds, our bodies, and I was utterly addicted to what we did in bed.

Simon’s intelligence was a power aphrodisiac and he gave me regular homework assignments: masturbate more. And he enjoyed watching me pleasure myself.

It was a glorious time. Toward the end of the semester, we were lying naked in his bed, and he was kissing me. “I love you, Sadie,” he whispered against my lips as his hands skimmed up my waist to cup my breasts, shaping them, the pads of his thumbs rasping against my hardened nipples. “I love you,” he whispered again.

My heart stilled in that moment. He was the first guy—
the only guy
—who had ever uttered those words to me. And for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain, it made me trust him.

When he broke the kiss and looked into my eyes, it seemed like several thoughts were running behind his. “You trust me, don’t you?”

His erection dug into my hipbones and he was playing with my nipples, teasing them until they came to taut, aching peaks.

Then he began to shift, wedging his cock between the juncture of my thighs… the rub of his shaft so intimate against my skin, so excruciatingly thrilling.

Dimly, I was aware that he wasn’t reaching for a condom. “Don’t worry, baby.” His voice was cool and calm. “I’m clean.”

He was still moving, stroking the length of his shaft against my seam, pre-cum seeping from his cock.

“Simon, I—”

“Shhh.” His breath was coming fast and heavy, hot with need. “It’ll feel so much better without. Trust me.”

“But—”

“Don’t you trust me?” Palming my breasts with calloused hands, he bent down and sucked a nipple into his mouth, drawing on the tightly beaded tip with deep suction until I bit back a moan.

A deep groan rumbled in his chest, and
his breathing turned rough and uneven.

Then it all happened so fast. Too fast. In the heat of the moment, the tip of his shaft pierced the folds of my sex and he was moving inside me. Harder and faster he drove into me, the movements getting frenzied, desperate, the springs of the mattress squeaking in protest with every thrust, every plunder.

Just seconds before he came, he pulled out and I finished him off with my hands.

Something like a strangled groan escaped him as thick wads of cum squirted out onto my breasts, leaving a sticky trail of semen over my skin.

“I love you.” He collapsed against me, breathing heavily against my neck. “I fucking love you.”

Months later, it was those very words that consoled me when I needed the courage.

The courage to tell him.

We were in my dorm room, sitting on my twin-sized bed. Blood was thrumming through my veins and every muscle in my body was taut with nerves.

“Baby, what is it?” Simon began to rub small circles on my back. “I don’t like it when you’re upset.”

“I’m pregnant,” I told him, surprised at how steady my voice was.

Moments passed and when Simon said nothing, I became increasingly anxious. “Why aren’t you saying anything?” My words were awkward, stilted, and I couldn’t stop fidgeting. “Say something.”

“What…” he hedged. “What are you going to do?”

I looked down at my hands, twisted in my lap. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t have this baby, Sadie. You need to get rid of it.”

Seconds passed. I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze. “It’s too late,” I said quietly.

“What do you mean it’s too late?” His voice was disapproving and threaded with anger.

I said nothing, wrung my hands in my lap.

He reached for my hand. “What do you mean it’s too late?” he repeated.

“I’m four months pregnant.”

His grip on my hand tightened, cutting off circulation to my fingers. “You told me you were on the pill.”

“I was.” My voice shook.

Breaking his iron grip, he stood suddenly and began pacing back and forth in belligerent disbelief. “Then how the fuck did you get pregnant?”

His yelling reduced me to tears. “Why are you blaming me? You’re the one who didn’t want to use protection.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “You wanted this, didn’t you? You wanted to get pregnant.”

“No.” I spoke through the tears, choking on my words. “I never wanted any of this to happen.”

“It’s been four fucking months, Sadie! How could you not have known?”

My head throbbed with a blinding, stabbing ache. I’d replayed this same question over and over in my mind, hundreds of times. And I couldn’t explain why I didn’t have any symptoms. No nausea, no morning sickness, no food cravings—nothing.

Yes, I’d missed my period but my cycles had always been irregular. And I’d even taken three pregnancy tests, all of which came back negative except for the last one.

I tried to explain all of this to Simon but he just shook his head as if he couldn’t grasp what I was saying.

“I know you don’t believe me.” My tears turned into great shuddering, hurtful sobs. “But I didn’t know. I
honestly
didn’t know.”

Some of the anger seemed to leave him and he came to sit beside me on the edge of my bed. “So you plan on keeping the baby… since it’s too late to get rid of it.”

I nodded.

“You’re not thinking rationally. You’re throwing your life away. Think of what’s best. How are you going to support this child?”

The room was silent except for the small, irregular sobs coming from me. “We’ll find a way.” Another sob broke from my chest. I knew we would. Simon loved me.

“There is no
we
, Sadie.” He released a ragged sigh. “I want no part in this.”

My stomach plummeted at his plainly spoken words. “But I thought you loved me. You said so.”