What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Hannah Ford

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

P
LEASE NOTE
: This book contains the complete series of THE DEBT by Kelly Favor as a special bonus book. WHAT HE BARGAINS is the length of a normal WHAT HE WANTS book.

C
HARLOTTE

T
his is
what devastation feels like,
I thought as I walked into Noah’s apartment building.

Barren.

Dark.

Hopeless.

Raw.

I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the 39
^th
floor. I was freezing, the cold seeping through my skin and into my bones. I wrapped Noah’s shirt tighter around me in an effort to get warm, but it smelled like him, like his laundry detergent, his cologne, his essence
-- woodsy and masculine and dark. I associated that smell with his hands on my body, his lips on mine, his stubble brushing my cheeks, his arms encircling my waist.

I rested my head against the side of the elevator and tried to keep my teeth from chattering. I was just so god damn
cold.
A sob threatened to escape from between my lips, but I bit it back. I felt numb and disassociated, like I was watching a movie of a girl riding an elevator instead of actually
being
the girl in the elevator.

It made sense that I would feel that way. I, Charlotte Holloway, would never have taken off my engagement ring and thrown it down a sewer grate the way I’d done just a few moments ago. That was a crazy, insane, irrational thing to do.

How much had that ring cost? I wondered. Two hundred thousand dollars? A million? I’d never been one of those girls obsessed with jewelry, who knew all about cut and color and carat or whatever other Cs there were to worry about.

Of course, cost was the least of my concerns. Throwing my ring down the sewer was something I couldn’t take back. It meant Noah and I were over. And the real me, the rational me, would never have done something like that.

I slid my key into the front door of the apartment. The numbness was wearing off now and every time I blinked, the image of Noah’s car disappearing around the corner burned against the back of my eyes.

I didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to enter the apartment without him there. The pain clawed at the inside of me, so visceral, so intense that my breath caught in my chest.

And then I heard a voice.

A low voice, female, murmuring, almost secretive. I thought maybe it was someone from downstairs, coming home after a late night of partying, but then I realized it was coming from inside Noah’s apartment.

My mother.

But who was she talking to?

For a moment hope bloomed in my chest as I thought that maybe Noah was back. But that was impossible—he would have had to pass me in order to get inside.

I pushed the door open just a crack. My mother’s voice came from the living room. She must have been on the phone. She was still talking softly, her voice hushed, muted, like she didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“….get away for a little while…” she was saying. “I’m just not sure what time… no, she’s not going to be…. Oh, that’s hilarious! … yes, as much as I can…” Her voice was cutting in and out, and I was only able to make out snatches of the conversation, but it sounded like she was walking closer, moving from the living room to the front hallway.

Who the hell was she talking to at this hour?

I opened the front door all the way.

My mother was standing in the front hallway, just a few feet away. Her phone was to her ear and she was wearing a white bathrobe, one I recognized from the closet in Noah’s guestroom. Her ash blond hair was pulled back from her face and perfectly smoothed – no sign of bedhead, which meant she’d probably checked her reflection before coming out here. “I have to go,” she said quickly, and shoved her phone into the pocket of her bathrobe.

“Who was that?” I demanded.

“Your stepfather.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a reporter?” I asked, not bothering to keep the accusing tone out of my voice.

“What?” She sounded startled.

“A reporter. Like the one you talked to earlier.”

A flash of embarrassment passed over her face, but then she straightened her tiny shoulders. “It was your stepfather. I called him because I heard something in the hallway. I was scared.”

“Whatever.” I closed the door behind me and kept my back turned to her for an extra beat, hoping the extra time would signal her to go back to bed.

But when I turned around, she was still standing there.

“Where were you anyway?” Her tone wasn’t accusing – only curious. If she thought it was strange that her daughter was out gallivanting around the city in the middle of the night, she didn’t show it.

I considered lying, making up something. But then I thought, why the hell should I protect her? She sure as hell didn’t care about protecting me.

“I was at a club.”

“A club!” Her eyes lit up with excitement and she reached down and cinched her robe tighter around her slim waist. “What kind of club?”

“Just a club,” I said vaguely. She was obviously imagining me at some upscale place with expensive drinks and handsome men. I wondered what she would think if she knew the truth – that the drinks were expensive, the men were handsome, but that none of that mattered when you were getting tied and whipped and fucked in the back room. Emotions were flashing through me one by one, almost too fast to keep track of, moving from devastation to anger to recklessness.

Right now recklessness was winning out, and I walked to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of champagne, uncorked it and took a long swig right from the bottle.

My mother followed me.

“Want some?” I asked, offering her the bottle.

She shook her head, almost distracted. Again, if she thought it was strange that I was asking her if she wanted to partake in champagne with me at this hour, she sure as hell wasn’t showing it.

I shrugged and took another sip. The champagne didn’t taste good going down – it was bitter and it burned my throat, and the bubbles fizzed around my stomach, popping and swirling. I forced myself to take more anyway, telling myself that the blurring of the sharp pain of Noah leaving that the alcohol would provide would be worth it.

“Where’s Noah?” my mom asked. She was looking over her shoulder and back toward the door expectantly.

“Noah.” I repeated his name, the sound of it on my lips sending me for a loop. I set the bottle of champagne down on the kitchen island.

“Yes. Where is he? Parking the car?” She perched herself on one of the stools in front of the island and slid the champagne bottle toward her. Her eyes scanned the label, almost like she was considering having some, like maybe I’d convinced her that this was something the elite did in New York -- drink champagne at all hours of the day.

She pushed a piece of hair behind her ear, a gesture so familiar, one I’d seen her do thousands of times, and suddenly all the anger, all the recklessness that had built up inside of me flowed out of my body in one whoosh, like a balloon losing its air. A small cry escaped my lips.

“Charlotte?” my mother asked, looking up at me in alarm. “Charlotte, what’s wrong?”

“Mom,” I said, and my voice was strangled, and she was up and out of her chair instantly and her arms were around me and she was smoothing my hair and patting my shoulder.

“Shh,” she said. “Shh, baby, it’s okay.”

I was crying now, really sobbing, and when I pulled back, there were wet spots on her robe.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Noah, is he… is he okay?”

“He’s gone.”

The frown lines in her forehead deepened, somehow escaping the Botox treatments she’d been getting since she was thirty.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” she asked carefully, and now she’d taken a step back from me, almost like I’d just announced I was sick and she was afraid it was catching.

“I mean, he’s gone,” I said and sniffed. “He went to a hotel.”

“For business?”

“No, Mom, not for business! We had a fight and he… he left.”

Her lips set into a tight line. “Of course he did.” She picked the champagne bottle up off the counter, then crossed the kitchen to the sink and poured it down the drain.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “I was drinking that.”
“Not anymore.” She turned and looked at me, and I saw the pity on her face. Not that I could blame her. I could only imagine what she was seeing. Me standing there, trying to drink champagne in the middle of the night, tears running down my face, my nose filled with snot, wearing Noah’s shirt over basically nothing else.

“I can’t believe this, Charlotte,” she said, and now she was pacing. She reached over and began tapping her thigh as she walked, a gesture her therapist had taught her as something she could do when she was stressed. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“To make Noah leave? What did you do?” She crossed her arms over her chest and immediately went into lecture mode. “Men like Noah need to be handled very carefully, Charlotte. They could have their pick of women. They need a very gentle hand.”

I gaped at her.
“That’s
what you’re going to say to me? That men like Noah need a gentle hand? God, you are really unbelievable, you know that?” I started to walk away from her, down the hall toward my room, but she followed me.

“Yes, Charlotte, that’s exactly what I’m going to say! I knew you would never be able to keep his interest, not long-term, but Jesus, it’s only been what? A couple of weeks?”
I whirled around, and when I spoke again, I could feel the anger taking over. “That’s what you’re worried about?” I asked. “What about the fact that I was out in the middle of the night, Mom? That I’ve come home with hardly on clothes on, with marks on my wrists?” I pushed up my sleeves and showed her the marks, the marks where he’d tied me up. “Don’t you wonder about any of that?”

It was just a test. I didn’t need her to save me from Noah. I was secure in the choices I’d made in my sexual relationship with him. But was my mother blind? Didn’t she think it was strange that I came home alone in the middle of the night, my hair messed up, half naked, showing her bruises? Or did she decide she didn’t need to ask questions just because Noah was hot and rich?

She straightened up and looked me in the eye. “Don’t try to pull that shit with me, Charlotte.” She pushed my hands away, and now I saw a flash of the cruelty that lived within her, the cruelty she reserved for times when she was really hurt and trying to lash out at me, to hurt me and punish me for never being the kind of daughter she wanted, the kind of daughter who was thin and beautiful and didn’t care about things like law school or education. “Don’t you dare try to pretend that he hurt you.” She shook her head and looked at me sadly. “The way you’re walking around, dressed like that? You acted like a little tramp and you still couldn’t keep him.”

I slapped her.

I couldn’t stop myself.

I gasped as soon as I did it, my hand leaving her face and coming to my mouth.

She didn’t even react.

She didn’t even blink.

Instead, she just shook her head sadly and then walked back into the guest room, shutting the door behind her.

I
showered quickly
, then crawled into bed and pulled the covers tight around me. I still couldn’t get warm. I lied perfectly still, closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.

But no matter what I did, sleep wouldn’t come. The sheets smelled like Noah, the room felt too still without him, his spot next to me bare. Docket had come into bed with me, but he curled up next to my legs, leaving Noah’s side of the bed completely empty.

After a while, I gave up, turned the bedside light on and pulled out my laptop.

I hesitated, my hands on the keys as the cursor hovered over the search bar.

A second later, my fingers moved quickly, tapping out the letters.

LAMEUIX.

But twenty minutes later I’d found nothing, no clue as to who Lameuix was or what he might have to do with the missing girls from Force. There were people with the last name Lameuix, of course, but as far as I could tell, none of them had any connection to Noah or to Force.

Noah,
I thought,
what the hell are you hiding?

A headache was starting at my temples, frustration and anger and sadness swirling together into a throbbing pain.

I clicked over to my school email account.

There were two new messages.

One a campus wide alert reminding us about free healthcare in the campus clinic, and one from Dr. Jason Cartwright.

He’d sent it just a couple of minutes earlier.

Subject: URGENT

I clicked on it.

Charlotte,

Can you meet me in my office this morning? It’s extremely urgent.

Let me know asap.

Jason

I was just deciding to pretend that I’d never received the email when the chat window on the campus’s internal messaging system flashed blue and a message popped up on my screen.

I hovered my mouse over it, ready to click it away, sure it was Dr. Cartwright, following up on his request to have a therapy session that morning.

But it wasn’t.

It was Cora, the girl whose bachelorette party I’d been at the night I’d met Noah.

Hey chica – whatcha doin’ up so early?

Can’t sleep,
I typed back, deciding not to get into specifics.

Me neither,
she wrote.
But I never sleep On my way to the gym, wanna come?
I never went to the gym. Our tuition included a membership to the university’s athletic center, but I’d never been.

But wasn’t working out supposed to be good for stress?

And what else was I going to do, stay here and feel sorry for myself?

Sure,
I typed back.
Meet you in twenty?

Sounds good.

I shut my computer and as soon as I did, my phone buzzed with a text.

Charlotte – it’s Jason Cartwright. I emailed you but thought I’d text you as well. Can you meet me in my office this morning before class?

Sorry,
I wrote back.
Meeting a friend at the gym. I will reply to your email at my earliest convenience.