I lean back in my chair, drop my phone on the table, and pick up my cup of coffee. The coffee house is packed. People coming in and rushing out, already late for their meetings. At a table in the corner is a man on his laptop, and ironically, he has SoulM8 up on his screen. No one else would know it by the discrete layout we set up, but I notice it. The little girl a table to the right of me is drinking her hot chocolate while her mom snuggles up against her dad, and I’m just about to look away when she slurps the end of the contents with her straw.
Slurps with her straw.
Harlow is fucking everywhere even when I don’t want her to be.
“Love is pretty damn fantastic isn’t it?” Robert says when he takes his seat across from me, his newly refilled cup in his hand, and lifts a chin in the direction of the family I was just looking at.
“It is,” I murmur in response.
“That’s it? It is? Nothing more to add than that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, mate?”
“You miss her don’t you?”
It takes me a sharp second to realize what he just said and hold back my honest response—hell yes, I do—and collect myself enough to meet his eyes without giving my shock away.
“What’s that?” I ask to cover.
“You miss her. You were together and now she’s gone and you realize how damn shitty it is not being with her anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” I chuckle softly as I try to figure him out.
“C’mon, Zane. You guys did a great job keeping up pretenses and acting the part so that no one had a clue, but I knew you guys weren’t together from the start. I told you, I’m a smart man. Hell, she was hostile and spoke her mind and you were cocky and thought you knew it all.” He shrugs with a smug smile as he leans back in his chair and takes a slow sip of his coffee before looking back at me. “You were perfect for each other.”
“Are you telling me you set this all up? Set us up?” I can barely get the words out as I try to process what I’m hearing.
“I invested the money in SoulM8 for Sylvie. To give her a lasting legacy. But there was something about you, Zane, that reminded me of me when I was young. A well-earned arrogance. An air that you don’t need anyone or anything. An attitude that you have everything figured out when the one thing you need most in life you haven’t got a goddamn clue about.” Robert waves to the little girl with the hot chocolate and smiles before turning back to me. “I was you. Contrary to what I tell everybody else, I thought I’d date Sylvie a time or two and then move on. Who needed one woman? Who needed that bullshit called love?” He chuckles as he thinks back and as I try to pick my jaw up off the floor. “I was wrong. So wrong and cocky too. I thought I knew everything and I almost passed up the best thing that ever happened in my life because of it. Maybe I saw some of me in you and some of Sylvie in Harlow and maybe . . . just maybe, I wanted to give you the best gift you never knew existed.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Nope.”
“So the whole trust course and reality TV—oh my god. It was all a set-up.”
“You needed a little push,” he says unapologetically, “and it was great for advertising.”
“We sold your lie,” I murmur.
“No, you sold the fairytale.”
I blink several times as I stare at him, hearing that word again, and trying to make sense of everything. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say that you miss her. Admit that you love her. I know it scares the hell out of you, but that churning in your gut and tightening in your chest every time you think about her? That’s your answer. That’s what you’re going to feel like when you’re not with her.” He takes one more sip of coffee as he stands from his seat and plops a manila envelope onto the table. “There’s her contract for more work if you want to use her. It’s up to you to figure out what you want from here.”
“Robert—”
“Have a good rest of the afternoon, Zane. Later Smudge.”
And he walks off without saying another word and leaving me completely stunned.
I’ve been played. Fucking played in a game I had no idea I was in but hell if I’m going to stand on the sidelines anymore.
I STARTLE WHEN I LOOK at my cell and see Zane’s name. I’ve been looking at it like this every time it’s rung over the past ten days and not once has it given me the name I wanted . . . and now that it does, I’m afraid to pick it up.
“Hello?”
Play it cool, Low.
“Cinder?”
His voice. That nickname. Every part of me vibrates at the sound of it and hates that my reaction is still so strong considering how miserable I’ve been.
“Hi.”
“How are you?” he asks, concern in his voice I don’t want to hear.
“Good. Great,” I say without thinking and immediately am brought back to that first week on the bus together. The frustration, the sexual tension, the defiance.
“Care to elaborate?” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“I’m just sorting through some offers that have come in since the launch.”
“Any good ones?”
“A few.”
“Well, I have another one, in the form of a contract for you in my hands.”
My heart drops into my stomach at hearing those words. Work. Not me. That’s why he’s calling.
“You do?” I force myself to say.