LITMIR.BIZ

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out with blunt trauma. Her head hurt, and she was still tired.

      She reached across her pillow and picked up the receiver, drawing it up to her ear.

      “Addison?”

      She grimaced internally and realized that was probably not the response you wanted to have when you heard your boyfriend’s voice on the other end of the line.

      But then, something had changed since she last spoke with him. Or a lot of somethings. And he’d just left her to deal on her own. And even weirder than that, she hadn’t been upset at him, because she’d never expected him to stand with her. She’d expected to stand on her own. To stand strong. The way her father had taught her.

      “Eddie,” she said, “how’s Bermuda?”

      “I’m back at Columbia. Why was your phone off? Do you know how hard I had to work to track you down?” An apology hovered on the tip of her tongue, and she held it back. Which was the second good socialite rule she’d broken in only a few hours.

      But there was no one here to see.

      She took a breath. “Oh, well, that’s…I’m not. I moved out of the sorority house.”

      “I heard. I wasn’t overly pleased with how you were treated.”

      She couldn’t tell by the completely unaffected monotone of his voice. But didn’t say so. “I’m fine. Austin made arrangements for me.”

      She was not fine. But she couldn’t say that. Not even to the man she’d been dating for nearly two years. The man whose lips had touched hers, and whose hands had been….well, frankly, on parts of her body no other man had touched. He hadn’t taken her to bed, but they’d explored certain…things. All over her clothes, of course. All that considered, she would have thought they’d reached a certain level of intimacy.

      His actions right now seemed to indicate she was wrong about that.

      “Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” he said, his voice stilted.

      They sounded like strangers talking to each other. Or an old married couple who’d reached a certain level of indifference. And since they were neither, it was a bit of a disturbing revelation.

      “Yes,” she said.

      Why was this hard? What was she supposed to say?

      “Listen, Addison.” Oh well, he appeared to have something to say. “I know the timing is poor. For both my vacation and for this, but it can’t be helped.”

      She knew what was coming then. Before he even said the rest. But she didn’t interrupt; she just let him keep talking.

      “I don’t think this is working between us.”

      “Right,” she said, unable to say much else, not because she was hurt—but because there was no diplomatic response.

      Her father had been exposed. She’d seen him killed in front of her. She’d left school. She was holed up in a hotel alone. And he just wanted to break up with her.

      “I have to focus on law school. I have a lot of ground left to cover, and…I’m just not where I need to be for this to work.”

      Obviously Eddie was as well trained as she was—better, even. He was taking the blame, though he was utterly transparent. He was lying with smooth, even tones and saying what had to be said in order for her to feel better.

      It was a high-society breakup if there ever was one.

      “Right,” she said, still not ready to commit to saying anything other than that, her throat tightening, grief, completely unexpected and unwanted, filling her chest. Another abandonment. Another loss.

      “We’re too young to be as serious as we were.”

      Suddenly after two years, they were too young.

      “Of course,” she said.

      “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, and she believed it. Because with the way all the other men at school had been treating her since the news about her father came out, it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d retracted the marriage talk and offered a contract for a purely sexual arrangement.

      But he hadn’t done that. Eddie was self-interested, but he had a shred of honor. He couldn’t help the self-interest part. It was bred into him. He was a Howell, after all, and they would be working hard to distance themselves from the scandal. If it were even possible. Proving Jason had been hiding his little prostitution ring from firm partners was going to be difficult.

      She had a feeling Eddie was ready to burn bridges between the two of them, and between himself and his father if necessary.

      “I know you don’t, Eddie,” she said. He was hurting her, though, and that shocked her. She’d felt numb to his abandonment during the funeral, during these past weeks, but this was so final.

      She’d lost her friends—such as they were—all except Nora and Harlow. Lost her sorority. Her place at school. And losing Eddie was like having one of the last lifelines cut, leaving her hanging over an unknown abyss, staring into the blackness. Wondering how far she had left to fall.

      She’d never thought of herself as being dramatic, but here she was, indulging in a little bit of it.

      “If you ever need anything, Addison, you can call me.” And she could hear, beneath his smooth civility, the desperate plea for her to never use his number again.

      “Thank you,” she said. “I will.” And she hoped that he could hear, beneath her own civil tone, her resolve to never speak to him again. Her resolve to never even do a Google search of his name to check on his progress.

      They hung up, and she felt numb, and still a little bit as if she’d been hit in the head.

      That was over. She was out of the sorority. Harlow hadn’t even returned her email. Her boyfriend had dumped her.

      And she was living in a hotel with a man who didn’t wear shoes.

      All in all, things had yet to start looking up.

       * * *

      Addison reappeared in his office, two hours later, looking pale, but as polished as she’d been the first time he saw her.

      She’d changed her clothes, he noticed. From the pristine white of earlier to a gray dress that conformed to her curves, sleek and wrinkle free. She was everything clean and unruffled. And he found it endlessly fascinating.

      Imagining what all that softness would feel like beneath his hands.

       Remember the last time you touched a woman?

      He curled his hands into fists, rubbing calloused fingertips over his palm. A reminder of why he didn’t deserve softness beneath those hands. Not after what he’d done.

      She cleared her throat and clasped her hands in front of her. “Is there anything you’d like me to do?”

      “Answer the phone when it rings,” he said, distantly aware that his tone was harsher than was called for in such a neutral scenario, unable to correct it. “You can sit at my desk.”

      “And you’ll sit?”

      “Elsewhere.”

      “Okay.” She moved over to his desk and sat, rolling the chair forward, looking very clearly confused.

      He picked up his iPad from the desk, then walked over to the other side of his office and sat on the floor, resting his back against the wall.

      She looked up but didn’t say anything before looking back down. She wasn’t going to betray the fact that she thought his actions were odd, and he wasn’t going to explain.

      He looked down at the tablet in his hands and started going through his email. He preferred email because it put the control for the pace of interaction in his hands.

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