I stared into space that night, letting Hunt push my shirt up past my breasts. He didn’t touch them for a good minute, just stared. “Goddamn, Lake.” I wished he wouldn’t talk. It made it impossible to pretend he was Callum.
My stare was totally vacant as he rubbed on my body, kissed my cheeks and my neck. I felt him rock-hard on my leg but with a sudden flinch and a grunt, he was done and off to his room, and I was lying there, gazing at the ceiling, remembering how many times I’d forced Callum to do this same sleepless dance. The only difference was he probably hadn’t felt dirty or hated himself and I was glad for that. I was glad that he never did or would feel this kind of self-hatred because it was the most confounding misery. And I didn’t even know at the time that it was just the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Callum
Lake never returned to the hotel last night.
I called her but there was never an answer. I asked around the hotel, the front desk. No leads. But I shut off my insides the second I felt the panic. I didn’t need that shit. I was hollow for the next ten hours I looked for her. Oz held onto the suspicion that she’d gone drinking to blow off steam. He’d keep a lookout for her. He was taking Ana on a pub crawl to do damage control and get her in good enough spirits to keep our article positive.
By sunrise, he stumbled in from wherever they’d been at all night, carrying a pair of heels and a giggling blonde on his back. But his smile fell fast when he saw me in the lobby. I don’t know how I looked. Not great, probably. I told him that I hadn’t found Lake and he immediately put the girl down. He covered his drunk eyes with his hands, dragged them hard down his face and then sobered right up. It was like a fucking magic trick. “Alright, so what’s the next step?” he asked as the blonde moaned that she couldn’t walk anymore in her heels. He tossed her the keys to his room without looking. It was at this point that Ana came in behind them with the camera crew. She looked fairly drunk but walked perfectly straight. “Where have you already looked for her?” Oz asked.
“Everywhere. I mean it. Everywhere. I had everyone here on the lookout for me, bunch of bar and shop owners doing the same. But I don’t know when she left and we were doing the shoot for four, five hours. She could be anywhere at this point.” My voice was calm despite the fury raising hell on my insides. It ran around like a madman and clawed everything raw.
“And she’s not answering her phone?” Whatever look I gave Oz made him hold up his hands. “I know. Obvious question. I just had to ask.”
“I don’t know where to look anymore.”
“Then maybe you should stop.” We both looked at Ana. Her hair was down, wavy, flipped to the side. Her eyes were bleary from the drinking but there was ease and confidence in her voice that had me irrationally annoyed. I needed a break from her so I went off to the bathroom where I thought she wouldn’t follow.
Wrong about that.
“I need a minute.” I was leaning against the sink when she came in.
“Do you? I don’t see you needing this bathroom at all,” she contested playfully. “Considering your fly’s still up. Womp, womp.” I paused at her speech. It was the only other sign of her having had a few more drinks than usual.
“Right. Well, in that vein, I see you needing this bathroom even less. Women’s is across the hall.”
“Don’t play with me, Callum, you know why I’m here,” she rolled her eyes and fluffed her hair in the mirror. “Lake’s a grown woman. She left so let her leave. She’s finally doing you a favor.” I met her eyes through the reflection, dazed and glassy from keeping up with Oz but so certain in the words she had to say. I looked away when she reached into her neckline and pulled her tits up in her bra. “You should honestly be relieved.”
“I’m not.”
“You will be when you let this all go,” Ana exhaled drunkenly, kicking off her heels and leaning barefoot against the sink. I grimaced.
“Dirty floor.”
“Dirty girl,” she countered suggestively. I must’ve rolled my eyes because she groaned and caught me by the arm on my way out the door. “God, Callum, she’s dead weight. She. Is. Bad for you. And she made a decision tonight. Now you make one. It’s time for you to start making the right decisions again.” Ana held me in place and cast that sultry look of hers on me. With three neat snaps of her fingers, she undid the top buttons on her shirt, till I could see her round, pushed-up tits. “Do you know what to do or do I need to spell it out for you?” She undid my belt in a flash. Her hand slid into my jeans and palmed my dick till it grew reflexively hard. She pouted. “Poor baby. I know you’re stressed so I don’t mind doing all the work tonight,” she murmured, running her tongue along the contour of her parted lips. I watched it make a full, wet round before placing my hand over hers. She moaned, squeezed a handful of my package.
But her eyes flashed at me when I slid her touch firmly off my cock.
“I don’t need it spelled out. But thanks for the offer.”
I left her in the bathroom. A muscle twitched in my cheek as suddenly, and might I add, disturbingly, her image fused with that of my father’s. Christ. Fuck my memories for doing this to me. Ana obviously wasn’t him. She just had the same brand of ruthless determination and the words she’d said reminded me of the ones he had left me with on my twenty-second birthday.
I need you to start making the right decisions.
It played before my eyes again.
It was my first birthday without Lake since I was six years old. I had just quit the job I’d been hired to out of my first internship. I had Logan, work friends, other friends hounding me to go out but I stayed in my apartment and chose my night’s company from all the flirty texts I’d gotten from girls. The one I picked who came over had my zipper down and her mouth open when the doorbell rang.
My dad.
I saw him increasingly less with every year following the divorce. Partially because he always kept trying to explain himself and his explanations always mentioned Lake. I wasn’t in the place where I was looking to hear her name, ever, and I’d never forget how cruelly he left my mom, so I gladly cut him out of my life.
Unfortunately, Logan didn’t. Our fathers were best friends. It was the only reason I’d ever thought to befriend Logan in the first place. We were polar opposites. A thousand differences set us apart but the most relevant one that night was the fact that he worshipped his father. Didn’t make a single move in his life until it was approved by Logan Senior. I wavered between relief that I didn’t have that relationship with my dad and vague envy over never knowing the feeling of needing to repay for the warmth and support provided since childhood. There was none of that with my dad when I was growing up.
But he made an attempt at it on that birthday. I didn’t answer his text about what my plans were, so he asked Logan’s father to ask Logan and was given the reply that I was staying home.
“I’m sorry.” He apologized to the girl when I opened the door and he saw her. She gave a tight-lipped smile, wiped her mouth and grabbed her purse before slipping out the door. In the hall, she flashed a call me sign behind my dad before tiptoeing for the elevators. “For you,” my dad said, handing over a small, black bag from the same store that he’d been buying me three hundred dollar ties every year. I reached into it. Another tie.