“Yes.” I knock his hand from me and sit back on a sun lounger as we leave the harbor.
“You never used to.”
My eyes trace the skyline of the city we’re slowly leaving behind. “I never planned to, but my job changes people. It pushes your limits and broadens your horizons in what is sometimes the most effed-up ways possible. That’s just how it is, and when you stand in front of enough men who only want you for one thing, you accept sex for what it is. Fucking.”
“You don’t need to talk about yourself in such a derogatory way.”
“Why? That’s what it is. I don’t have sex with these guys, Aaron. We don’t make love. We f**k. After a while, you accept your job for the blunt reality of what it is and it filters through into the rest of your life.”
“And it jades you.”
I glance at him. “No. It changes you and perhaps the way you see the world, but it doesn’t jade you. The person that jaded me is me.”
He leans back, folding his arms across his chest, and peers over the top of his Ray-Bans. “I don’t believe you. Something jaded you.”
A small, dry laugh leaves me and I look away. “Sleep with enough men who promise forever to a woman then go away on business while she’s sitting at home rocking a baby to sleep and you see how hollow love is. How easily promises can be broken.”
Nothing but the sound of the boat against the water surrounds us for an uncomfortable moment.
“Have you ever come between a marriage?”
“I don’t know. It’s not my job to know.”
“That sounds…cold.”
I smile wanly and meet his eyes. “Why people hire me is none of my business, unless a reason is explicitly asked for, like with you. Most of the time, the meeting is made and carried through with no questions or information provided to me. Call me cold, call me a bitch, but when I walk into an appointment with my clients, all I want to know is if they have my money and how they want me to f**k them. Not if their wife is sitting at home polishing the silver while he gets what he’s obviously being denied.”
“What he’s obviously being denied?”
The arch in his eyebrow pisses me off, and I raise my own in return.
“If he was getting it at home, he wouldn’t need to pay for it, now would he?”
Aaron snorts, and I shift in my seat.
“Are you telling me if you were married and weren’t getting it you wouldn’t go elsewhere?”
His eyes crash into mine with an intensity that makes my heart stutter. “No. No, I f**king wouldn’t. I’d grab my wife, sit her the f**k down, and work through that shit. Whatever it took. If I was committed to one woman, I’d be committed to her and her alone. And if, in the impossible event I was tempted to look elsewhere, I certainly wouldn’t pay for it.”
“That’s ironic, don’tcha think?” I stand and storm back to the cabin.
“Shit. Dayton! I didn’t mean it that way.” His footsteps are hard against the floor as he follows me.
I lock the door behind me and lean against it. It’s more than a bit goddamn ironic coming from the guy paying for someone to be by his side for six weeks. Try the absolute definition of the f**king word.
“What way did you mean it?” I yell through the door. “That you don’t need to pay for it because you could easily find it for free? That you’re too good to pay for a hooker?”
He bangs his fist against the door, making it vibrate against my back. “Don’t call yourself that. Jesus. Open the door!”
“Fuck no.” I cross my arms over my chest, a pang of hurt tightening my chest. I’m surprised by how bad that last sentence made me feel—especially given the situation we’re in.
“Bambi, please open the door.”
“If you don’t stop calling me that, I’m going to order a figurine off Amazon and shove it up your backside.”
A muffled sound rumbles through the door and I pause. Is he laughing? He is. What a jackass.
“I’d like to see you try. Now please open the door because I’m sick of shouting at you through it.”
I push off the wooden surface and throw myself on the sofa that curves the corner. This is one big-ass boat. “No. I’m mad at you and I don’t want to speak to you right now.”
He sighs loudly, and I can imagine him running his fingers through his hair. “Okay. I tried asking nicely. Open the door before I kick the f**king thing down.”
“You wouldn’t?” That sounded more uncertain than I’d hoped for.
“I’ll kick down anything that stops me from getting to you.”
“If that was supposed to soften me up, you failed!”
Now, if someone could tell that to the flutter in my stomach, that’d be great.
“Open the door.”
“No!”
He rams into the door, once, twice, three times. The lock snaps and the door splinters with the weight of his body against it, and he nearly falls into the cabin. I narrow my eyes and fold my arms across my body.
Aaron steadies himself and brushes off his shoulder. “That was unfortunate.”
“I’m sure you can afford a new one, what with all the sex you don’t have to buy.”
“That came out wrong and you know it.”
“Actually, you know what?” I stand. “I don’t. Do you know why I keep my job a secret? Why I have a second name? My safety aside, I do it because I don’t want to live with the stigma of being a call girl. I don’t want to be viewed as the kind of person you just made me feel like.”
“Day…” He reaches for me and I step back.
“I do it because sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel dirty and cheap enough that I don’t need anyone else to weigh in on it.”
Aaron grabs me quicker than I can move away and holds me to him. “You’re not dirty and you’re certainly not cheap.”
“Only because you know my price tag,” I hiss.
“Wrong,” he says firmly. “Because you did what you had to do to survive at a time when there weren’t any other options for you. When you were scared and lost and alone.”
“And now? What’s your excuse for now?”
“Monique became the family you’d lost, and no one likes to leave their family.”
And he’s right. He’s so, so f**king right that I’d probably cry into his chest if I weren’t still so pissed at him.