His response was immediate and absolute. His face paled, and he dropped his hand from my thigh and sat back in his seat. We stared at each other, his expression blank with shock. I imagined that mine probably looked about the same.

And then I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.

Chapter 9

I called Germaine while I was waiting for the subway and told her I wouldn’t be coming to work the next day. She sounded puzzled, but didn’t ask me any questions. I was intensely grateful. I couldn’t have talked about what had happened, even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t have the words for it. Whatever had just happened, whatever Carter had tried to make me do, however I had refused—it was all beyond me.

The next morning, I slept as long as I could, and then lay in bed for another hour, eyes closed, trying and failing not to think about Carter.

Fact: he had asked me to perform oral sex on a stranger.

Fact: he had been stunned that I refused.

Fact: he had let me walk away without protest.

Implication: he thought that I would want to do it?

Consequently, implication: he thought I wanted to be his whore?

I rolled over, groaning, and pulled my pillow over my face. I didn’t want to think about anything. My life had gotten entirely too complicated since I’d met Carter. I knew there was a reason I’d stayed a virgin for twenty-four years. It was time to swear off men, and go back to being celibate for the next twenty-four. Maybe by the time I was fifty, I would have figured out how to interact with the opposite sex.

Finally, I admitted defeat and got up to make coffee. I would never know what Carter had intended unless I asked him, and I had no intention of ever doing that. In fact, I had no intention of ever speaking to him again. I should have cut ties the previous evening, like I originally intended, before the party, before I let him touch me. My mistake was, as always, letting his charisma influence me away from what I knew was the correct course of action.

So. Starting now, no more Carter. No more sex. No more intense interpersonal connection. I would go back to being just me, boring Regan, cocktail waitress and person of no importance whatsoever.

And he could go back to being Carter Sutton, most important man in the world.

At least to me.

I ground the heels of my hands against my eyes. I wasn’t making things any easier for myself.

My coffee maker whistled at me, and I gratefully poured my first cup of coffee. I was going to need way more than one to get me through this day, but I had to start somewhere.

I looked at the clock. It was noon, which was around the time I usually woke up. I should have made more of an effort to go back to sleep. At least when I was sleeping, I didn’t have to think about Carter.

I took my coffee over to the sofa and opened my laptop. My inbox was full of emails about impending Black Friday sales. I hated the holidays: I had no home to go to, and usually spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas alone in my apartment, feeling adrift. The last thing I wanted to do was spend too much money on a flat-screen television or whatever other useless junk I didn’t need.

I spent fifteen minutes reading through and mercilessly deleting every email in my inbox.

It didn’t make me feel any better.

I started making my daily rounds of gossip and fashion blogs—two things I had very little interest in, but had started reading about in an effort to educate myself. Since I started working at the club, I’d spent more time than I cared to think about reading reviews of different lipstick brands. It could be pretty overwhelming, but I figured there was a steep learning curve, and the only way it would become less confusing was if I kept plugging away.

And of course, because the universe hated me, the first website I opened had Carter’s face plastered all over it.

The headline screamed, “CAROLINA RAMOS STEPS OUT WITH INFAMOUS PLAYBOY CARTER SUTTON! BUY HER DRESS HERE!”

Infamous playboy?

I clicked on the link. Carolina Ramos was apparently a model of some sort, and she and Carter had been spotted at an art opening on Saturday night, climbing into a limo together.

That was the same day I’d woken up in his bed. I swallowed hard, fighting against the sudden lump in my throat. There was no reason for me to be surprised. We hadn’t made each other any promises. He was young and handsome and wealthy—of course he was keeping his options open. I would be doing exactly the same thing, if I had options.

I opened a new tab and typed “Carter Sutton playboy” into the search bar. The long list of results didn’t reassure me. I clicked on the first link. “Carter Sutton at it again: fourth girl in two weeks????” I clicked the back button and opened the next link. “Carter Sutton still delicious, seen flirting with Amber Reynolds at Nobu.” The third link: “Tina Lafayette spills all about hot night with Carter Sutton!”

It was one thing to know, intellectually, that you were nothing, just a convenient diversion. It was another thing entirely to have it spelled out for you in 48-point font.

Of course I meant nothing to Carter. Why would I? I was just another disposable woman, not even famous enough for the tabloids to pay attention to. He was nice to me, sure. His mother had probably raised him right. But niceness didn’t mean anything. Most people were nice, for the most part. It was the default state for social animals: don’t smack the monkey beside you, and it won’t smack you back.

None of my rationalizations made it hurt any less.

I should have stopped there. I should have closed the browser and read a magazine, gone outside, done anything to distract myself, but I was determined to find something that would let me hate him. I needed to hate him. It was the only thing that would make me feel better. I didn’t think it would be very hard. He went to a sex club for fun in his spare time; surely he’d done something morally repellent that would make me lose all interest in him. Tax evasion, exploitation of workers, human trafficking.

But the more I looked, the more I regretted it. He hadn’t done anything horrible, and worse, he’d done so many things that were good. He was the lowest-paid executive at his company. He had donated 50% of his income to charity in the last fiscal year. He volunteered—oh God—as a Big Brother to a kid from the Bronx. He was, in short, a prince among men, and as I read article after article describing the many noble things that he’d done, I realized that he wasn’t just a pretty face. There was more to him than the womanizing smeared all over the tabloids. He was a good person, the kind of man that I couldn’t help but admire.