But I can’t meet Emily today, even if I want to.
Ryke wants to teach me how to rock climb. Not in a gym. Like on a real fucking mountain. I had to ask whether we were going to use ropes and a harness—considering the guy free climbs (he’s stupid enough to scale a mountain with nothing but his hands, legs and some chalk). We’re planning on climbing the normal, sane way. He can do the whole Spider-Man routine when I’m not watching.
I can’t leave until I finish filtering the morning mail with Rose.
The kitchen table overflows with letters, manila envelopes, and small packages.
Paparazzi have sold photos of Lily buying tampons in the grocery store. It’s ridiculous. And her “fan” mail accumulates with each new headline on the cover of a gossip magazine. Most letters are from old men who think she’ll reply or meet them somewhere for sex. That’s what’s been happening lately. People are grabby as hell. I thought that the guy in the hallway of Princeton was just a fluke, but a lot of men feel as though Lily wants all sex, even from them, just because of her addiction. And they make a go of trying to get it from her.
It’s like she has a twenty-four-seven “open” sign plastered to her body now. And there’s no way for her to spin it around to “closed,” which I know she wants to. Thank God she has a bodyguard.
I rip open a couple letters and nearly vomit at a picture of some dude’s balls.
“Shred this one twice,” I tell Rose, throwing the photo into her pile. The shredder rumbles by her feet as she feeds the machine more and more mail.
She glances at the photograph, flips it over and lets out a snort. “I’ll be thinking of you while you touch yourself,” she reads. “Your sentiments are not shared, Mr. Gordon.”
“This guy is living at the State Penitentiary. That makes me feel fantastic.” I toss her another letter and then slice open the packages with a knife.
I really wish we didn’t have to go through this mail at all. I’d much rather burn it without even opening, but some people actually send money. Sometimes as a joke, other times I think they honestly believe Lily will fuck them for cash. Rose, Lily, and I agreed to collect the money and donate it to a women’s shelter in the city. At least someone profits off this.
So Rose and I spend all morning ripping and tearing and shredding. Lily would join us, but Rose and I specifically try to censor her from Mr. Gordon’s balls and company. One day, Lily accidentally opened a letter with photographs attached, and her eyes grew wide in horror, as though the person was one step away from breaking into our house to rape her. I’ve thought about that possibility too, which is why I installed a better security system.
Lil doesn’t admit it, but Rose and I see that she’s afraid to leave the house. She rarely goes out, and when she does, it’s usually after a great deal of pleading.
Lily has accepted my mail-sifting routine with Rose, also calling it our “bonding time.” I haven’t been Rose’s number one fan, not even after the media-palooza went down. But what was once a frost-bitten relationship has surprisingly begun to thaw.
“Since I have to go to business meetings now,” I tell her, “I’m going to need some everyday kind of suits. You still have those black ones from your menswear line, right?”
She goes still and the shredder stops growling. “You don’t have to help me, Loren. I don’t need your charity.” In one month, Rose almost lost every single investor she had for Calloway Couture. Only one has stayed onboard out of sheer loyalty.
I roll my eyes. “It’s not charity. I need suits. Now that you fired a certain someone, yours are no longer plaid and ugly.” I can’t say Sebastian’s name unless I want to be assaulted with rage.
“He did have horrible taste,” she says, lips pursed. As soon as Rose ripped the guy from her life, he snapped a picture of himself for Rich Kids of Instagram and called her a cunt-bag. If you even utter his name, she looks ready to lunge for the ball-cutting shears.
Rose assesses my current wardrobe. A black V-neck and faded Diesel jeans. “You go to your office looking like that,” she reminds me. “Why would you need suits?”
“I have weekly meetings with my father. If I show up in this I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Running my own company terrifies me. I don’t want to pour my heart and soul into it and then have the entire thing destroyed. What Rose is going through—it fucking sucks. Maybe that’s why I’ve preferred apathy all of these years. You can’t be hurt when you have nothing to lose.
She mulls over my proposition and then begins to stuff the shredder again. It rumbles to life. “Fine, but you have to pay full price.”
I laugh. “No family discounts? I’m going to be your brother-in-law.”
“Unwillingly,” she says with cold eyes. Jesus Christ. I’m never going to live that down.
I blame Connor.
He somehow coerced me into revealing my true feelings about this wedding. I admitted to not wanting to marry Lily, not like this at least. I want to do it on our own terms. And somehow Rose has warped that into I don’t want to marry her at all. If I could, I’d be engaged for five more years. She’d be my fiancée and we’d get hitched when we’re both healthy and in love. But that’s not a future that will come true, so I stop trying to imagine it.
I smother that conversation by slitting open a small package. I made the mistake yesterday of reaching blindly into a box. I never, ever want to touch another man’s cum again. Rose couldn’t stop laughing while I soaked my hands in disinfectant for thirty minutes.
I dump the contents onto the plastic-lined table. A neon hot pink dick stares back at me. Without touching it, I slide the dildo into a trash bag.
The next box has what looks like an expensive vibrator, brand-new, wrapped in its original packaging. I leave it on the table as I read the card.
And then an excited squeal resounds from the staircase. Lily sprints down the stairs, her glee-filled eyes pinned to the vibrator.
I grab her around the waist before she can grab it. She points to the package. “That’s new!”
“I’m aware,” I say. “You still can’t have it.”
She cranes her neck. “It’s a Zell500. That’s a luxury brand. You can’t just toss it in the trash.” Her eyes go big. “That’s sacrilege.”
I’m tempted to read her the card: A beautiful toy for your beautiful pussy, my lovely Lily. It’s fucking creepy, and I know it will deter her. But I don’t want to scare her either. That’s what we’re trying to avoid with all of this.
“It’s a vibrator, Lily,” Rose snaps, “not the Holy Grail.”
I give Rose a smile. “So you don’t want it then?”
She glares like she’s ready to put me in the shredder.
I stifle a larger grin and turn to Lily. “Sorry, love. It’s going in the trash.”
She surrenders rather easily. I unhook my arms from her and slide the vibrator into the garbage with the others.
The front door opens, and Ryke saunters into the kitchen, carrying two large vases, white lilies poking his face. As soon as Lily spots the flowers, she slips behind my back and clutches onto my shirt—like whoever sent the floral arrangements are about to jump from the vase and grow life-sized.
“These were by the gate,” Ryke says. “I would have left them, but the paparazzi were trying to get photographs of the cards.” I hold open the trash bag, and Rose suddenly has a fit.
“They’ll break!” she yells at me. “And then the glass will tear the bag, slice someone, and blood will be everywhere. I can’t clean blood out of the hardwood.”