Begging For Her Slap

She was a kept woman. Nothing more. She walked, so let her walk.

He said it the way he said everything. Cool. Unbothered. One ankle crossed over his knee, watching his best friend come apart over a breakup like it was mildly interesting weather.

For three years I'd been Damien Voss's arrangement.

For three years I believed that word was the whole truth of me. Something bought. Something kept. Something that came with a resale value.

So when the word got around that he was marrying into another family, I did the smart thing.

I bought a one-way ticket out of the country. Sent one clean goodbye. Powered off my phone before the wheels left the runway.

Then I landed, and turned it back on.

Him: [Good riddance? Keep dreaming.]

Him: [Then what the hell were the last three years?]

Him: [Answer me.]

Him: [Baby. I'm begging you. Don't leave me.]

The man who called me a kept woman was on his knees in my notifications.

And I hadn't even found baggage claim.

Chapter 1

"You're not winning her back bleeding on my floor, Beck."

Damien pulled the bottle out of his best friend's fist like he was disarming a toddler. "She's a kept woman. She left. A woman who wants out isn't a woman you chase down. So let her go."

Cold. Clean. Effortless.

Let me back up.

By the time we reached the club, Beckett had already thrown a bottle at the wall and told the whole room to get out.

He was folded into the center booth, tie gone, one hand locked around a fifth of something expensive, and when a guy leaned in to comfort him, Beckett hurled the bottle past his ear.

"Boss. Come on. She's one girl. I'll find you ten better."

"Out." He didn't look up. "Nobody replaces her."

I stood in the doorway and offered a silent, heartfelt apology to a man I had personally destroyed.

Nobody in that room knew it, but Tessa hadn't left Beckett over anything Beckett did.

She left him over a coffee.

And she left him because of me.

Two nights before, she'd called me three drinks deep and vibrating with rage.

"I asked him for a matcha. One matcha. You know what he brings back? A caramel oat latte."

I waited.

"That's her order, Del. His ex. Two years, and his hands still walk to her drink on their own."

"Dump him," I said.

That was the entire consultation. One word. By morning my best friend had broken a genuinely good man's heart, taken her money, and boarded a flight abroad with a spring in her step.

She'd already texted me from the air.

Tessa: [the men here are six-two and criminally hot. that's the AVERAGE. get on a plane.]

I was still deciding how guilty to feel when Damien found me on the couch.

At the door, before we went in, he'd stopped me with two fingers on my wrist.

"Do me a favor. Talk to your friend. If it's over, make it clean. Block, delete, no loose ends."

"Don't leave Beck one thread to pull. Half-measures are just cruelty in a nicer coat."

I nodded, sweet and obedient, already running the numbers on my own way out.

He had no idea he was teaching me.

Inside, Damien crossed the room like the floor owed him money, dropped into the seat across from the wreckage of his best friend, and lifted the bottle straight out of Beckett's hand.

"This is what you're made of?"

Beckett's eyes came up hot. Then he registered who it was, and everything in him folded.

"You don't get it, Damien." His voice cracked low. "I love her. Without her, none of it means anything."

Damien leaned back and looked at him the way you look at a bad investment.

"That's all you've got in you." Not a question.

"She was a kept woman, Beck. Nothing more. She walked. Let her walk."

"She wanted out. Why bankrupt your pride begging someone who already signed the papers?"

God, he made it sound easy.

Chapter 2

"Cut your losses. Sunk cost doesn't get a vote in the decisions that matter." Damien never raised his voice. He didn't need to. "You think wrecking yourself brings her back? Have some dignity."

Beckett dropped his head and went still. Talked down off the ledge, apparently. That fast.

I sat in the corner and studied the cold, clean line of his profile.

That was Damien everywhere but in bed. A man three moves ahead of a game the rest of us were still reading the rulebook for. That face, that stillness, was the exact thing that had caught the eye of the Ravenel heiress.

A few days back a magazine had run it. Photos. A very specific, very sourced piece confirming Damien Voss was marrying into the Ravenel family.

My shoulders came down an inch.

Good. If he could be this untouched about love, we could end the clean way. No scene. No mess.

Here's the part I never said out loud. In three years, Damien Voss had bought me a great deal. He had never once said he loved me. I'd stopped waiting for it somewhere around year two.

The engagement report didn't land like a wound. It landed like a calendar. It just told me when.

I texted Tessa one word.

Me: [Done.]

Then I booked the red-eye to Amsterdam and set the boarding pass as my lock screen.

He came out of the shower while I was in the closet, packing up three years of jewelry.

His assistant had bought every piece. One per holiday, delivered on schedule, like a subscription. Didn't make it worth any less. I laid them into the case one at a time, and my fingers stalled a second on the most expensive piece before I set it down too.

Enough here to keep Tessa and me in champagne for a lifetime.

The corner of my mouth pulled up.

"What are you thinking about?" His voice came low, right over my head.

I jumped, then caught myself.

"About all the jewelry you bought me. One look and I think of you."

Please. Three years as a kept woman teaches you exactly what a man wants to hear.

Something pleased moved through his eyes. His arm came around my waist.

"There's a jewelry auction in Miami next month. I'll take you."

I nodded.

Next month gutted me quietly.

I wouldn't be here next month. Next month he'd be someone's fianc.

I had standards, even as a kept woman. No married men. No ugly ones. That's how I'd vetted my way to Damien in the first place, on Tessa's referral. Rich. Beautiful. Very good with his hands.

Three years, and he'd been generous the whole way through.

Today was the last day.

I reached up, looped my arms around his neck, went up on my toes, and kissed him.

His eyes darkened. He took the kiss and made it his.

That night I held on like it was the last time, because it was.

Afterward, in the dark, he pulled me back against his chest, his mouth at my ear.

"Why so worked up tonight?"

I checked the time on my phone. Red-eye in five hours.

"No reason," I said, and burrowed into him. "Go to sleep."

His breathing went slow and even against the back of my neck. Mine didn't.

I lay in the dark and took an inventory I would never get to cash in. The weight of his arm. The place his heartbeat lived under my palm. The exact warmth of him, which I would not have after tonight, and which he was spending on me without knowing he was being robbed of it.

He thought he was falling asleep beside his Saturday-night arrangement.

He was saying goodbye to me. And I was the only one in the room who knew it.

The next night, a photo came in from a girl in the same line of work as me.

Damien. The Ravenel heiress. A gala, the two of them side by side.

Her: [My guy says it's official. Mr. Voss marries the Ravenel girl next month.]

Her: [People like us know when to exit, sweetheart. Don't do anything stupid.]

Her: [He's rich and he was generous. You'll land fine. Better to bow out clean and first than get shown the door. Play it graceful and he might even cut you a check.]

Me: [I know. Already on the red-eye.]

I'd meant to say it to his face.

But midnight came and he still wasn't home.

Just one text.

Damien: [Something came up. I won't be back tonight.]

Damien: [Don't wait up.]

Chapter 3

The ache came out of nowhere.

I looked at the photo, Damien and the Ravenel heiress shoulder to shoulder at that gala, and something went sour in my chest. I didn't get the chance to work out why. My alarm went off.

I picked up my suitcase, took one last look at the house I'd lived in for three years, and walked out without turning around.

At the gate, before boarding, I sent Damien one message.

Me: [Damien. Let's call it here. Clean break, no hard feelings.]

Short. Clean. We were both smart people. He'd understand. He might even tell me I was being sensible.

Then I ran the whole routine. Block. Delete. Gone.

My thumb hovered over his name for three full seconds before I did it.

The plane pushed back. The attendant's voice came over the cabin. I held the power button down and watched his name go dark.

Damien was at the hospital.

Beckett had a bleeding ulcer. At the gala he'd been in a corner with the Ravenel heiress when Beckett folded to the floor mid-room, and there'd been nothing to do but load him into a car and get him here. He'd just finished texting Delphine.

Now he was riding Beckett about the ex he still wouldn't shut up about.

"I hear you're planning to drag Tessa back home." His voice was flat. "You can't force it sweet, Beck. She's already gone."

His phone chimed.

He opened it, and there was her message.

He called her before the screen had time to dim.

A cold, mechanical voice answered instead of her.

Three years, and it was the first time Delphine hadn't picked up.

From the bed, Beckett watched his face change and pushed himself upright to catch the whole thing. Something in his chest went, against his will, a little warm. Almost pleasant.

They'd grown up together, though. Brothers. So he wrestled the corner of his mouth flat, reached over, and clapped Damien on the shoulder.

"Getting dumped isn't the end of the world, man. Ease up on yourself."

Hadn't Damien just lectured him six ways from Sunday? Called him a lovesick idiot?

Beckett wanted to see what the great strategist did now that he was on the wrong end of it.

He'd expected, at the very least, that Damien would try to hold on.

Instead, Damien's eyes cooled by degrees. He slid the phone into his jacket, and when he looked up he was exactly as remote as he always was.

"Mm."

Then he stood and walked out, spine straight, before Beckett could get a word in.

Beckett clicked his tongue, honestly impressed.

"That's my boy."

Made sense, really. Cold as the man was, whatever he had with Delphine couldn't hold a candle to Beckett and Tessa. No wonder she'd cut and run so clean. At least his Tessa had dumped him to his face.

In the car, Damien looked up again.

The rims of his eyes had gone red.

His fingers moved over the phone. One message. Another. Another.

The screen threw back a small gray banner each time.

Delivered to a number that had blocked him.

I turned my phone on the second I landed.

Tessa called first.

"I'm right outside arrivals. Walk out and you'll see me."

"Okay."

I was about to let the screen go dark when the notifications started stacking, one on top of another on top of another. 99+.

Same unknown number, every one of them.

Unknown: [Good riddance? Keep dreaming.]

Unknown: [What do you mean, call it here. Then what were the last three years?]

Unknown: [What did I do wrong?]

Unknown: [Answer me.]

Unknown: [Baby. I'm begging you. Don't leave me.]

...Damien?

No. Damien didn't talk like this.

Damien had never once called me baby.

Chapter 4

One of his friends messing with me? A dare gone wrong?

I typed back, wary.

Me: [Damien?]

The reply came fast.

Unknown: [Mm.]

A second later, my banking app lit up.

Thirty million dollars. Just landed.

That kind of money. That was him.

But these messages.

I stood there, one hand dragging my suitcase and the other locked around my phone, not understanding a word of it.

"Delphine."

I looked up. Tessa, in a barely-there leather mini and sunglasses that cost more than rent, two blond, endless-legged men trailing her who looked airlifted straight off a runway, one of them holding a card with my name on it.

Straight out of a soap opera.

But this was another country. Nobody here cared what you did.

So I took a photo and posted it.

Me: [Unbothered and internationally single.]

The comments rolled in on the drive back.

Commenter: [girl DELETE this, you're not scared Damien sees it??]

Commenter: [free already?? i don't even know how much longer i've got to grind.]

Commenter: [jealous. +1]

Beckett: [KEEP those men away from my wife. somebody tell Tessa the second I find her, she is DONE.]

The last one, all caps and flailing, was Beckett. I didn't answer.

Women in our line of work keep our own networks. For a while, no sponsor, no ex, nobody finds us. It's the whole reason Beckett still couldn't reach Tessa.

As for Damien.

I didn't know why he'd sent any of it. But I knew this much. He wasn't Beckett.

Beckett fell for Tessa the first time he saw her.

Me, I was never Damien's type. He wasn't going to come looking.

Those messages were a lost dare, or too much to drink. Three years together. Emotions run high. It happens.

Those were the only two explanations I could give myself. So I took them, washed up, and lay down.

I don't know why, but I hadn't been asleep long before I was back at the night I met him.

My family had just gone under. My father jumped, and the debt he left behind landed on me. I was still in college, still fielding collectors every single day.

Tessa said Beckett had a friend. Handsome, rich, clean hands.

She dragged me along.

"Trust me. He's a ten."

She wasn't wrong.

Damien walked in, six-two, and became the center of the room by doing absolutely nothing. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, that expensive, arctic stillness. The kind of man you were allowed to look at and nothing more.

I sat in the corner, nerves eating me alive. I made an excuse to slip out, and getting up, I caught my heel on the table leg and landed square in his lap.

He went quiet for a long time.

Too long. On a man that composed, stillness could have meant a hundred things. I read it as contempt and got myself off his lap.

The next few times we met went about as well.

I licked a drink off my lip and he told me to show some restraint. It rattled me so badly I lost my grip on the glass and spilled it down his stomach. I scrubbed at it, flustered, then escaped to the restroom to fix the hem of my dress.

When I came back, I caught the tail of a conversation between him and Beckett