Page 134 of To Hate Adam Connor

He looked surprised at my words.

“Neither one of us is ready to be a parent, Jameson. I’m not even sure if I’ll ever be.”

We shared a long moment of silence, then Jameson released a humorless laugh and rubbed his neck.

“What a mess. What a freaking mess. I thought if you ended up deciding to have the baby, I could persuade you to come to Pittsburgh with me. I thought it was a sign for me to try to ask you again…not that I did a bang-up job the first time. That’s why I came here, and not only is there no baby, you’re dating.”

“I’m not dating,” I bristled.

“What was that little show I saw then?” He gestured toward the door Adam had disappeared through.

I frowned. “It’s not like that.” But was it? What had I agreed to exactly? What did he want? Sleep in the same bed? Because even that was a big thing for me. Date? Could he even date? Be seen out in the public with me? Sex? What did ‘You’re mine then’ mean? And could you even date a movie star? How?

“I see,” Jameson murmured, and I remembered that I wasn’t alone.

Walking over to me, he put his hand on my shoulder, his eyes holding mine. That’s when I felt a trickle of emotion, something I could remember. Then without any hesitation he pushed his fingers into my hair and pressed a firm kiss on my lips. No tongue, just a last kiss filled with what ifs and apologies. It was such an unexpected move that I didn’t know how to react. He pulled back from my lips only enough that the tips of our noses were almost touching, then closed his eyes and held me to him.

“Jameson…” I whispered, putting my hand on his tattooed wrist. He let go of my hair, but didn’t back away.

“When you first told me you loved me, I felt like I’d scaled fucking mountains. He’s a lucky son of a bitch. Make him work harder; he is right, you deserve better.”

A quick kiss on my cheek, and he was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Adam

That evening as I drove through the colorful city to the restaurant after getting a short text from Jason telling me where I could meet them, I was still replaying the meeting I’d had with my lawyer in my mind.

The leaked sex tape—the alleged sex tape—was apparently real. Whoever was holding the hard copy in his or her hands was trying to get the best bid for it, and to entice the parties to bid higher, they were releasing stills from the video…stills that clearly showed Adeline half-naked with a cock in her hand as she was quite literally captured swallowing it. It wasn’t the most perfect shot of her beautiful face, but it was most definitely the money shot that had all the media in a frenzy over who’d get the full video.

“We can use this,” said Laura, my lawyer. She must have seen the look on my face because she didn’t even pause before continuing. “It’s a low blow, I know, but if you’re serious about sole custody, we can use this to our advantage. Look at the time stamps; if this isn’t altered, it means she was cheating. And if it happened once, we can most likely find others. Even if there are no sex tapes, we’ll find something else. We should use this, Adam. It will make our jobs easier, trust me.”

“No. I’m not looking to drag her through the mud. She’ll have a hard enough time recovering from this enough as it is; I don’t want to dig and find something else. I’m not doing this to destroy her, Laura; I want you to keep that in mind as you proceed forward. I just want my son with me. Find another way. Dig into something else, talk to her lawyers, find another way.”

The shots weren’t altered. She had cheated on me while we were still married. I knew that for a fact because in the photos you could see her hand, and I could see a small rash on her wrist, a redness caused by an unexpected irritation from a copper bracelet she wore for a shoot. The date matched when she had that rash.

Was I surprised when I heard there was a sex tape? Can’t lie; yes, I was. Adeline…Adeline, for all her faults, had been loyal, or so I’d thought. But I was past the point of being angry about the existence of it. I couldn’t go back and change the time, change the mistakes we’d made together. It didn’t affect me anymore. She didn’t factor into my life anymore. It was her mess, and only hers. I’d already instructed everyone on my publicity team to do their best to keep me out of the whole thing. There would be no comments coming from me. No quotes.

Still, I spent the entire day ignoring every single call that came from Adeline or her assistants. My mind filled with Aiden and what this new situation would mean to him, I left my car with the valet and entered the restaurant at exactly ten past seven. I was ten minutes late thanks to LA traffic.

At first, when I didn’t see Lucy sitting next to Olive, I didn’t think anything of it, but the closer I got to their partially hidden table toward the back, the possibility of her still being with that Jameson guy dawned on me.

Had I made a mistake by leaving her with him?

Had I lost my bright light?

Jason’s head came up from Olive’s neck, and he gestured to me with his hand. Olive noticed me too and offered me a shy smile. My steps faltered before I could get to their table and ask where Lucy was because Lucy emerged from the hallway a little to the right of where her friends were sitting. She sent a beautiful, unsure smile my way.

She looked stunning—as always. She wore black fuck-me heels with a black dress that hit her a little above her knee, and the neckline of her dress made it possible for me to see those delicious swells of her breasts. That was all I could take in as I changed my direction and headed toward her, my steps lighter now that I knew she was there.

With a small smirk plastered on her face, she rubbed her palms on her dress, subtly pulling it down in the process, and started toward me. A waitress walked up to the table that stood right between us, almost tripping me in the process.

Lucy smiled.

I laughed.

Steadying the waitress, I apologized to her and quickly rounded the table.

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