Page 67 of Loved

“The villain.”

“Is that how you think of yourself?”

I shrugged.

“James, you’re the author of your own story. You can be whoever you want to be.”

“Sure,” I said with a laugh. That sounded like a line ripped straight out some bullshit self-help book.

He leaned back in his chair. “Do you think Penny sees you as a villain?”

“No.”More like a sex god.I smiled to myself.

“Why are you smirking?”

“Do you not want me to smile?”

“Of course I want you to smile. James, you’re not a villain. You’re not the man they’ve portrayed in the article. Not unless you believe you are. And I don’t think you do.”

He didn’t know about the mantra I’d said while I’d been trying to stay away from Penny. I did believe I was asick fuck. I did believe I was a monster. But…I didn’t want to believe that. “I actually didn’t ask for this appointment because of the article.”

“No? Well, how about you tell me about that conversation you had the other night after we got off the phone. You were going to talk to Penny about what she wanted. What did the two of you decide?”

“We didn’t get a chance to talk about what she wanted from her college experience. I found out the article was coming out and I was trying to do damage control.”

“What kind of damage control?”

“Writing my resignation letter…”

“You decided to resign without discussing it with her?”

“Before you jump down my throat, Penny already gave me hell about this. And I know I should have spoken to her about it ahead of time. But I was just trying to get ahead of everything. And there was only one option. I had to resign.”

“James, we talked about how important it is to be a team…”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Penny and I are a team. But she still should have trusted my judgement and let me handle it.”

“Why? Because you’re older than her? That doesn’t sound like the two of you are on equal footing at all.”

“But Iamolder than her.”

“Being significantly older clearly doesn’t make you wiser.”

I glared at him. “Touché.”

“So you resigned without discussing it with her. So…now what?”

“She wants to keep going to classes.” At least the ones that hadn’t been cancelled because of me.

“So the two of you are staying in town?”

“That’s what she wants.”

“But what doyouwant, James?”

“I want to be with her. Wherever she is.”

He smiled. “Interesting.”

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