Page 79 of The Right Garza
Tightening Trent’s leather jacket around me, I swing my dangling legs back and forth.
After a late-night dinner at The Lobster, I bugged him to hit the Santa Monica Pier with me for a stroll. Trent is the farthest thing from a “stroll” type of man, but he indulged.
Ineededthis quiet, intimate time with him, as it’s our last weekend together and I want to soak up every last bit of it. Even if his being here with me, sitting with our legs dangling off the pier, is reluctant.
“For where?” His tone is casual, unbothered. Not what I expected after breaking the news that I’m leaving.Him. Us.
Renovations at the house are done. Job complete. Debt paid.
After having professional photos taken and stellar videos created to highlight all the best parts of their newly renovated investment, I brought in Trent and True for a grand tour. True was the most surprised by the results, as he openly admitted that he’d had low expectations.
To celebrate, Maggie and I are organizing a “housewarming” party with just close friends and family. After that, I’m off.
“Washington,” I answer.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah, her husband’s brother runs a real estate company. He secured me a job as a receptionist. It’s something to start with,” I say with a shrug. “I could work on getting a real estate license on the side. Maybe ease into that later on.”
“And where will you stay?”
“Isla said I can stay with them for a few months until I’ve saved up enough to get my own place. They’ve got a nice place. Better than going back to Redlands.” I laugh with uncertainty.
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” he mumbles.
For some reason, his blasé attitude rankles me. I don’t expect him to grab my ankles and beg me not to leave, but I also wasn’t expecting him to be so nonchalant about our end either.
Surely the last couple of months meant something to him? He’d been so determined to make me his, and now he doesn’t even care that I’m leaving L.A.?
It’s my fault. I’d been so insistent on us never being anything more than a fling and having no expectations that it seems I drove out every non-sexual interest he might have had in me.
On one hand, I should be happy, because it will make leaving easier. But on the other, I don’t know…I guess I just expected…something. Anything but indifference.
Trent jumps to his feet on the pier and holds his hand out to me. Sulking on the inside, I take it and let him pull me up, then I let out a surprised squeal when he slams me up against him and presses his face in my hair.
“If this is our last weekend together, then I don’t want to spend it on the Santa Monica fucking pier.” His hands glide down my back and squeeze my ass. “I want to spend it in my bed, burieddeepinside you, leaving my mark and making sure you never forget the best fuck of your life.”
Just like that I’m quaking in the knees for him. Desire blazing through me like wildfire.
Lust and sexual avarice push my irritation with him to the back burner. And now I don’t want to be here either. I want to be where he wants me. In his bed, with him inside me, doing what he’s so damn good at. Making me writhe and scream and claw my nails into his skin.
Needy, lit on fire, I push myself against him. Tip up on my toes and whisper sultrily against his lips, “Then take me there.”
~
“No, notthere!In the kitchen,” I half-shout at an assistant from the catering company we hired for the party tonight.
The directive came out louder and gruffer than I intended—something that’s been happening all week. I’ve been in such a shit mood that even Maggie has been avoiding me.
The housewarming party is tonight and by noon tomorrow I’ll be on a flight to Washington. I should be ecstatic that I’m at the end of this debt repayment, but I’m not. Instead, I’m irritated with myself for getting it all done so quickly. I should have been shittier at it. Screwed it up. Not researched and made so many smart, efficient moves. Or, maybe even blown the budget.
That way I would’ve had more time withhim. The man who professed to wanting me all his life. But now that he’s had his fill of me, has grown bored and could care less what I do with myself after tonight.
I don’t know what it is that I even want from him, but it’s not this…this casualness. I suppose I assumed someone who claims to have had a hard-on for me for so long would at least ask me to stay. I would’ve refused, of course. But it’s really gotten under my skin that he hasn’t.
Maybe hedidhave a thing for me when we were younger, but now it just feels as if he’s with me to prove something. To punish me for not choosing him back then.
Arrgh. How did I allow myself to get this attached? I’m lost in my feelings when I’m the one who insisted on “nothing serious, just fun.” How pathetic. To lay down the rules and get caught in them myself. Now it’s time to leave and it hurts.
