Because He Torments Me Read Online Free PDF

not contact you
after today, and if I see you at work, I promise to be nothing but
professional.
    Good luck on your first day tomorrow.   I have every reason to believe you are at
the beginning of a very long and successful career.
    All best,
    Callum

 
    The words blurred before me as furious tears
filled my eyes.   I felt the side of
my face started to twitch, that’s how infuriating this gesture was.
    All best?
    A token of apology?
    For what?  
    Making me feel something for him before taking
off not once, but twice?
    He was a sociopath, I realized.   He was an insane, crazy sociopath who
cared about nothing but himself .  
    The thought was comforting for a moment, but I
couldn’t convince myself to believe it.   I saw something in him, saw something in the way
he was with me, the way he’d treated me that night in Florida, bringing me ice
cream in bed.
    I’d felt a connection to him, not just
sexually, but emotionally, intellectually.
    Was all of this because had had a
girlfriend?   That girl who’d shown
up at lunch that day, the whispered conversation he’d had on the terrace of his
bedroom in Tampa, the way he insisted on me not talking to anyone about what
had happened, the contract I had to sign in which I promised to pretend not to
know him.
    Was he telling me I needed to stay away from
him because he was with someone else?  
    “Wow,” a voice behind me said, and I turned to
see Nessa standing in the living room, her eyes wide.   “What’s all this?”
    “It’s nothing,” I said, suddenly
uncomfortable.   How the hell was I
supposed to explain this?
    “It looks like a whole lot of something,” she
said, dropping her bag on the couch and walking further into the room.
    “I thought you had to work late,” I said.
    “Botox party was cancelled,” she said.   “The birthday girl got cold feet when
she realized botox is made from botulism.”
    “Botox is made from botulism?” I asked.   “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve
ever heard.”
    “Don’t try to change the subject.   Where did you get all this stuff?”   She peeked into one of the garment bags,
her eyes widening when she saw the designer label.
    “It was a gift,” I said.  
    “From Callum?”
    I hesitated, then nodded.
    “Wow, are you guys… I mean, is this like…”
    “No.”   I shook my head.   “No, this
was... he just wanted to congratulate me on my new job.”
    “You got a new job?”
    I nodded.   “At Archway.”
    “Adriana, that’s amazing!”   She threw her arms around me, and I
hugged her back, touched by her excitement for me.   “What’s the job?”
    “Publicity assistant,” I said, realizing I
hadn’t gotten any other information.   I had no idea the salary or even what responsibilities the job entailed.   But Nessa didn’t care about any of
that.   After her initial
congratulations, she was right back to focusing on Callum.
    “So this is a gift?” she asked gently.
    “Yes.”   I nodded.   “We’re just…
“   I trailed off, not sure exactly
what we were.   I didn’t want to
reveal that we were going to be working together, because that was going to
lead to all kinds of other questions, and I really wasn’t ready to admit that
Callum was the one who’d gotten me the job in the first place.   “We’re friends.”
    It was a lie.   Callum and I weren’t friends.   At all.
    Nessa repeated the word. “Friends.”
    “Yes,” I said, with more conviction.
    “Friends who buy each other twenty thousand
dollars worth of clothes and shoes.”
    I shook my head.   “No.   I can’t accept them.”
    “What?”   Her eyes widened.   “Adriana,
yes, you can.”
    “No, it’s too…” It made me feel cheap, like he
was buying me off.   He was trying to
smooth things over why?   So he could
soothe his conscience with the fact that I’d gotten something out of our
weekend away together?   To buy me
off, so I would keep quiet about what we’d done?   His