Wilder Ridge in Versace Spotted with Unknown Blonde in Boxer Shorts.
That would be the caption before I trip in a pair of slippers that are four sizes too big for me because I didn’t want to go barefoot. These boxer shorts are held up by a safety pin, and I didn’t bother to comb the tangles from the ends of my hair.
None of this makes a difference to Wilder, who would have preferred we stayed at his place with no clothes on at all. He walks me all the way to the front door with his arm slung protectively over my shoulders, murmuring a long list of rules I’m to follow.
Don’t leave the apartment.
Don’t go near the windows.
Don’t leave the fucking apartment.
“I’m serious, Camilla. Don’t leave this apartment. Pack your things. I won’t be long.” He’s hesitant to let me go, turning to face me outside the apartment door. Wilder stands with his feet shoulder-width apart, lowering his head to look me in the eyes. “Unless you want to keep wearing mine. I’ve grown partial to seeing you in them.”
I pull his shirt away from my body. It hangs off me in sheets. “This isn’t sexy. I’m drowning in your clothes.”
New caption:
Wilder Ridge in Versace Kisses Unknown Blonde in Boxer Shorts.
“You’re sexy in anything you wear.” He presses a small kiss at the corner of my mouth. “You could wear a trash bag and I’d still want to fuck you.”
“I must be good at my job if you’d still want to sleep with me in a trash bag,” I say playfully.
“That’s not your job anymore.” Wilder’s posture straightens, and he pulls his lapels tight. “The only person who’s ever going to experience you like that again is me.”
As much as I’d hoped for this, Wilder had me convinced our relationship wouldn’t evolve past casual. But Lydia has firsthand experience falling in love with a Ridge and saw this coming from a mile away. She knew my days as a Hush escort were coming to an end, and she prepared. Vera may have been hired to service half of my clientele, but the entire roster is hers now.
I’m done selling my body.
Daddy would be so proud.
The door suddenly swings open, and Lydia appears brandishing her cell phone toward Wilder like a weapon. “You’re late for dinner. Talent says to hurry.”
Wilder cracks a smile, and he hooks his arm around the back of my neck, tucking me into his side. Lydia crosses her arms over her chest, unmoving and unwilling to stand down. This feels like the part in the movie when the bad boy shows up to take the sweet, innocent girl to prom. An instrumental rock ballad plays, and the camera zooms in first on Lydia’s face, and then Wilder’s, who’s dressed the part, but despite how luxurious these slippers are, they’re not prom appropriate and I’m not innocent.
And this is real life.
Eyes more gold than green look me up and down from the oversized slippers to the tangles in my hair, and she snorts, but there’s something besides boredom in her expression. It’s in the way her jaw tightens and her eyebrow arches. There’s a little twitch in her nose, and a single hair out of place at her temple, a rare imperfection.
Might she feel… jealous? Possessive? Resistant?
“I’m coming back for her,” Wilder says.
“Naturally,” she drawls in her typical indifferent tone, but it curls around the tail of the Y a little too sharply.
There’s no denying the pull in the pit of my stomach, luring me toward Lydia. I’m tied to her as strongly as I am to Wilder. The reasons differ, but the ache around my heart is just as powerful and impossible to ignore. She’s ice-cold, he’s white-hot, and I exist somewhere in the middle, tepid and calm.
It was a year ago when I arrived alone in Grand Haven with a backpack full of candles and no direction. The front page of a newspaper reeled me in, Inez introduced me to the lifestyle, but Lydia Montgomery gave me a home and all the intimacy she could afford. She was the first person in my entire life who thought I deserved more, and she gave me options and a chance to decide for myself without casting me off.
Words aren’t her strong suit, so she speaks grand gestures.
Whenever I find a fresh box of matches on my dresser, I know she was thinking about me. On the nights when my candles go out and she rushes in to save me from my nightmares, Lydia sits at the end of my bed until I stop crying. And when she thinks I’m asleep, she tucks my blankets under my chin and dries cooling tears from my face.
She’s added candles to her office décor for the evenings when we stay past sunset. There’s an entire jar of Nutella hidden in her desk drawer next to a pack of plastic spoons in case I get hungry, and she doesn’t complain when I take her chair and roll it against the window to watch the dolphins in the bay.
We hold hands on occasion, but we don’t hug or kiss like some sisters do. But sometimes we sit knee to knee at the vanity when she does my makeup, and Lydia grazes my cheek with the back of her knuckles or pets my hair even after the curl is perfect. There’re times when her foot finds mine under the dinner table, or we gravitate toward each other on the couch and our elbows touch—small points of contact that mean everything after so much time spent alone.
It’s human connection that says,I need you as much as you need me.
