Manwhore (The Manwhore Book 1)

I need to see my mother. First, because I need to see that she’s looking a nice healthy color, not gaining or not losing weight because of unstable blood sugar. Second, because I know that she will have something wise to tell me, something that will help me see that maybe there’s a positive to take out of this freaking mess I’ve gotten myself into. I ask the girls to come over with me. I need girl time, which usually makes me feel wonderful. Tea, carbs, talking about Wynn’s aromatherapy shop and Emmett, Gina’s anecdotes about the department store, my mom telling me she’s stolen some time to paint in the room that used to be mine, and topics for my column.

My mother looks perfectly stable. She swears to me that her insulin’s working like clockwork and she’s had no recent blood sugar spikes, no episodes of hypoglycemia.

She’s enjoying the girls’ updates with a big, wide smile and eyes that are, by the second, getting bigger and wider than that.

“So she’s now going to take him down,” Wynn finishes filling my mom in.

My mother looks at me in surprise, then laughs. “Oh, but those young boys, they’re just being boys. They’re just being themselves—they’re certainly not evil. Malcolm Saint has been some sort of bachelor hero since he was born to that devil of a dad!”

“I didn’t say he was evil,” I quickly say, prickling in defense. “This story . . . it’s a job, it’s like pulling the curtain away from something, or revealing something new about a topic people are crazy about. I am certainly not going to write that he’s evil!” I’m getting defensive, so I scowl. “I’m not a mean person, Mother, I’m just trying to do my job.”

“So what will you say? That he’s a womanizer? These girls maybe want to be taken advantage of. I know I did. Your father—”

“Stop!”

Her eyes widen at my outburst.

“I need to write this exposé, and do you know why? Because if I don’t, I’ll get fired, and I don’t know how I’ll get by. And even if I don’t get fired, Edge is at the edge of collapse—and dozens of people are going to end up without jobs. And this, Mother, this is my opportunity to get you a house—a house of your own so you can paint for the rest of your days and maybe have me support you. So I will write this exposé because I’m a professional, and then Edge will get a new edge and my job will stabilize or even catapult me to another level, and then I’m going to buy you a big-ass car and a big-shit house with the money that rolls in, and Saint will be on his yacht with a dozen lovers and he won’t even give a shit.” My voice breaks and my eyes start watering, and Gina and Wynn, who’d been busy flipping through my mother’s magazines, suddenly look up and lower them.

My mother’s face softens. “I don’t want a house, Rachel,” she says, slowly setting down the tea box she’d been pulling out of a cabinet.

A stray tear comes to the corner of my eye, and I dab at it. “Well, you’re getting one. You deserve one, Momma.”

“Rachel, did you miss having a father so much? Did it hurt you so much?” She comes over and sits by my side, and reaches out to take my hand in her warm, soft one.

“It didn’t make a dent. I had you,” I assure her, blinking because I’ve never, ever had an episode like this.

“So why do you need to do something that is clearly not sitting too well with you?” she continues in that understanding way of hers.

Another tear, in my other eye, escapes. I free my hand from my mother’s and wipe it, aware of Wynn and Gina being so quiet, everyone being so quiet except me, breathing fast as I try not to cry harder than these measly little sniffles. “Well, isn’t that what life is about?” I ask her. “Making hard choices? Isn’t that what you choosing to stop painting so you could get a job was about? It was a choice that broke your heart but you had to do it because there was no other choice. Not really. Was there?”

“This young man, how does he feel about you?”

“He’s not in love with me, Mother. He’s not my dad. It wasn’t love at first sight, it wasn’t two soul mates connecting. He doesn’t want to be with me like Father did with you. He didn’t see me and think, ‘That’s my soul mate, that’s the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, no matter how short’!”

I can’t go on. My throat clams up and my chest hurts. “I’m a challenge to him,” I add in a little voice. “I’m just this challenge to him. He’s not a man to feel love for a woman, he’s not made like that. He and I . . .” Something in my chest keeps tightening, like a noose, and my eyes are on fire. “We wouldn’t last even a season. And just like my dad, one second, poof, he’ll be gone, and it’ll be just me and you. Me and you, Mom. Like always.”

I don’t think I can bear to hear a reply, any reply, whether it’s to soothe, to reassure, even to agree, which might hurt even worse, and because I’m being stared at by the three of them as if I just grew a thousand worms out of my head—because I’m evil and that’s what happens to evil bitches like me—I push to my feet and head down the hall to my old room and close the door, breathing as I sit there on a stool before my mother’s unfinished canvas, my eyes leaking tears. I don’t even know why I’m crying. It shouldn’t have been this hard. I never expected it to be this hard. But my friends and my mother are starting to think I’m making a mistake.

I groan and lie down on the floor where my bed used to be, staring up above. I stared at this ceiling when I was just a little girl who wanted a dad, who had dreams, who wanted to make a difference, who wanted to write because writing made something . . . it made something out of nothing.

I used to lie here as a girl, and before I met Gina and she met Paul, I would wonder if I’d ever fall in love with a man the way my mother fell in love with my dad. My mother loved my dad before he even had the chance to disappoint her or break her heart. My mother has the purest view of men in the world, that they are inherently good—the yang in the world, the perfect complement to our yin. And I used to be a girl who would wonder who my yang would be. What he’d do. How he’d look. How hard he’d love me.

Never did I imagine twinkling green eyes and dozens of smiles, and a man who challenges me, teases me, is about as flawed as he is perfect, and makes me want to know him down to his every last thought.

My girl . . .

God. I’ve made such a huge mistake.

By fighting him, I’ve only intrigued him more.

Yielding to him, I’ve only doomed myself to pain.

My mistake wasn’t accepting the assignment to write the exposé, it was that I dropped my walls and got close to him to the point where he feels like part of my soul. My mistake was taking his shirt in my hand, and going to his club, and to his yacht, and moving my lips beneath his, and going to his place and begging him to make love to me even after I promised myself it would never happen.

I need to put an end to this, but I can’t rationalize right now. The thought that I need to end it makes me crave to see him all the more.

I impulsively pull out my cell phone and dial. His voice mail answers. He’s probably fucking some other chick, I tell myself negatively. I leave a message: “Hey, it’s me. I guess . . . nothing, really. Call me. Or not. ’Bye.”

I hang up. Then I wipe my tears and get a grip. I had a goal, a chance to write an exposé, to get my name out there, advance my career, reveal the real Saint and not the legend. Maybe I can open a girl’s eyes and avoid one broken heart. Maybe they can realize that Saint won’t love them. Nobody is going to love them except themselves, if they work hard at it. And their friends, if they choose wisely. And their families, if they’re lucky. This is my side of the story—the side of the little girl who grew up wondering what it would be like to live with a man’s love, then grew determined to prove to herself she didn’t need it. I know there are a lot of girls out there like me. Those who didn’t get the guy at seven, at thirteen, at fifteen—they didn’t even get the guy when they were born. Why will we get the guy now, when we’ve grown up already? We don’t need him now.

He calls me back. “Hey. You all right?” he asks.

“I . . .” Something unknots in my stomach at the sound of his voice. I’ve never felt so connected with a guy. Where you can hear the concern in his voice, and you’re sure he can hear the sadness and frustration in yours. How can this be? I wipe the corners of my eyes. Hate, hate, hate crying. “Yes, I’m okay. I just wanted to talk to you.”

I clear my voice, hating that it wavered a little at the end. There’s a tense silence. Way to go, Rachel. Say goodbye to Saint now. Do you think he wants to deal with a crybaby right now?

“Where are you?” he asks.

“I’m at my mom’s. Heading back to my apartment.”

“Otis will be there. Spend the afternoon with me.”

My voice gets shy and I admit, “I’d love that, Malcolm.”

He’s quiet, as if taken aback by how vulnerable I sound. And then he surprises me too, his voice just as low and fiercely husky and tender. “Me too. I’ll see you soon.”

I hang up and stare at my phone, my heart literally in pain inside my chest. Am I in love with him? Why am I so consumed and so confused? It seems like my brain points me in the direction of my logic and my lifetime career dream, but the rest of me doesn’t want to go there if it means having to leave him.

I glance at my mother’s painting and am struck by its raw beauty. It’s like nothing she’s ever painted before, as if all these years what she couldn’t paint just simmered inside her, creating a powerful force that, once set free, fired up and took over the canvas. Even the room itself.

Just like an affair with Saint is taking over me.