“Let it happen?” she says bitterly. “Sawyer, you’re paying me to give you fuck-me eyes. You’re paying me to kiss you and grind against you on the dance floor. I’m not letting you pay me to sleep with you.”

“What if I fire you and then re-hire you again tomorrow – then could we have sex?”

Her jaw drops. “No, then we could not have sex. You’re crazy.”

She tries to pull away, but I pull her back towards me. “Fine. But you’d better talk about something to get my mind off it. I’ve got a painful boner going on thanks to you.”

“Okay, let’s talk about my graduation next week.”

“Your graduation? What about it?”

“You’re planning on coming, aren’t you? It’s Saturday night.”

“Why would I do that?”

Her luscious cherry lips turn into a sour pucker. “You’re kidding, right? You need to come to my graduation, Sawyer. It’s what any boyfriend would do.”

“But it’s a night off. I have other plans.”

The truth is, I totally forgot about her graduation and I had made plans to go see Danny since we have an early game that day.

“Plans? What plans?”

“I don’t have to tell you everything I do, Aspen.”

“With the girl at the beach?”

I roll my eyes. “There is no girl at the beach.”

She steps back, releasing my hold on her. “Maybe I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe I don’t care what you believe.”

“You can be a real asshole, you know that?”

“Hey, you two,” Rylee says, coming up next to us. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were bickering like an old married couple.”

“What?” Aspen and I both say to her at the same time.

She laughs. Then she waves her hand at our surroundings. “Do you really want everyone to see you fighting? What are you arguing about anyway?”

“He doesn’t want to come to my graduation,” Aspen says.

“She doesn’t want to sleep with me,” I tell her. “Even though she clearly wants to.”

Rylee shakes her head and then drags us off the dance floor behind her. “First off, you have to go to her graduation, Sawyer. It’ll be good for you to make an appearance at something in her life. And second, are you out of your mind asking her to sleep with you? It’s against the terms of your contract and it would ruin everything you have going. Do you really want to do that?”

“I just thought—”

“You just thought you’d get a quick lay like you always do. Well, you can’t think like that anymore.” She motions to my pants. “Now go splash cold water on your face before you hurt someone with that thing.”

She hooks elbows with Aspen and they head off in the other direction, Aspen looking over her shoulder at me with a triumphant stare. The woman is infuriating sometimes. I don’t see what the big fucking deal is. We’re two consenting adults. Why can’t we sleep together and still have a professional relationship? Hell, even my lawyer was able to handle it.

I stumble down the hallway to the bathroom, aware that maybe I should stick to water for the rest of the evening. The wine was flowing freely at dinner. Mostly because the more you drink, the more zeros you’re likely to write on the check before the evening is out.

Just before I make it to the bathroom, I get pulled aside into a dim hallway.

A blonde woman, with breasts that are overflowing from her dress, backs me into a corner. “Sawyer Mills, I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” she says, jumping up onto me so I have no choice but to catch her.

Her lips crash down on mine. She tastes of vodka and cigarettes – not nearly as good as Aspen tasted. I try to put her down, but her legs clasp onto me like a vice.

“The women’s bathroom locks,” she says. “Want to join me for a quickie?”

I look at her for a few seconds too long. Long enough for her to think I’m contemplating it. Long enough for me to think I’m contemplating it. I mean, in all fairness, it has been a long time for me. Over a month in fact. Can I really be expected to be celibate that long? Can any man?

But then I focus on her face, taking in her smeared lipstick and fake eyelashes, and I want to kick myself for even thinking about it. And the reason I want to kick myself is not because of the contract or my job. The reason I want to kick myself is because she’s not Aspen. And in this moment, I realize I don’t want to sleep with anyone who isn’t her. And the realization guts me. It guts me because having Aspen isn’t in the cards. Truly having any woman isn’t in the cards. Not for me anyway. And I wonder if being with the one woman I want but can never have is a cruel twist of fate.

“Get off me,” I say to the woman.

Then someone walks around the corner and almost runs into us. “I’m sorry, I was looking for the—”

Aspen’s eyes go wide when she sees me holding a woman in a compromising position. She looks from the woman back to me, just shaking her head.

“It’s not what you think,” I say, trying again to put the woman down. Once I have her off me, I reach out for Aspen. “She jumped up on me. It’s nothing.”

She looks at the woman. “Yeah, I can see that,” she says. “The nothingness is written all over her face.”

She turns to walk away, but I grab her arm and pull her back. “She’s nobody,” I say.

Aspen shakes her head at me and I think I see her eyes get glassy. “And that’s exactly why you’re an asshole.” She rips her arm out of my hand. “We’re done. This is done. You can go to hell.”

Aspen turns and runs down another hallway. The woman grabs me and holds me back. “Let her go. I’m here and willing.”

“Just stop,” I say, removing her hand from me.

The woman calls out after me as I race down the hallway and open all the doors to try and find Aspen. But she’s gone. One of the doors leads to the outside and I can just make out the bottom of her dress as she pulls it into a cab and shuts the door.

Chapter Twenty

Aspen

I put down the phone, still angry over what Sarah told me. But I know she’s right. The contract specifically states ‘if he was found to have had sexual relations with another woman.’ I was stupid not to amend it to cover all activity including kissing and whatever else Sawyer and the skank were doing last weekend.

I look at the tabloid magazines sitting on my coffee table. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. It makes me out to be just another one of his throwaways. ‘Trouble in Paradise,’ one headline reads. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ boasts another.

Nobody got a picture of Sawyer and the woman I saw him with, but that doesn’t matter. They’re posting old pictures of him and random women to make it look like I’ve been getting played all along. I can’t even count how many of my classmates and friends have called to console me over our breakup.

But the thing is, when it comes down to it, I had to admit to myself that I was jealous. That I’ve fallen for a guy who isn’t capable of being with one woman. And even if he were, he wouldn’t choose the one he hired to play a part.

My ridiculous fantasy of him becoming that guy I met the first night, of him falling for me the way I’ve fallen for him, of the two of us living happily-ever-after – it’s all a silly dream. One I know I’ve been fighting since day one.

I don’t even know how it happened. He’s not that great of a guy if I’m being honest. He’s self-centered. He has no idea how to treat a woman. And his arrogance knows no bounds. Why would he think he wouldn’t have to go to my graduation? It’s ludicrous.

I’ve read his texts and emails a dozen times. Each one seemed more desperate. He claimed he was cornered by that woman. That she came on to him and it had just happened when I ran into them. He practically begged me to let him come over. He did come over, but I had Bass turn him away.

But the memory of that woman and her smeared lipstick. And the reality that he’d just said he wanted to find a dark hallway and have sex with me. It all adds up to the fact that he’s an arrogant liar. Maybe he’s been sleeping around all along but has just been very discreet about it.

“Come on, beautiful, you can’t be late for your own graduation,” Bass says, looking all handsome in his dress shirt and tie. “And I told Brooke we’d pick her up on the way.”

“She really likes you,” I say.

He nods. “Yeah, I know.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You don’t like her? She’s very pretty. And nice. She’s the only one of my classmates who hasn’t tried to get something out of this whole deal of my friendship with a famous baseball player.”

“She got courtside seats,” he reminds me.

“But she didn’t ask for them.”

“So, there’s still a deal?” he asks.

I look at the ground. “Yeah. Technically, he didn’t violate the contract.”

“I’m still not sure why you’re so pissed, Penny. You’ve been moping around the apartment all week. You should be excited. You’re graduating. You’re getting a shit-ton of money. You can go to grad school. And Denver will stay out of prison.” He sees me staring at the tabloid on the table. He runs a hand through his hair. “Shit. You’ve fallen for the guy, haven’t you? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

I shrug and try to swallow the tears that threaten to fall.

“Mother fucker,” he says, going over to sit on the couch.

He looks mad. Really mad. But more than that, he looks hurt.

“You know it can’t happen, don’t you?” he asks. “The guy is a womanizer. If you didn’t know that before last weekend, you do now. He begged you to sleep with him and when you said no, he grabbed the next person in line. He’s not worth it, Aspen. He’s not worth your thoughts, your time, and especially not your tears.” He stands up and wipes his thumb under my eye to catch one that’s fallen.