Daddy's Bought Virgin: A Fake Marriage Romance (Innocence Book 2) Read online

  One of Sasha’s headlights is out, and the other is pointed at a strange angle.

  Her car is at least a couple decades old, riding low to the ground because the suspension is completely busted. The car makes a horrible clanking sound. Coupled with a grinding sound, and the sound of a loud whistle, the car makes enough of a racket that as I look behind me, I see Lily looking up from her car to see what’s going on.

  “Where are you going?” calls Lily after me, waving her hands for me to come back. She holds up the dress, and it looks gorgeous, perfect.

  I’m standing here in the middle of the street, with Sasha’s car rushing towards me, with Lily behind me, holding the dress that will allow me to keep my million dollars.

  All I have to do is dry my tears, change, and go to the dinner party. David Masters will never know the difference.

  But I know what I have to do.

  Sasha skids to a stop right in front of me, blaring her horn. She opens her door and rushes out to me, her face full of worry.

  “Are you OK?” she says frantically, gripping my arms. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Can you take me home?”

  “Get in,” says Sasha, trying to open the passenger door for me.

  But it’s stuck.

  Sasha lets go of me to give the door a good, solid kick right at the handle.

  “It always sticks like this,” she says.

  “Olivia!” cries Lily, from behind us.

  “Who’s she?” asks Sasha.

  “Nobody,” I say.

  Finally, the door is open and I get inside, tossing my bag into the back seat.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  Sasha jams her foot onto the gas pedal, turning the car around wildly on the empty street. I look into the mirror and see Lily, a symbol of the life I’m leaving behind.

  David

  “I’m sorry for the delay, gentlemen,” I say. “I’m sure she’ll be down any minute.”

  Suddenly, Ryan’s wife, Lily, comes into the room.

  Everyone stares at her, probably wondering where the hell Olivia is. A lot of them haven’t met her before. So far, this is going terribly. The judge is asking me all sorts of questions about her, about how we met, and what she’s like. My plan is crumbling at my feet.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she whispers to me.

  I get up, excusing myself, and follow Lily into the kitchen, where Nancy is pretending to clean the sink, but is obviously only interested in listening to what we have to say.

  “She’s left,” says Lily.

  “What do you mean she’s left?”

  “I don’t know what happened. Her dress was… messed up… from…”

  I nod my head, and urge her to continue.

  “She was really upset, and I told her I’d get her a new dress… but next thing I knew she was running down the street and some beat up old car came and picked her up.”

  I nod, and feel something inside me…

  It’s a feeling I haven’t felt for a long time, and it’s guilt. It’s almost hard to recognize it, but it’s palpable, like a physical thing that’s been lodged inside me, and it’s impossible to ignore.

  Why did I treat her like that? Why did I act like such a dick and tell her to figure something out? Why didn’t I at least send Nancy up to help her get something else to wear?

  “Why don’t you head back in with everyone else?” I say to Lily.

  “What’s happened?” says Nancy, uncharacteristically.

  I ignore her.

  I dial Olivia’s number, but of course it goes straight to voice mail.

  I don’t need to be told exactly what this means.

  She’s left.

  But it’s only now that I realize… that the thing I’m most worried about isn’t whether or not the judge is going to believe me… believe that I’m a changed man and that Olivia is really my wife.

  It hits me in a single split second. No, I’m not worried about any of that.

  I’m worried about Olivia.

  I want her and I need her.

  I need her back, for real this time.

  Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about keeping Laura away from Alicia.

  “What’s going on?” says Judge Carter, with a bit of a smirk on his face. “Your new wife hasn’t shown up yet?”

  “She lives here,” I say coldly. “Where would she be showing up from? It turns out, though, that she’s come down with a bit of the flu, and she won’t be able to join us for dinner.”

  “I see,” says Judge Carter, obviously not believing me.

  “Don’t worry,” says Ryan, looking at me. “These things happen. I’m sure everyone is anxious to meet her just like Lily and me, but we’ll be fine waiting for another time.”

  I nod my head.

  “And,” says Ryan, giving me a knowing look. “We all have our ups and downs, and trust me, Lily and I have had ours. But they always end up OK.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

  “Nothing,” says Ryan.

  I dig back into my steak and take a sip of the wine, swishing it around in my mouth.

  “This isn’t any good,” I say, untruthfully. “I’m so sorry to have served this to you all. Let me go get you something better from the cellar. It won’t take a minute.”

  “It’s delicious,” says Ryan.

  “Quite good,” says someone else.

  “Perfectly adequate,” says Judge Carter, making a face.

  That pisses me off. It is, after all, a very nice wine. There’s nothing wrong with it at all.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, grabbing the wine bottle from the table by the neck and heading out of the room.

  I don’t have any intentions of going back to the table.

  Running into the garage, I hop into the Porsche and jam the button that opens the garage door, only to find that it’s already open.

  No problem. Makes it easier on me. I jam the stick shift into reverse and hit the accelerator and clutch, revving the engine and roaring out of the driveway.

  I call her again on my phone, but there’s no answer.

  “Listen,” I say, speaking to the voicemail. “I’ve been a… I don’t even know what the word is. And this isn’t like the movies, where I… you know how it goes.”

  Despite considering myself quite eloquent normally, especially when it comes to business matters, I just don’t know what to say. I’m completely lost for words, and I’m not even trying to talk to her. I’m just speaking to a damn machine, leaving a message that she’s not even ever going to listen to. It’s pretty clear she wants nothing to do with me.

  I hang up without finishing the message.

  My phone beeps at me. It’s a text from Olivia.

  “I quit,” says the simple message.

  “Won’t you reconsider?” I write. “For increased compensation?”

  This isn’t what I want to say. I want to tell her so much, but I don’t have the words for her. I only have the words for a business deal, for a financial transaction. And that’s not what she is…

  She’s a person, a person that I might care a lot about.

  “No, don’t contact me again,” reads the next text message.

  Damn it.

  Fuck.

  I toss the phone into the passenger seat and pull the car over to the side of the road, putting it in neutral and letting it coast to a dead stop.

  The night around me is silent and dark. There’s nothing here, except buildings that appear empty and a couple of dead trees.

  Philly is a strange city in that on one block the houses are nice, and the streets are full of activity, and then on the next the houses are falling down and no one’s out.

  This is one of those blocks.

  I’m usually just driving from one place to the next, never looking at my surroundings. I’m on the phone, on my headset, or dictating a business note to my phone, or I’m thinking about negotiations
or tactics.

  I must have driven this route a hundred times, but I’ve never pulled the car over and stopped to look.

  Most of the houses have busted up windows and boarded up doors. They’re abandoned, except for maybe some vagrants that live inside.

  I hadn’t noticed, but the radio is playing some soft jazz music. I turn it off in frustration.

  I’m feeling all these emotions that I’ve been stuffing deep away for so long, and I don’t know what to do about them.

  The world seems dead and empty, and I’m the same way. Everything has come to nothing, and I realize that I need her, and that I can’t have her. Everything is lost. Completely.

  Olivia

  “So what the hell happened?” says Sasha, taking her eyes off the road to look at me and my gown. “You look crazy!”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know. The gown’s ruined.”

  “What the hell happened? Are you OK? Do we need to go to the police or anything?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s nothing like that. The gown just got ruined during… sex.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “So you’re not a virgin anymore. That totally changed our dynamic, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno,” says Sasha, shrugging. “We can talk about that later. But what happened? I haven’t heard from you at all from the wedding.”

  “Things aren’t… as they seem,” I say.

  “OK,” says Sasha. “This is getting really weird. You need to tell me exactly what’s happening or I’m driving us right to the police station. If you don’t want to go, I’m stopping the car then.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I say. “But it’s nothing like that. You don’t need to be worried. I’m fine. Now, at least. OK, so here it goes…”

  I tell her everything that happened, down to every last detail, leaving out most of the sex, though. I may not be a virgin anymore, but there are some things I’d rather keep private, mainly how fucking great it felt, how incredible it was.

  “That’s insane,” says Sasha. “So none of this was real? And you lied to me at the wedding? You made me think you were really getting married. Who does that? Who are you? And you had sex with him? Was that part of the contract too, to please his cock, to fulfill your wifely duties?”

  “No,” I say. “That was just… spontaneous. In fact, we weren’t supposed to hook up. That was part of the deal. That’s when everything went south.”

  “You’re telling me,” says Sasha.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I can’t believe you made me think it was all real.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” I say. “I’m sorry, Sasha. I really wanted to tell you… but who knows what would have happened. He would have found out somehow.” I don’t want to tell her that I know she would have opened her mouth somehow somewhere.

  “I get it,” says Sasha. “It’s a lot of money. You said a million dollars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, that’s a lot. Is he looking for another fake wife?”

  “Sasha!”

  “It’s just a lot of money.”

  “So you’re not mad at me?”

  “How can I be? Hell, I’d do that same thing for a million dollars.”

  “Well now I’m not going to get any of it,” I say. “And I’ll have to quit that job. There’s no way I can work there now. I’m going to be completely broke and also in debt.”

  “Join the club,” says Sasha. “But seriously, something will come along.”

  “That was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” I say. “And I completely blew it.”

  “You never know…”

  “Come on,” I say. “When have you ever heard of something this crazy? Being offered a million dollars for a few months’ work.”

  “But you’re doing the right thing,” says Sasha. “You just can’t do that. I’m glad you’re coming back.”

  “Wait,” I say, my mind suddenly turning to the practical, despite how desperate and despairing I feel. “Is there even room for me? Didn’t you rent out my room?”

  “Oh,” says Sasha, her voice falling. “I’m sorry, but yeah… I mean, what was I supposed to do, though?”

  “But I sent you a check for the amount!”

  “Well, I’m broke too!”

  “So you stole the money from me?”

  “Let’s not look at it that way.”

  “I don’t see how I can’t.”

  “I’ll give it back to you, now that I know you’re not really married to a zillionaire.”

  “A billionaire,” I say, correcting her.

  “Whatever. He’s got a lot of money. And I thought you did too. I thought you had more than you knew what to do with. What’s $500 to you?”

  “It’s a lot now. Who’s in my room, anyway?”

  “I don’t really know her. She’s some woman who responded to my Craigslist ad.”

  “You got just some random roommate?”

  “She’s kind of weird too. I haven’t seen her much, though. She generally stays in her room.”

  “Does she work?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.

  “How old is she?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions. Are you jealous or something?”

  “I just don’t like the idea of someone in my room. I left a ton of my stuff in there.”

  “Well it’s still there, so long as she didn’t do anything with it. I think she’s about 45.”

  “That’s about how old David is.”

  “He’s 45? Damn, he doesn’t look that old.”

  “It’s not that old, really.”

  “So how was the sex?”

  “Sasha!”

  “I’m just asking…”

  “It was… great. But that’s the problem. It’s like we started this other relationship on top of the business one. I mean, in some ways, I love being with him. He makes me feel safe, and…”

  “He gets you off?”

  I nod my head and she glances over to see me. Hopefully she doesn’t notice that I’m blushing considerably.

  “But the thing is that he’s just not there… emotionally… and I don’t think he ever will be.”

  “That’s almost all men,” says Sasha. “Get used to it. It’s just the fuck and the dump. Or the disappear. Or the ghosting. That’s been getting more popular lately.”

  “The ghosting? What the hell is that?”

  “Oh, that’s when someone just stops replying to all of your texts, phone calls, emails, whatever. He fucks you and then bam, just disappears like a ghost.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Well, that’s what happened to me with my last hook up. I thought something was really there… I don’t know why I was so dumb.”

  “Join the club,” I say.

  Sasha laughs.

  “But ghosting…” I say, toying with the idea in my mind. “That sounds good… that’s exactly what I’m going to do to David.”

  “You’re just going to ghost him?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  We get back to the apartment, and instead of feeling good to be back, I have a heavy feeling in my chest as I enter the building again. The lobby smells like gas, as always, and the hallway has that unpleasant flickering fluorescent light.

  “Come on,” says Sasha, looking at me. “It’s not that bad. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

  “It’s just that…” I say, dragging my feet on the way in.

  “You’re already used to the billionaire lifestyle,” she says. “But you’ll get back to our level soon enough.”

  We enter the apartment, Sasha opening the door slowly, calling out, “Alicia? Alicia, are you there?”

  “Hi!” says a woman with hair that’s sticking practically straight up. She’s about David’s age, but she looks much older. Her skin is gaunt and she’s way too thin.

  “This is my friend, Olivia,” she says, presenting
me. “Olivia, this is Alicia.”

  We shake hands, and hers feels cold and clammy. Her hand is very thin and bony.

  “I was just working on the roof,” says Alicia excitedly. Her eyes are wide and almost popping out of her head.

  “The roof?” says Sasha, concerned.

  As far as I know, there’s nothing wrong with the roof whatsoever. Sure, the pipes leak in the kitchen and the toilet clogs, but I’ve never had a problem with the roof.

  “Of course! Didn’t you see it? It’s all filled with holes that leak.”

  “That leak?”

  “Yeah!” says Alicia, moving her body around strangely. “There’s ice coming down through them. I was getting so very cold and then I saw it! It was so obvious. There were a thousand holes and I plugged them all up! Don’t you see? We’re safe now?”

  She’s talking like she’s crazy.

  For the first time, I notice an odd smell in the apartment. It smells like burnt plastic.

  I look around the common room, which is more of a mess than usual. There’s a broken glass tube on the coffee table.

  “What’s that?” I whisper to Sasha, nudging her and pointing to the broken piece of glass.

  “Shit,” mutters Sasha. “Let’s see what she’s done to the ceiling.”

  “Where did you say you found her?”

  Alicia practically drags us into her (really my) bedroom.

  “What have you done to the ceiling?” says Sasha.

  I sigh when I see the ceiling.

  There’s glue all over it. It looks like she took glue and painted the ceiling with it.

  And not only that, but she’s stuck all kinds of things into the ceiling. And they’re my things, the things that I left in my room and didn’t take to David’s. There’s my diary, my high school yearbook, my comb, and a teddy bear that my aunt gave me when I was four years old.

  “What have you done to all my stuff?” I cry out, my voice cracking in frustration and despair.

  “I’ve plugged up all the holes!” says Alicia, her face straining, her eyes practically popping out of her head.

  “Damnit! You’ve destroyed all my stuff. There aren’t any holes.”

  “Are you insane?” says Alicia. “I’ve stopped all the ice coming in. I would have hoped you wouldn’t have been so selfish… I had to use your things to save our lives!”