Strict (Part Three) Read online

  She shrugs. “I just didn’t have the money, and my landlord finally issued an eviction notice. I ignored it for as long as I could, but when the police showed up and threatened to escort me off the premises…”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Not that I could have helped. I’m broke, too. But not in the same way Grace is broke.

  Grace and I met freshman year of college when we lived on the same floor in our dorm – both of us hated our roommates, but the housing office refused to let us switch. (Something about trying to work through interpersonal conflicts. The housing office was big on trying to get us to expand our horizons and learn to get along with all kinds of different people – which is why they wouldn’t let me room with Cassidy.) But by the end of the semester, I was pretty much living in Grace’s room and her roommate was living in mine.

  Grace is an orphan – her parents died when she was a sophomore in high school, and the grandmother she was sent to live with died when she was eighteen. She has no brothers and sisters, no family.

  When she lost her scholarship junior year, she had to take a break from school, and now she works at a bar off campus, waitressing.

  “I didn’t want you to freak out,” she says, “and besides, it’s not that big of a deal. If you could just let me stay here for a few days, I think I can probably figure something out.”

  “You can stay here as long as you want.” It’s probably breaking like five million rules, but since Cassidy died, Grace is the closest thing I have left to a sister.

  “That girl Alanna seems intense,” Grace says, signaling that the subject of her eviction is now closed. I have a million questions for her – like why did she come all the way to New York City instead of just finding a friend to crash with in Syracuse? And what about her job—won’t they be upset if she doesn’t come back to work? But the smudges of mascara under her eyes give away the fact that she’s been crying, and I don’t want to push her.

  “Yeah, well, I think she’s blackmailing me,” I say instead.

  “What?” Grace asks. “Blackmailing you about what?”

  I sigh and head to the mini-fridge in the corner of my room, pull out two Diet Cokes, and tell her the whole sordid story. Everything. The night at Strict. The first day of my internship. And all of the things that have happened between me and Gage.

  “Wow,” Grace says when I’m done.

  “You think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  I swallow and play with the pop-top on my can of soda. “Do you think it’s stupid to… to want be in that kind of relationship, after what happened with my sister?”

  Grace takes a sip of her drink, considering. When she finally speaks, I can tell she’s being deliberate with her words. “I don’t think that what happened to your sister had anything to do with the kind of relationship she was in. I think Cassidy chose a bad man.”

  “But…?” I prompt, sensing there’s something else she wants to say.

  “But I think you need to ask yourself if you really like what he’s doing to you…or if you’re only doing it because it makes you feel closer to Cassidy.”

  By the time I fall into a restless sleep, it’s already almost time to get up for work.

  I shower and dress, then follow Alanna and Poppy dutifully to the subway as they chatter on about some reality show I don’t watch, cups of takeout coffee from a café on the corner clutched in our hands.

  We spend the day putting the finishing touches on our pitches to Gage, and after lunch the three of us are herded into the conference room for a meeting with him.

  When he finally appears, my heart constricts. He’s wearing a dark charcoal suit, his dark hair perfectly coifed, his six-foot-two frame as commanding as ever. I remember what he looked like with his shirt off, his abs clenching as he came all over my hand, and my skin prickles with awareness.

  It’s like we have a secret that only the two of us know.

  Or three if you count Grace.

  And possibly, four, if you add Alanna.

  My stomach turns at that last thought.

  Gage, however, seems like he hasn’t given a second thought to what happened between us last night.

  He takes a seat at the end of the conference room table. Willow trails behind him, wearing a high-necked white blouse with a ruffle down the middle and long sleeves. I try not to think about the tattoo on her wrist, or what it means that she was engaged to River.

  “I’m ready to get started,” Gage says by way of greeting. “Have the three of you agreed on which companies you think may be appropriate for an investment from Stratford?”

  “Yes, Mr. Stratford,” Alanna says immediately, giving him a confident smile. Her statement isn’t exactly true. We’ve been able to narrow it down to three, but there were definitely some disagreements.

  “Don’t keep me in suspense, Ms. Miller,” Gage says, sounding sarcastic and slightly bored, like our thoughts would never be anything worth being in suspense about. “Tell me what you’ve decided.”

  “We choose Poshscript, the stationery company, Evino, the mail-order wine subscription service, and Scoop Me, the frozen yogurt store,” Alanna reports smugly, like it’s a test and she’s aced it.

  Gage blinks, impassive, then leans back in his chair. A heavy silence falls over the room, and Alanna’s smile falters just a little.

  None of us say anything, waiting for Gage to speak.

  After another moment, he swivels his chair so that he’s facing me across the table. “And you agree with this, Ms. Cavanaugh?”

  “Yes.” I say it with confidence. But the tone in his voice, the way he’s asking the question makes me feel like maybe I don’t agree with it.

  “Okay.” He says it the way you’d say to a child who’s insisting that two plus two equals five. “Each of you tell me the company you are most interested in.”

  “Evino,” Poppy says.

  “Scoop Me,” Alanna says.

  “Poshscript,” I say.

  Gage turns his attention back to me, his eyes boring into mine. I shift uncomfortably on my seat. “Why Poshscript, Ms. Cavanaugh?” he asks.

  “Their growth year over year has been impressive,” I say, sliding their profit and loss statement over to him. “They’ve grown, but not at a rate that would cause them to get overwhelmed by expansion. Their cost to acquire a customer is two dollars, and that customer then spends, on average, twenty dollars a month on their website, with a reorder rate of seventy percent.”

  Gage ignores the information I’ve just sent across the table to him. I don’t know if it’s because he’s already familiar with it, or because he doesn’t think it’s relevant.

  “And their management team?” he presses, steepling his fingers together.

  “Sheila Nelson is their CEO,” I say. “And while there’s been some turnover, the team she has in place now seems stable.”

  “And what do you base that on?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He sighs, impatient. “The fact that their management team is now stable. What do you base that on?”

  “I spoke with Sheila by email,” I say, pleased at myself for not letting the fact that Gage’s reception the other night had been cut short to stop me from making contact with the head of Poshscript. “She sent me the roster of their current team, all of whom have been there for at least six months.”

  “And do you think six months is enough time to make sure a management team is stable?”

  “I think the answer to that question depends on numerous different factors.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the cash flow of the company and how committed they are to their current team.”

  “And you’ve researched their managers?”

  “Some of them were at the party,” I say pointedly. “But I didn’t get a chance to speak with them.” It’s out of my mouth before I realize it sounds like – no, that it is -- an excuse. Gage’s eyes narrow.

  “S
o you didn’t know that Kayla McNamara, their current head of operations, has never stayed at a job for more than eight months? And that their head of customer service was fired from his last job for subpar performance?”

  “That’s not…” I flip through the binder before me, looking for some kind of hint of any of the things that’s he’s told me

  “You won’t find the answers in the binder, Ms. Cavanaugh. Our job as investors is to do our due diligence on these companies, not just take everything at face value. To invest in Poshscript means that we’d have to consider putting in a new management team of our choosing. I wonder how their CEO would feel about that.”

  “I’m not sure,” I mumble.

  “Well, that’s something you should have figured out before you tried to put my money at risk.”

  My cheeks burn. The problem is, I’m not sure if he’s right or if this is some kind of test. Yes, Poshscript’s management team might have been less than stellar, but is that really a deal breaker? Would Gage really turn them away for that? Their financials are stable, and private equity firms are notorious for buying companies and then clearing out their employees. It’s a risk a company takes whenever they accept money from an outside source.

  I feel like I should be able to ask these questions – after all, that’s the reason I’m here, right? To learn.

  But Gage has moved on, and he similarly eviscerates both Poppy and Alanna’s picks, making me feel not so bad about what he did to me, but not exactly great either.

  The only thing I can do is take solace in the fact that the smug smile on Alanna’s face gets wiped off as Gage points out exactly how the company she choose is a mess.

  Okay, I tell myself. You want to play tough at work, Mr. Stratford? Fine. Game on.

  Chapter 3

  CHLOE

  “One, two, three, drink!” Grace takes the shot of tequila, licking her wristful of salt before downing it and then sucking on a lemon.

  I try to do the same, but only manage half of the shot before my throat burns and my stomach lurches.

  “Ugh,” I say, setting the shot glass back down on the bar. We’re at some hole-in-the-wall bar in Morningside Heights that’s aptly called Hot Shots. Grace found it after googling “cheapest bars in Manhattan.” And it looks like the cheapest bar in Manhattan – all wood paneling and cracked upholstery, the dartboard on the wall dangling precariously from a bent metal hook.

  “You’re not doing it right,” Grace says, shaking her head.

  “I can’t,” I say, taking a sip of water to try to chase away the taste of the liquor. “It’s too just too vile.”

  “That’s the point. You’re supposed to down it so you don’t have to taste it.”

  “How it consuming something that you’re not supposed to taste the point?”

  “Because it’s not supposed to taste good, it’s supposed to get you drunk.”

  “I don’t think I should be drunk,” I say morosely, taking another sip of my water and deciding to feel sorry for myself. “Not after the day I had.”

  “Why are you interning at a private equity firm anyway?” Grace asks, motioning to the bartender for more shots. “That’s not what you want to do, is it?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  She frowns. “What do you want to do again?”

  “I’m not sure.” I twirl the ice around in my water glass, contemplating Grace’s question. When I first decided to major in business in undergrad, it was because that’s what Cassidy was doing. We had plans to open our own business after we got our MBAs. What kind of business, we weren’t sure. But Cassidy was always good at coming up with plans, and I guess I just thought she would come up with something spectacular. After she was killed I completed my degree and went for my MBA, that was the track I was on, and it seemed like a good way to honor her memory.

  But I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. Now that she was gone, I had no one to tell me what to do.

  “Well, you better figure it out soon,” Grace says, then sighs. She lays her head down on the bar, apparently not caring about things like germs and bacteria and communicable diseases, all of which I’m sure are residing in this place. “Sorry. I’m really the last person to be giving anyone advice on what they should be doing with their life.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” I say, then wait for her to give me some clue of what exactly happened, why she got evicted, and why she decided to come to New York, when it would have been pretty easy for her to crash with a friend in Syracuse while she saved up money for a new place.

  But instead, she grabs my hand and pulls me onto the small dance floor –which is really just a cleared space on the dirty wooden floor -- where the sound system is playing a dancey pop mix. I’ve always felt self-conscious dancing in front of people, but there’s a fair amount of people already dancing, and I stick to the middle of the group.

  Also, the tequila must have started to kick in, because I have a buzzy feeling in my head that makes it easier to let go and not worry about what other people think.

  I lose myself in the music for a while, until my phone buzzes against my hip, where I’ve shoved it in my pocket along with my ID and credit card.

  I pull it out.

  One new text.

  Gage Stratford.

  My heart pounds just at the sight of his name on the screen.

  WHERE ARE YOU

  All caps, no question mark, as if the thought of a question mark at the end of a question is superfluous to him, as if just the fact that the text is from him will convey the idea of how serious it is. Which, I have to admit, is actually quite effective.

  I write back, OUT WITH A FRIEND, wondering if I would have had the balls to do it in all caps if I wasn’t just a little bit tipsy.

  Then I wonder if he’s texting me as a boss, or as a ….whatever it is you call someone that did the things he did to me last night. Is it possible that he needs me for some work-related crisis?

  Where?

  This time, his reply comes with no caps, and just a question mark. Which is almost more…ominous, somehow, as if he’s calm now because he’s gained control of the situation by getting me to reply.

  Do you need me for something work-related, Mr. Stratford? I type back.

  Where. Are. You.

  I chew on my lip, not sure what to do. But then I decide he’s being a real dick. He was a dick to me earlier today in that meeting, and he’s being even more of a dick right now.

  If he doesn’t need me for something work-related, then my time off is my time off. I can do what I want.

  So I text him back the name of the club.

  And when he doesn’t reply, I let myself fall back into the music, moving to the beat as the DJ puts on a One Direction remix of a song Cassidy used to love.

  Chapter 4

  GAGE

  The text comes to me with a name of a bar. She’s at a bar. Some wretched place called Hot Shots, a ridiculous name that shows the idiots who run it gave no thought to branding or originality. And who is this alleged friend she’s with? The thought of her with another man, touching her, talking to her, sends jealousy burning through me.

  I google the place, scanning down the list of yelp reviews, blanching at the pictures people have posted of themselves sweaty and drunk, dancing and reveling.

  One user exclaims that the place is great for hookups, and that they have the best margaritas, like, ever!

  I snort in disgust.

  And then I think about last night, the way she looked spread out before me, her nipples hard, her hand moving over my cock, the little ‘oh’ of surprise that her full lips made when I came all over her hand.

  I tell myself to stop. Not to think of her. I have work to do, reports to write, River’s company to deal with.

  It would be reckless to go out gallivanting around the city, showing up at some bar and doing what? Dragging her out of there? Taking her back to my car, telling her the rules, punishing her naked ass, slashing my belt ag
ainst her virgin flesh.

  That’s all it takes -- one image of her naked ass, and I’m up and out the door, on my way to find her.

  When I arrive, I step out of my car and watch through the window.

  She’s dancing in the middle of a loose knot of people, her hands in the air, her cheeks flushed, a slight smile on her lips. God, she’s beautiful.

  Something clenches in my heart, something unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I’ve had physical reactions to many women before, of course I have, but this is something different.

  I take a deep breath and try to steady myself, telling myself that it’s just because I haven’t fucked her yet, that once I get that out of my system, I’ll be able to calm down. But the thought of fucking her is intense, knowing she’s never had a cock inside of her, that I’d be taking something from her that she’s never given to anyone else.

  I should stay away.

  She’s damaged.

  Not as damaged as me, but still damaged. The kind of damage that is incompatible with the things I need.

  I should let her go, leave her alone, let her find a man that can soothe her wounds instead of breaking them wide open.

  But at that moment, a douchebag in an NYU hat approaches her from behind, his hands resting lightly on her waist as he begins to dance with her.

  No.

  Mine.

  Before I can stop myself, I’m marching into the bar, not giving a fuck who sees what I’m about to do.

  Chapter 5

  CHLOE

  It happens in an instant.

  One second, I’m dancing with some random guy who’s wearing too much body spray, and the next second, Gage is there, shoving the guy in the shoulder so hard that he stumbles backwards.

  “Hey!” I say as Gage grabs my arm and starts leading me toward the exit. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What you, apparently, are too naive to do,” he growls.

  When we get out onto the sidewalk, he opens the door to his car, which he’s somehow managed to park right in front of the place. In New York City. Where there are never any parking spaces. “Get in.”