The Other Side of Greed by Lily Zante
Chapter Thirty-Five
BRANDON
Fuck.
I’m a jangled-up mess. My dick wants one thing, but my head is telling me something else.
And my heart. I can’t look at Kyra and not feel something. That’s why we’re in this hot, sticky mess. I want her. But everything we have, everything she thinks I am, is a lie. An intricate web of deception. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell her the truth about what I do on my days off. I could have started there. I should have started there. I should have told her who I am, what I do and why I walked into Redhill.
Only now I’m in her bed, and all I want to do is fuck her. But it is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and this makes it difficult. It holds me back, because I can do this and not care. I have done this and not cared. Not this—I’ve never become romantically involved in order to secure a deal. Never. This is a first. But I have run roughshod over people.
With Kyra, this is something else. I have come to care for her more than I thought was possible for someone like me. But everything about me is a lie. That I’ve always been Brandon Hawks. That I was born on the day I was adopted by the billionaire Philip Hawks.
That Brandon Clements, the unwanted boy, doesn’t exist.
Kyra would like the real me, the boy I used to be. After all, she saves children like this. But telling her the truth over all the lies will be impossible. She will never give me a chance.
I slow down my steps and wonder what the hell I’m doing. This is wrong on so many levels, and yet I can’t help the way I feel about this woman.
I will hurt her so badly.
Each lie is built on another lie which is built on another lie.
But she’s waiting and my dick will explode unless I bury myself inside her right now. I buy the condoms and rush back. My cell phone rings just as I reach her place and I rush to answer it, my breath ragged from me almost running, but also because my hard-on isn’t helping.
“Brandon?”
It’s a voice I don’t recognize.
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Emma’s father.”
The blood in my veins freezes. “What’s wrong? Is she okay?” I’m prepared for the worst, because he wouldn’t call me unless it was the worst.
“She’s better. She’s much better.” I hear the laugh in his voice. “She asked for you.”
“She did?”
“Could you come by? It’s not urgent or –”
“I’ll be there.” Emma asked for me. She wouldn’t ask for me unless it was something urgent. I have to go.
I knock on Kyra’s door, my hopes deflate, just like my steel hardness. The surge of adrenaline whooshes clean out of my body. She opens the door wearing nothing but a bedsheet, and her smile slips when she sees my face. She can read me in an instant, and I can’t hide anything from her.
She steps back as I walk in, closing the door behind me. We stare at each other. “You’ve changed your mind?” she asks, her head cocked because this sudden turn doesn’t make sense.
“Emma’s dad called me.”
“Is everything okay?”
I nod. “I think so, but I’m not sure. At first I thought it must be bad news if he’s calling me.”
“You should go.”
“I don’t want to leave like this. I need to exp—”
“No, you don’t. You just need to go, Brad.”
Knowing Kyra, I completely get how she must feel. I’m giving up sex with her to go visit a friend. I see her mind going through mental hoops and jumps because something about me—everything about me—isn’t adding up. She should tell me to get the hell lost. She should yell and scream at me that she never wants to see me again. But she blinks and listens patiently, drawing the sheet around her really tightly.
“Let me explain.” I move towards her, but she moves back. It’s guilt which makes me run to Emma. Feeling personally responsible for her accident, I have no choice but to go to her if she asked for me.
“Emma’s waiting, Brad. You should go.”
Maybe this is a sign, one of those signs that Kyra was talking about. I’m on the verge of making a huge mistake, and leaving here is the best thing to do.