N is for... (Checklist Book 14) by L DuBois (best classic books TXT) 📕

He hadn’t been brave enough to do either. Damn.

He could explain that he didn’t talk about his past, not at Las Palmas. He could encourage her to stay, pull her back onto his lap, and touch her, gently at first, but with increasing intimacy, until she was ready to go again.

There was something in the tightness of the skin around her eyes that stopped him.

“Next weekend.” Daniel stepped back, out of her space.

She relaxed. “Thank you. For listening. For making me feel…a little less broken.”

“You were never broken,” he assured her.

“Hearing you say it makes me believe it just a little bit more.” She gathered her long blanket train, holding it in the hand not pressed to her breasts to keep the rest of it in place. “Until next weekend, Sir.” She added a sassy little wink.

Daniel watched her walk away, and hated himself for not being brave enough to stop her.

Chapter 15

“This is stupid. I’m sorry.” Autumn looked at her best friend. “You should go home.”

Summer gestured with her glass. “Don’t be stupid. I’m your ride-or-die bitch.”

“Cheers to that.” Autumn picked up her own glass and touched it to Summer’s. It wasn’t the first time this evening they’d toasted.

They’d been friends since freshman year of college when they’d been roommates. Someone in the housing department thought they were clever, assigning girls named Autumn and Summer to the same room. They’d bonded over a similar feelings about their names—both of them having a combination of irritation and pride in their seasonal names.

They’d held each other’s hands through those first awkward months of college. Their lives had taken different, if parallel, tracks in the past few years. They were both finally established in their careers. Summer was going to save humanity from itself. She was a program manager for a major environmental non-profit.

Autumn had always been good with numbers, but earned her BA in economics, which was an odd major, since economists were people with advanced degrees, and besides that, her best job prospect was to teach.

She’d gone a different route, making her own way in the world of what she liked to think of as fake-money.

Now she was a hedge fund manager, a position she’d taken just because it was a new challenge. They’d begged her to come on board because Autumn had made a name for herself, and an ungodly amount of money, as a day trader. High risk, high reward, and the earning potential had been nearly unlimited.

She’d paid off her parents’ house, was paying cash for her siblings’ college tuition, and her abuela was still lighting candles for her every week, because she was sure Autumn had to be doing something illegal to have made that much money that fast.

Her day-trading mentor—one of her professors—had always said she had a super high EQ—emotional quotient, to go with a good IQ, which was why she could handle high risk day trading. Before yesterday, she would have agreed with him.

But it had taken Daniel to point out that she didn’t actually despise other submissives, but was, in fact, afraid for them. Afraid they’d experience the pain she’d gone through. So much for a high emotional quotient.

“Remind me again who we’re looking for?” Summer leaned in, head swiveling so she could scan the crowd in the dim bar with narrowed eyes.

“We’re not looking for anyone. He probably won’t come. It was just something we said in passing.”

With every minute that passed, Autumn felt a little stupider for coming here. The hunting-lodge themed whiskey bar was her local hangout, since her downtown LA condo was up on the twenty-seventh floor of this same building. She’d spent the day in her pajamas, studiously not thinking about Daniel. She’d planned to keep that going right through the night, but as the sun set she’d gotten antsy with the need to do something.

What bar would we have met at?

His question ran on a loop through her brain as she showered, did her hair, and put on her best jeans and a black stretchy top with a deep V and ruched detailing on the sleeves. Jeans and a cute top was the universal going out standard in L.A.

She’d been about to order a car to take her out to Santa Monica when some semblance of sanity returned. She wasn’t going to go sit alone in the rooftop bar at the Bungalow, hoping he’d show up. That wasn’t romantic, it was somewhere between pathetic and stalker.

Instead she’d called Summer, who’d still been at work in East L.A. Summer jumped on the gold line train and met her upstairs at her condo, where she’d borrowed a cute top to go with the jeans she was already wearing. Then, arm in arm, they’d taken the elevator down to the second floor of the building, passing out of the private residences’ lobby and into the small landing where a faux log-cabin door marked the entrance to the bar.

While they sipped their first drink, Autumn had told Summer about Daniel. Not all of it, but enough. She’d met a man at that secret club she belonged to—the one Summer thought was some sort of finance world power broker hangout. They’d hit it off, talked, but not exchanged numbers, because that was frowned upon in the club. Summer had made a weird face at that, but hadn’t called her out, so Autumn kept up the lie, saying that though they hadn’t exchanged information, she’d told Daniel about her two favorite bars.

Summer had been all for splitting up, one of them going to the other bar which was a few streets over in the basement of what used to be a bank. Now people could sip drinks while sitting in the old vault. Autumn had shut that shit down, because she felt stupid enough already. Having to sit here by herself, while Summer was at the other place, would only make it worse.

“I could send John to the