Manwhore (The Manwhore Book 1)

A short while later I slip into my bedroom and stand, in my socks and his shirt, and stare at my laptop.

Inhaling, I bring it, along with my shoebox filled with note cards, to the little rug beside my bed. I sit Indian style on the floor and read my notes, one by one. Notes on him.

Truth and loyalty, I had written.

Traits he probably admires in his best friends. Traits he may never have found in the women who are after him. Truth and loyalty . . .

That’s all I can write about. The rest of what I’ve learned is too raw for me to share.

But truth and loyalty.

Things Saint values above love.

Things he wouldn’t find in me. I read the back of the card, my scribbled note, this one talking about me.

I SUCK SOOOO HARD.

He’d stood there talking about truth and loyalty while I sat there moved by everything we talked about, absolutely knowing that I was falling in love, helpless to stop it.

And still, I was taking notes. Studying him like a lab rat. As if he wasn’t human. As if he weren’t driven by the same things everyone else is: a heart, a mind, a body, hormones; as if he didn’t need air and water and maybe even love; as if he were this robot to be scrutinized and picked apart for the amusement of the world.

Really? What does it matter that he’s been with a thousand and one women? What does it matter that he’s the city’s obsession and now also mine? He’s human. He’s entitled to the little privacy he has. He’s so damn closed off, he rarely opens up to anyone, and I know it’s because he’s always so judged and scrutinized.

My eyes water, and suddenly I grab the cards and start tearing them up, one by one. Then I lie with all the notes scattered around me and cry a little. Then I look at the scattered mess. What did I just do? Oh god.

If I want to save the magazine, I need to deliver something.

I breathe in and out.

“Rachel?” I hear Gina call.

She peers inside and scans the mess of torn note cards, and then me. As broken as the paper around me.

“Oh, Rachel.”

I start crying.

“I need to write it.”

“Rachel, tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. If he knows you well at all, he’ll understand.”

“What? That I’m a liar?”

“Tell him you love him,” she says.

“He doesn’t want my love. He values . . . truth and honesty, qualities I don’t possess.”

“You possess them in spades. You’re loyal and honest with everyone.”

“But not with him.”

“From the moment you talk to him and come clean, you will be. Make him see it from your eyes. Maybe you can have it all.”

“Whoever gets it all, Gina? Nobody. Nobody, that’s who.”

“But yet we all believe that we can. Isn’t that the point of everything we do? We want it all. So write this piece. And if you still want him, then you should go get him.”

I pause. “I do want him,” I whisper, wiping my wet face with the back of my hand. “It’s a million tiny things that, added up, tell me there is no one in this world, ever, who will have this spectacular effect on me but him. Sometimes I just can’t see myself when we’re together, I’m so lost in him.” I wipe my eyes. “He’s the only man I dream about at night, and the only man I want to wake up next to in the morning. Everyone is after his fame or his money, but I love him not because of anything he has but because he has me. . . .”

“Oh, Rache. Don’t cry. Maybe there’s hope for you two.”

“How can there be? He doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

“He’s fucking hurting, Rachel! Even I can tell, because there’s not one picture of him without fucking shades to cover his eyes. There must be hell in those eyes, Rachel. I can’t believe I actually feel bad for him now.”

“Because I was the Paul in our relationship. I was the liar.”

“Paul played me. You never played him. Your feelings were real.”

I groan and bury my face in my hands. I remember how Helen warned me from the beginning. That I was too young, playing with adults. I hadn’t seen all of this coming. She was right. I was not ready for this at all.

But I take the Kleenex Gina passes, wipe my tears, connect my laptop, boot it up, and write my heart out.

The day I turn it in, Helen tells me that the Edge email servers are bursting with hate mail for me, and she advises me to take the week to work from home.

The day it’s published, I don’t get out of bed. I don’t answer my phone. My mother stops by, but she ends up chatting with Gina because I don’t want her to see me like this; I’m too sad to fake it today, and she knows me so well. She tells me before she leaves, “I’m going to go paint.”

She’s telling me I should do the same. She’s telling me I’m free to go out there and do something I love.

But what I love hates me.

Twitter:

Did you read your girlfriend’s article? @malcolmsaint

On his Instagram:

No way @malcolmsaint would give that bitch a second chance!!

And the feminist groups online:

Rachel Livingston, our hero! Revenge on the playboys! Want to play with our hearts? Beware the time you will find your own weakness. Revenge is sweet!

Later that week I find enough energy to get out of bed and go to work, and I’m immediately called into Helen’s office.

There’s tension between us. Helen was not happy when I sent over the article. She said, “It’s not what I asked for.”

“No,” I concurred.

Helen took it and printed it anyway.

Today, I’m surprised that she seems pleased to see me, genuinely pleased. “It’s a circus out there,” Helen tells me, waving me forward from behind her cluttered desk.

“I’m not online. Can you blame me?”

“No. But let me fill you in.” She signs to a chair across from her desk, but I remain standing. “Your boyfriend,” she begins with obvious glee, “pulled Vicky’s piece. It can’t be reposted without legal repercussions now.” She eyes me with a new gleam of respect and admiration, and adds, “In case you lost me when I said ‘your boyfriend’ ”—she laughs happily—“Malcolm Saint canned any print editions of Victoria’s post—and it was removed from the blog.” She nods ever so slowly and somberly.

My eyes widen. “What?” I finally speak.

“Victoria’s article. Your boyfriend owns the rights. It can’t be published anymore—not without his say-so.”

“What? How?”

She shrugs, then leans back in her chair with a little creak of the wheels. “Seems like Saint doesn’t want it out there.”

Ohmigod, he made Victoria’s story go away? “If he canned Victoria’s, why not ours? Why didn’t he can mine?” Why didn’t he read mine?!

My heart is in a fist in my chest and so are my lungs.

“Guess he doesn’t hate you that much.” She shrugs casually, but stops herself when she seems to notice—finally notice—that I’m crushed. That my hair is a mess, my face is a mess, I’m a mess. “Maybe he does like you, Rachel,” she says softly. “I’m impressed, did you know? I’m not the only one who’s impressed. The world is impressed too. He hasn’t been seen . . . consorting with you-know-what types.” She taps a pencil absently on her desk, her eyes narrowed on me. “But he’s been skydiving daily. You’d think he has a death wish or has some serious mojo to get out of his system.”

I hardly hear her. I need to get away. From Edge, from her, from this office. “Is it all right if I work from home today, Helen?”

Though I sense her reluctance, she agrees. I go get my things from my desk, aching to my bones.

Saint skydiving.

Saint buying Victoria’s article.

Saint thinking I betrayed him.

Outside that afternoon, I stop when Edge stares back at me from a newsstand, one copy remaining on this side, a few on the other.

“You read that yet?” The man behind the newsstand whistles and laughs. “That reporter’s got her panties in a twist over the guy.”

I lift my head, prepared to scream at the man. Instead, I scan the picture of Saint that Helen used on the cover—those icy green eyes staring back at me. And yes, this man is right. I do have my panties in a twist over Saint. Not just my panties—my entire body. My entire life.

I miss him like nobody’s business.

I want to kiss him.

I want to squeeze him. With my arms. And my thighs. With my whole body until I BREAK or he breaks me, and that’s just fine, as long as he comes after me.

“Smart woman,” I finally whisper, emotion thickening my voice. “I think I’ll take him home with me.”

I buy the copy just because of Malcolm’s picture. Sharp tie, perfect collar, and that thick-lashed gaze, screaming to be warmed, that gets me. It’s a marvel how those eyes of green ice can so easily melt me.

I sit down on a bench with the magazine on my lap, brushing my fingertips over his eyes, wondering for the thousandth time if he will ever read what I wrote to him.