Chapter 8: To Hell With the Terms

Imogen's POV

The elevator doors opened on Colby with one hand braced against the wall.

His tie was gone and his collar was open, and he smelled of whiskey from six feet away.

"Em," he said. "Em, there you are."

Nathaniel stepped in front of me without a word.

"Go home, Colby."

"I'm talking to my wife."

"She isn't your wife."

"Paper says she is."

Colby swayed and caught himself on the door frame.

"Em, come home. I'll say whatever you want. I'll stand up at the dinner and say it."

"Just come home, baby."

I looked at the man I had slept next to for five years.

He had been crying.

It did nothing to me at all.

"Say what happened in my bed," I said.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

"That's what I thought."

"You don't know what he is," Colby said, and his voice rose.

"You have no idea what you're sleeping next to."

"Ask him what he did, Em. Ask him why he's never read the report."

Nathaniel took him by the back of the collar.

He did it without any effort at all.

He turned Colby around, walked him two steps to the elevator and put him inside it.

"Get him a car," Nathaniel told the doorman on the intercom, "and send the bill to my father."

"Nate," Colby said, from inside, and I had never heard him call him that.

His voice cracked.

"Nate, please. Don't let her ask."

The doors slid closed.

I stood in the hall with my pulse in my ears.

"Don't let her ask," I said. "Ask what?"

"He's drunk."

"That wasn't drunk, that was afraid."

Nathaniel did not answer.

He was looking at his right hand.

The cuts across his knuckles had opened again, and a thin line of blood ran down between two fingers.

I had a promise to keep, and a man bleeding in front of me.

I took his hand.

I did not think about it.

"Terms, Mr. Lathrop," I said.

His eyes came up to mine.

They were the darkest I had ever seen them.

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