Savage Hearts by Chloe Cox Page B

seek abuse. Which implied that she had been abused.
    So she had been going back and forth between secretly swooning a little bit, getting uncomfortably turned on, and then becoming all together terrified. Just this endless, confusing cycle of craziness, curled up by herself in her favorite lumpy chair, swirling one endless glass of wine, and wondering what the hell she was going to do.
    Which was why, when hefonwhy, whr phone buzzed its way across her coffee table, she grabbed for it with a sense of relief. Until she saw who it was.
    Jason.
    Just a text message this time. One of those incredibly innocent-sounding texts that no third party in their right mind would construe as a threat or an attempt to wound her; he was, after all, a lawyer.
    “Out to dinner with Lindsay. Wish you were here.”
    Sounded perfectly innocuous, but Cate knew better, and Jason knew that. What that text actually said was, “I’ll be screwing some chick named Lindsay tonight just to show you I can. You’ll never do better than me, and you’re replaceable, and don’t forget it.” Jason had always used infidelity as a kind of cudgel to beat back Cate’s self-esteem whenever she started to stand up for herself. And the truly pathetic thing was that for a long time it had worked.
    Jason would cheat and then leave little clues. Sometimes he’d refer to it outright. Sometimes he’d make sure other people saw him. And now he was doing it again as part of a campaign to convince Cate that she couldn’t divorce him— that’s how messed up he was. How messed up they both were, anyway. After all, she’d put up with that—and worse—for six long years. She’d not only put up with it, she’d defended him to herself. She’d come up with reasons why the things Jason did when he started to feel insecure about Cate’s success made sense.
    It disgusted her.
    It disgusted her that she didn’t recognize all the signs until he’d actually hit her. It wasn’t like she was a stranger to any of this; she’d seen it all before. And yet she’d fallen for it, just the same.
    And now Cate was in this uneasy limbo where she’d taken all the steps she could, and yet she wasn’t quite free of him. She was terrified of what Jason would do when he realized she really wasn’t coming back. Of what he would do when he learned she was involved with Club Volare. Jason knew about Cate’s secret life online; the man had a hard drive full of it, had told her about it. Had threatened to make every embarrassing secret public. For the moment, while he was still looking for a new job, Jason needed the semblance of propriety just as much as Cate did, but that didn’t make her feel terribly secure.
    Pretty much the last thing she wanted to be thinking about was her time-bomb of an ex-husband, but the truth was, she was sitting here contemplating the idea of taking that risk all over again, of exposing herself to someone, leaving herself vulnerable.
    Had she lost her mind?
    Yes. The answer was yes. Mind: gone. Because here she was, fantasizing about Soren’s arms all over again. They’d looked like the kind of arms that could hold a girl down just right.
    Wasn’t that screwed up?
    It did not escape her notice that she’d never have to worry about cheating with a man like Soren. You can Clren. Yo’t cheat on something that doesn’t exist, and he’d made it very clear that there wouldn’t be romantic obligations. Or attachments. Or true vulnerability. Or whatever people were calling it these days.
    She’d be free.
    Except he’s your client. Or he will be, once he signs the retainer agreement.
    “Couldn’t it just be easy?” she muttered. “Just once? Easy.”
    Her phone answered her by buzzing all over again. She watched it dance across the coffee table in wide-eyed disbelief, sure that it was Jason again with some other creative way to make her feel like crap. She suddenly realized most of the texts she got were from Jason. That couldn’t be a good sign