Total Control (15 page)

“Just a minute!” I pulled Ethan’s shirt on
and went to the door. When I opened it, Dana was standing there, smiling.

“Zane is here. He wants to talk to you.” She said.
What the fuck!

“Who’s Zane?” Ethan said on the phone.
Fuck!

“Um, just someone we met at the club. Sorry, Ethan…Dana, just tell him I went to bed.”

“You met some guy at the club and now he’s coming to your room and asking for you?” Ethan sounded pissed.

Jo let Zane come through the front door and now he was walking toward my room.
Fuck!
“Gia,” he said. I put my hand up and he stopped.

“Ethan, I’m sorry. I’ll call you right back.” He just hung up
without saying a word.

“Nice!” I said, holding my phone up. “What the fuck?” I glared at all three of them.

“Shit, Gia, calm down. What’s the big deal?” Dana asked me.

“Well, one minute I’m having a very pleasant phone conversation with Ethan, and the next minute he’s wondering why the fuck some guy we met at the club is in our room asking for me!” They all looked around at each other, like they were trying to put the blame on someone.

“I’m sorry, Gia. I have to talk to you,” Zane said.

“Did you hear what I said? My boyfriend is pissed off and I don’t want to come to your room
., I thought I’d made that clear at the club.” Dana and Jo looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

“Your boyfriend? You’ve only known him a week. Please, Gia, five minutes. Then I’ll go and you can call him back and tell him I was drunk and got lost or whatever will make him happy. Please?”
Who the hell does he think he is?
I knew he wasn’t gonna leave me alone until I heard him out though, so I agreed.

“Five minutes!” I looked at Jo and Dana before I turned and went back into my room. Zane followed me in and turned to shut the door. “Really?”
I said, so he left it open a crack.

“Gia, I can’t get you out of my head. Sometimes you just have to make an ass out of yourself to
go for something you really want, and this is one of those times for me. If I didn’t get the feeling that you wanted it too, then I wouldn’t be here right now. I couldn’t stop thinking about the reason you wouldn’t stay with me. You’ve known this guy for a week, and you’re gonna let him stop you from meeting other people? When I kissed you, you kissed me back. You had your hands in my hair and you felt something; so did I. Here’s my number, think about it. I’m sorry for upsetting you, but I don’t give a shit about the guy you call your boyfriend. If he’s so great, then why did you kiss me back? Like I said, I had to tell you how I feel or I’d always wonder what might’ve happened.” He stood up and walked to the door. “You should tell him what really happened.,” he said and left.

I can’t believe that guy! Talking about Ethan like that! What the hell did he know? Nothing!
I called Ethan right away.

“Ethan, I’
m sorry. We met a group of guys at the club and this one took a liking to me.”

“Gia, guys don’t show up at a woman’s hotel room at two o’clock in the morning because they had a good conversation in a club earlier.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ethan.”

“How about the truth, Gia.
”
Fuck!

“We kissed
,” I blurted. “He came out to have a cigarette when I did, we got to talking, and he kissed me. He wanted me to spend the night with him and I said no. I didn’t give him our room number, maybe Jo or Dana gave it to one of the other guys, I don’t know. I’m sorry, Ethan.” I said it all very fast. He was silent. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel every beat.
Just say something!

“When he kissed you, did you kiss him back?”
Shit, why did you have to say that?

“Yes.” I had to fess up. I felt horrible.

“Why?” He was really hurt.

“I just fell into it,” I whispered as tears streamed down my cheeks. “
He saw me, he wanted to kiss me, and so he did. It made me feel something. I’m so sorry.”

“Would you have told me?”

“Probably not.”

“What did it make you feel?”

“Ethan, why are you doing this? I mean, I’ve known you for a week, I kissed someone else, I feel horrible that I hurt you, I’m sorry for it, but I can’t change it. I’m not gonna go into detail about it, that won’t help anything.” I was getting mad now.

“I guess I’m having a hard time understanding how you could have sex with me this morning,
fly to California, call me a couple of times, one of those times you even sent me pictures of yourself in sexy lingerie, then go to a club and make out with a random guy, then while you’re having phone sex with me, the guy shows up at your room in the middle of the night, and then lie to me about it.”
Something is seriously wrong with me.

“I guess I’m having a hard time understanding how I could do that, too.” He was so good to me, and I’d just screwed it up.
I wanted to fix it, so I told him the truth. “He made me feel like I was the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. He kissed me hard and passionately. He wanted me to go back to his room so we could kiss for hours and then he could show my body how much he appreciated it until the sun came up. I told him if I would’ve met him a week ago, I would’ve done it, but since I’d already met someone who was really amazing, I’d already gone farther than I should’ve.”

“You wanted to go to his room, didn’t you?”

“Part of me did, yes. The other part of me knew that you and I were a couple, even though we hadn’t actually said we weren’t going to see other people, it was implied since we called each other ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend.’”

“Gia, I think you should go ahead and see other people. I don’t think you’re ready for a relationship like the one I want to have with you. You’re right, we’ve only known each other for a week, so whatever the hell that means. I know it doesn’t m
ean that it hurts less.” I couldn’t believe what he was saying! I couldn’t lose him, not now, not over a kiss! I started crying.

“You’re breaking up with me? Over a kiss that I admit was wrong and am sorry for?”

“No, not over the kiss, but over the way it made you feel. You haven’t been with many guys. You’re curious now. You’re more open to it, more confident, I can’t hold you back, and I definitely can’t share you. I want all of you, the good, bad, ugly, everything, but you can’t give it to me.” He was so sad, but he was right. I did want to go to Zane’s room and I had felt something great when he kissed me.

“I’m so sorry, Ethan. I don’t know what to say. Can’t we talk it out or at least think about it tonight and talk about it tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry too, Gia. I hope you find what you’re missing and I wish you the best of luck with the therapy.” Why was he being so short and cold with me? That made me angry.

“Ethan, why are you doing this to me right now? I need you, I thought you loved me!” I was crying hard by then.

“I’m doing this
because
I love you, Gia.” He hung up.
What the fuck!

I called him back, it went right to voicemail.
No! You cannot do this to me!
I sobbed into my pillow. I called him again, and again, and again. I knew he’d shut his phone off, but I kept calling anyway, just in case there was a chance. I left a message.

“How can you say you love me and then hurt me like this? You know I can’t handle this right now. Just call me, or better yet, you said all I had to do was tell you to come and you would. Come to California, Ethan
, I have to see you. You said if I ever needed you, you would be there. I need you!” I was sobbing so hard he probably couldn’t understand what I was saying. “How can you do this to me? You said you loved me, no matter what. You said you loved me.” I barely got the last sentence out. It was barely a whisper, I was exhausted.

I crawled under my blanket and cried until I passed out.

Chapter 12

Ethan

I turned the power off on my phone, put my head in my hands, and lost it. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. We were having a sexy phone conversation one minute, and then I told her she should see other people the next! How could she make out with some guy and then act like nothing was up?
I knew this was going to happen! How could she do this to me?
I felt like the wind had just been knocked out of me and I couldn’t breathe.

I
laid down and closed my eyes. I second guessed everything I’d said to Gia. I almost called her back seven times. I thought about her kissing some guy and it was brutal. I could hear him telling her how he wanted her to come back to his room and let him ‘show her body how much he appreciated it’.
Who the fuck says something like that? How could Gia be attracted to that?
I wanted to see what he looked like. I wanted to see what Gia saw in him. I still couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t concentrate. Thoughts were flying around in my head, bouncing off of each other, it was chaotic.

I was shaking. I tried to take deep breaths,
but my heart was pumping so fast it made me get light headed. I sat up, but it made me want to run to her, so I laid back down. As my head hit the pillow, it pushed out her scent and I eagerly sucked it in. I was more distraught than I’d ever been or knew I could be. The pain was deeper than anything I’d ever felt. I couldn’t regain control. I didn’t know a life without Hotness, and the thought of living it was a nightmare.

I finally fell as
leep. I had a horrible dream. It was about Gia. She had spent the night and I woke up to her thrashing, crying, and having her own nightmare.

“Gia!” I said sternly, shaking her.

She was hitting me and pushing me away.

“Gia!” I tried to get control of her, but couldn’t.

“No! Ethan! You’re hurting me!” She was having a nightmare about me!

“Gia! I’d never hurt you, wake up!”

She woke, but the crying continued and when she looked at me, I saw fear in her eyes.

“Gia, it’s okay, it was a nightmare
,” I told her softly, trying to take her in my arms, but she wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t touch me, Ethan! I don’t want you to touc
h me!” She was scared of me.

“Okay, Gia. I’d never hurt you, you know that, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t!” She glared at me. “You’re always hurting me.” Her voice was accusatory.

“What? When?” I was shocked.

“Always! Every time! You think I like it when you touch me, but I don’t.” She looked at me like she hated me. I felt like she’d stabbed me in the chest.

I woke up in a cold sweat. I was breathing rapidly. I got up and paced around my house. I grabbed a
bottle of water out of the fridge and gulped it down. I thought about how Gia had nightmares constantly and I couldn’t imagine having to get used to something so disrupting. I laid back down and closed my eyes. All I could see was Gia crying and telling me she hated when I touched her. It was a long, long night.

***

When morning finally came, I drug myself out of bed and into the shower. My body ached, like someone besides Vince had beaten the shit out me. Every time Gia popped into my head, I forced her out. I made some breakfast and checked my messages. Gia was on my voicemail and her message tore me up. Part of it was hard to understand because of her sobbing. I spent the next thirty minutes staring at my phone, wanting to call her. I was doing to her what I promised her I wouldn’t. I couldn’t have ever imagined that she’d give me reason to break that promise, but she did. I had to get it out of my mind.

I headed out to get some work
done. There was a lot of clean-up going on from the decent crowd we’d had the night before. I got right to work helping and before I knew it, it was time for the morning meeting.

When I walked in, I could tell word had gotten around about Vince’s firing and punching me out.
My face was pretty swollen and my eye was black and blue. Some people gasped when they saw me and others just stared. I didn’t care, it was the least of my concerns.

“Good morning
, everyone,” I started. “Good job last night. Rose filled me in and it sounds like you all did great. Just a couple of things I’d like to go over. Vince is no longer employed here, nor is he welcome on the property. I know he’s a friend to many of you,” I glanced at Shelley, who was glaring at me, “but please keep that relationship away from The Lock. I’ve got calls out there for a replacement, but until then I’ll need some help keeping our schedule and shows going as smoothly as Vince did.” He was really good at his job, but I knew we could handle it for a while. “As always, we’re a team, and as long as we all have the same goal in mind, we’ll be a success.” I saw a lot of smiles and nods.