Cam stomps his foot and curses loudly. “Fuck.”

He turns around, grabs his hair in his hand, and pulls hard. He’s such a big man, but something about him right now, the foot stomping, the hair pulling, reminds me of an angry leprechaun.

He whirls back to me, grits his teeth and blows out steam. “No. Really? You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not,” I say, standing my ground, shaking my head. “This is my choice. I have to do this.” I flash back to my conversation with Joanne about accountability, about ownership. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but I’d like to think I’m starting to figure it out. I’m stumbling and bumbling and messing it up, but at least I’m starting to speak the truth.

“I don’t want to say goodbye.” For the first time Cam sounds like he’s whining. A chink in his cool-as-a-cucumber style.

“I know. But I have to try. I have to do this.”

He grabs my shoulders, grips me tight. “No. You don’t have to do this,” he says, his hot breath painting my cheek. I can feel the burn of the vodka he just downed.

“Cam.” I stare sharply at his hands that pin me. “I do. I do have to do this.”

He moans angrily and narrows his eyes. But he lets go of his hold on my shoulders. “I just got you back, babydoll. Don’t do this to me.”

“Cam, I’m sorry.”

His eyes light up with a sneaky sort of glow. “Then, I’ll beg. I told you when you came to my office that I’d beg you, and I’m not fucking above begging.” He drops to his knees instantly, raises his face, and looks at me with those big blue eyes. He clasps his hands together. Holy shit. He was serious. “Please, don’t go.”

A part of my heart aches not just for him, but for me letting him go too.

“But this isn’t fair. You leave me. You come back. You leave me again,” he says, shaking his clasped hands at me to emphasize his point. “And I don’t like it. I don’t like being jerked around.”

All my instincts tell me to fall to my knees, to hug him, to say I’m sorry I disappointed him too. But I keep my body still. I can’t give in to him. And I can’t give into my past. I want my future. I want to make the better choice now. “I never meant to hurt you, and I’m sorry I jerked you around, Cam. But there’s nothing you can do to change my mind. I have to move on. ”

“You belong with me.” He pounds a fist against the floor. “You’re mine. You’re my Layla,” he says, grasping to keep me.

“Cam,” I say softly, but firmly. “You had Layla. But that’s not me anymore. I have to be Harley now. Only Harley.”

He sighs heavily, then bangs his forehead once, twice, three times against the cool hardwood floor of the bar. It must hurt like hell. When he raises his head, I can see the start of a red, angry bump but also the resignation in his eyes.

I offer him a hand. “Come on. Get up. Let me say a proper goodbye.”

“Dammit to hell,” he mutters as he stands up from his plaintive post.

Then I look him in the eyes and I speak from the heart. “I want you to know you gave me something that mattered deeply to me, that I needed desperately at that time in life. You gave me choices, you gave me control, and you gave me a place to belong. And I don’t regret anything I did, because everything I did brought me to where I am today. And I will never regret you. You were there for me more than my own mother ever was.”

I watch him, saying nothing, trying to gage his reaction, predict his next move. He’s still as his eyes glass over, then he abandons the begging and pleading. “I’m going to miss you. Like miss you for real, Harley,” he says, and I don’t blanch when he uses my real name. Because that’s who I am to him now. I am shedding Layla, right here, right now, leaving her behind.

I hug him one last time. I want to tell him I will see him again, that we’ll grab a cup of coffee and catch up, but we won’t and we shouldn’t and that’s okay too. Some people come into your life for a little while to help you through. Some stay a lifetime. Cam and I had our moment, and now the moment is gone, but it won’t be forgotten. I won’t forget him. I won’t forget how he took care of me when nobody else would.

That’s when it hits me. In some warped way, Cam was like family to me too. Only better than my flesh and blood parents.

He groans and flubs air through his lips, like he’s letting out a long train of steam. “I’m not going to say I want this, but if this is what you need, babydoll, then I’m not going to stand in your way. Mr Stewart is going to pitch some kind of fit, but I’ll take my lumps like a big boy,” he says, nodding, and I can see the gears in his sneaky brain kicking in when he adds, “I’m just going to go up there, tell him you ate something nasty, you threw up something fierce, and you’re sick to the stomach and had to go home, because that’s about the only reason that won’t have him slicing off my neck.”

I laugh once, but hope he’s joking. “I don’t want your neck sliced off.”

“Believe you me, nor do I. I like what’s above the neck and below it. Now get the hell out of here before I try to steal you back.”

I hug him and I’m betting Trey is quaking in his boots, and if he is then that boy will just have to deal, because I need to say goodbye to this man who loved me too.

We leave the bar together and Cam stops when he sees Trey, shakes a finger at him, huffs out through his nostrils. For a fleeting moment, I can see the worst unfolding. But instead, Cam takes Trey’s hand in his, then places his other hand on Trey’s shoulder. “Now listen, you better fucking take care of her because I am about to endure a shitstorm up there for her. I’m letting her go and this better be real, and you better love her and treat her like a queen. Because she deserves everything good in the world. Got it?”

Trey is stunned speechless. His jaw hangs open, then he quickly recovers, and nods. “Yes, sir.”

Then Cam marches upstairs to fix the mess I made for him.

Forget the myth of the hooker with a heart of gold. He’s the pimp with one.

I turn to Trey. “I’m yours now and you’re mine.”

“You better fucking believe it,” he says.

He grabs my hand and we run like hell out of the Parker Meridien and into the New York night to a new beginning.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Harley

Breathless.

I am breathless from running, from the night, from being kissed senseless on the cab ride downtown. From the anticipation that this is it.

Trey shuts the door behind him, and we are back where we were several nights ago. His apartment.

And now this is the unknown. This is all blind trust and faith. The leap off the dock into the dark waters, with the hope the current won’t pull you down.

I hope.

I have so much hope now, so much more than I had mere hours ago, and it’s amazing how hope can be replenished like a geyser, and you can be overflowing. I have hope for the future, for love, for happiness, for the end to my empty, aching need for a fix.

This is more than a fix. This is real.

Because he is not Twenty-Five for me. This is the other side, all the way on the other side. Trey is Number One on a list I will never keep again. And I am so in love with Trey I can barely stand it, I can barely hold the words inside myself any longer, I want to tell him, to shout it, to sing it. “I’m so in love with you,” I say, because I can.

All this honesty, all this openness, without guise, without tricks — it’s like the sky is expanding, spreading. As it stretches, I stretch. It feels good and it hurts at the same time.

We stumble into the entryway, all hands and arms tangled up together.

“I am so fucking in love with you,” he says hungrily, and he loops his arms around my neck, tucks his face in my hair, and breathes me in as if I’m his oxygen. I’ve never known what it’s like to be cherished, but I’m starting to get a sense, and it’s a heady feeling. I’m no longer a prize, but a treasure. His treasure.