Free The Anatomy of Jane by Amelia Lefay Page B

majority, it’s plain hustle. Why do you make ten dollars an hour, and your boss, who doesn’t even clean houses, makes sixteen? You do whatever you can to get up the ladder and most times that means using people. You’ve probably been working your ass off all your life, and most likely getting screwed while you’re at it, too. But are you any better off than you were last year? Any opportunity you have to get ahead, you should take. If you don’t, you’re either scared or an idiot .”
    I was expecting her to snap back at me, but she stood there like I had slapped her across her face. Her eyes glazed over with tears she wouldn’t let fall.
    “Maybe you are right. I have been screwed over by bosses. It’s not fair and yet I keep working. I’m workaholic Jane.” She shrugged. “But I don’t have anyone to step on. All I have is me, so I treasure myself more than anyone or anything in the world. So when you try to buy me as if I’m nothing but an item and not a person, if I let you…then I won’t like myself. And if I don’t like myself, I will have nothing. Nothing is painful .”
    She quickly wiped a tear off her cheek and spun around to leave. It was only when she left that I felt like I could breathe again…even so, my heart saw someone so beautiful on the outside but so broken on the inside.
    “Way to go.” The door opened and Irene stepped in; my shoulders drooped. She was the other beautiful broken woman in my life who was driving me insane.
    “Why did you bring her here?”
    “I wanted to see how you’d react to her all dressed up,” she replied, leaning against my door. “I heard you fighting on Friday, and that was the first time I’ve seen you so engaged with a woman. You like her.”
    Walking up to her, I made sure she understood I was not playing around. “Do. Not! Drag her into your mess, Irene. You are twenty-eight years old, so fix things yourself. Last time you used people, how did that work out for you?”
    “Fuck you,” she hissed before exiting.
    Why did this shit happen to me?
    Nothing is painful. Jane’s voice echoed in my mind, and I suddenly felt the urge to find her…only to apologize, of course.
     

     
    When I said I had an addiction to Maxwell Emerson, I was not being facetious. In the four years we had been together, I had never been with anyone else…that fact alone was insane. I, man-whore Wes, had been and was in a monogamous relationship? Even my own mothers were shocked when I told them. It wasn’t that I couldn’t, I just had never found a person who could satisfy the raging lust I felt all the goddamn time. Then I met him and he was raging along with me.
    Feeding an addiction…living with codependency…stalking...love —call it whatever you will, but I was never that far away from him, which is why when Senator Elspeth Yates begged me to personally cater her event that evening, I said yes, even though I’d sworn to myself I’d never cater any event. When the prime minister of France wanted to eat my food, he came to my restaurant like everyone else.
    Which begged the question: what the fuck was I doing there?
    “This needs more vinegar! Chop the basil now and wait ten minutes once the—” I stopped mid-sentence when I saw Jane rushing down the stairs. She was dressed in emerald green and her face was puffy and pink. She had her shoes in one hand and the train of her dress with the other.
    “Tell me you see her,” my sous-chef exclaimed. “Do you know her?” he asked, confirming I wasn’t dreaming.
    “Bloody hell,” I whispered and was awed at how beautiful she still managed to look even while obviously upset.
    “Chef?”
    “Chop the basil now and wait ten minutes to grate the truffles on top of it,” I said to him, not taking my eyes off her as she ignored all the kitchen staff and moved toward the back patio. Taking off my chef’s apron, I moved to the fridge and took out a single chocolate and vanilla parfait with cherry