Read Online The Ex by Abigail Barnette - Free Book Online Page A

you.”
    “We were never ‘with’ each other. We had sex on occasion. There was no romantic relationship.” I’d only heard Neil use his current tone on a few occasions, and they’d all been serious as fuck. Like when I’d casually dismissed his worry over his cancer. And when he’d found out that I’d been kind of double-crossing his company.
    So, this was really bad.
    “Neil. You know that’s not true. You—” She stopped short at the murderous expression he cut her. To me, she said, “Stephen is a television presenter now, and he’s somewhat well-known here. And, as such, he’s an object of some interest to people.”
    “I’m following,” I assured her.
    With one more glance to Neil, she told me, “He’s planning to write a memoir. It will include some chapters about his involvement in the BDSM lifestyle. A large portion of that section will cover the time he spent with Neil. There are details—”
    Neil exhaled an impatient breath. “He’s going to reveal intimate details of our brief sex life,” he finished for her.
    “Neil, if I had any control over this—” Valerie began, and it seemed like they’d already covered this part.
    Neil interrupted her again. “You had better find some way to control this. He’s your brother.”
    “And it’s not being published through an Elwood and Stern company. My hands are as tied as yours.”
    I snorted, but my unintentional mirth was quickly silenced by two nasty glares. “Sorry,” I tried to explain. “Tied hands, BDSM…”
    “Yes, Sophie, I understood your joke.” He turned his ire on Valerie. “He is your brother. This is your mess to clean up.”
    “How does he even have enough to write about Neil?” I had struggled to flesh out my book, and I lived with the man. “All these years later, what could he possibly have to say? So, people will know that you’re into the whole domination and submission thing. So, what? Aren’t people okay with that now, what with that spank-me book that was everywhere?”
    “With the concept of it, yes,” Neil said. “But it is still humiliating to have your personal proclivities described for an audience. Especially when those descriptions won’t be entirely accurate.”
    “Wait, what?” I asked, but he gave me a slight shake of his head, as if to say we’d discuss it later.
    “I’ve tried to reason with him on this point, but he won’t budge,” Valerie explained apologetically.
    I still wasn’t grasping why it was such a big deal. I mean, I wouldn’t shout to the rooftops that I liked to be spanked and slapped during sex, but if someone found out, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “Neil, there are like four unauthorized biographies about you already. None of them seem to have hurt you. Why would this one?”
    “This one will have a wider readership,” he explained tersely. “The only people reading those four books you’ve cited are likely biography enthusiasts or young professionals who think they’ll learn the secrets to my success.”
    “This one has celebrity buying power behind it,” Valerie continued. “Stephen is in the public eye, more so than Neil. The salacious memoir of a television personality will sell much better than a cancer narrative about a rich man who’s only slightly on the radar.”
    I suppose I should have arrived at that conclusion on my own. But it wasn’t until Neil said, “And that rich man is about to get married. Perhaps his fiancé’s family wouldn’t be thrilled to imagine their young relative being tied up in the bedroom.”
    I almost argued that he was overreacting, that his relationship with Stephen had been years ago, and people would naturally assume that he’d been going through a phase. But before I could say it, I knew how wrong that was. People never forgot stuff. People never assumed that others could change.
    If someone—my mother, for example—read that book…
    “We’ve got to do something.” My eyes grew wide as I stared at