The Girlfriend

Chapter Seventeen

Jon

"If both parties have come to an agreement then we can proceed with the hearing," Judge Cabello said as he flipped through his documents.

Mediation shouldn't have ended in us sitting in front of a judge, we should have worked it out together, but here we were anyway with nothing but lying and secrecy between us. Christine and her lawyers were pretending that she hadn't received generous compensation from her father, the exact amounts that she had received weren't known to me and I noticed they weren't on our financial estimates at all. She didn't call attention to my missing stock portfolio, or that my appraisal was only hours old – something Cabello had raised his eyebrows at but wasn't saying anything about.

I tuned them out while the judge and Chrissy's lawyers discussed our agreement, mainly the spousal support documents. What a load of shit that was, it wasn't like I was leaving her destitute without my income, far from it since her father still bankrolled whatever I hadn't for the past decade. I glanced at her across the room; her dark hair was pulled into a twisty knot at the nape of her neck with the two small bleached sections loose and framing her face, she wore a deep purple blouse, and earlier when she came in I had seen that she was wearing high-waisted black dress pants. My own powerful femme fatale right to the bitter end.

"You really go by Jonathan all the time?" Christine asked with a scoff. "Not even Jon or Jonny?"

I rolled my eyes and went back to scanning the textbook. "Not unless you want to test my patience."

"Don't be so lame." She yanked the book out of my hands and dropped it on the floor. "I'm talking to you."

"Don't be such a hag," I snapped, pushing myself up from my chair. What was with this girl? Why did she only want to bother me all the time?

Christine jumped out of her chair and pressed herself against me, I couldn't help but glance down and stare at her tits in her incredibly low-cut shirt. My eyes slowly roamed back up to hers and I registered that she was smirking now and had a mischievous glint in her hazel eyes.

"Want me to show you just how much of a bitch I can be?" she asked, practically purring while she ran her hands up towards my neck.

What? I should have pushed her away, but I wanted to touch her. I reached out and cupped her cheek, running my thumb back and forth across her smooth skin. She was so soft and I knew that this was the point where I couldn't go back.

Christine grabbed at the sides of my face and pulled me down to her in a sudden kiss. I was supposed to stay away from girls while I was at school, I kept my trysts to short one-time-only-romps and I knew this one wasn't going to let me pull that on her. I pushed Christine away and tried to feign annoyance at her disregard for me or what I wanted.

"What was that about?" I demanded.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Jonny." She drew that god-awful nickname out, forcing it to sound almost seductive while she reached for my hand. "I can get you into the bar tonight if you want to come."

"I don't have a fake ID."

"You don't need one when you're with me," she assured with a wicked grin. "Take me on a date and I'll show you what you're missing out on."

There had been a point where I was convinced that I wouldn't be able to love anyone the way I loved her, just based on the way she pushed my buttons and tested my limits. I don't know when we outgrew each other, but I was still going to be thankful for the time we had spent together. And just like I could be happy for her to have Peter, I hoped she could be happy for me having Lydia and Patrick.