Chapter 14
Okay, I get it—I’m a grumpy asshole
Alex
“You’re impossible to deal with,” Katie gripes as she storms into my office. “Worse than you’ve ever been. And you look like hell.”
She sets a food container down on my desk with a plop.
It’s been almost a week since I fucked everything up.
Each day, my mood has gotten worse and worse.
When I’m at work, people avoid me. They turn in the opposite direction when they see me stalk down the halls.
I’m surly and mean. On more than one occasion, Katie has called to bitch me out for scaring employees.
She also calls and yells at me to go the fuck home at midnight every night.
“Whatever you did to make Amelia run, you need to undo it, Alexander. She’s not answering my emails, texts, or calls.”
I absent-mindedly run my hand over the beard I haven’t trimmed in days. “She won’t answer me, either, Katherine. I don’t know where she is. If I did, I would be there right now begging her to come back.”
Katie drops into the chair across from me. “Fuck. How the hell did you mess it up? She’s been in love with you just as long as you’ve been in love with her.”
Her words take me by complete surprise.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re an idiot. You’re both idiots. How do you not know this, Alex?
She stays late almost every night. What twenty-three-year-old woman stays late all the damn time?
She never leaves the office for lunch unless it’s with you.
She doesn’t go out for drinks with coworkers.
I know at least three men in our office alone have asked her out, and god knows how many others outside of our office.
She turns them all down. Because she loves your stupid ass.
” She points an accusatory finger at me.
“And now she’s gone and you’re self-imploding. Find her. Fix this.”
“I’m working on it,” I grit out. My resolve to give Amelia two weeks lasted two days. But I’ve interviewed half a dozen goddamned private investigators so far and hated every single one of them. I can’t trust just anyone with finding her…
“Good.” Katie stands and stomps out of my office, slamming the door behind her.
I look over some paperwork while I eat, but can’t concentrate on it. Why the hell am I even here?