Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
When cornered, I have a tendency to react much like any other hot-blooded control freak—I do something stupid.
In this particular case, I waited two days before doing something stupid.
Nevertheless, it was decidedly stupid; so stupid, in fact, that while I was getting ready for the stupid nondate, I kept thinking to myself Self, this is the stupidest thing that anyone has ever done in the history of forever.
Regardless, there I was, sitting in front of my mirror, going through the motions of getting ready for my nondate with Dr. Ken Miles. My stomach hurt, I had a headache, my body was revolting, my heart felt sick. And yet, I applied a liberal amount of blue mascara.
I was wearing cotton underwear and a sports bra—basically, the equivalent of a boob chastity belt—and I settled on a pair of black, wide-legged pants.
Sandra told me once that they made me look extremely short and suggested I never wear them.
But tonight, I wore them. And under the pants I wore leggings…
because it was cold outside. My shirt had both buttons and ties and I added two sweaters on top, both with buttons and ties.
My shoes were unsexy, laced flats that took forever to take off and put on.
I gave myself a once-over in the mirror. Yep. That was me. And I looked just about ready to go. It would only take me one hour to get out of this outfit when sexy time arrived.
Thinking about sexy time with Dr. Ken Miles made my stomach roll.
This was a mistake.
But in all honesty, I felt driven to it. Since our fight on Tuesday—and it was most definitely a fight—Nico had been relentless. The last two mornings he had paraded around the penthouse in his boxer briefs, brushing against me, teasing me, touching me.
When the appointments were at the hospital, he stared at me with his hot, smoldering Italian eyes.
His charisma and magnetism detonated all over everyone and in all directions; he made women on the periphery swoon with his bedroom voice and suggestive smile.
I wanted to both choke him to death and kiss him senseless.
He refused to give me a moment’s peace.
And I missed our phone calls. I missed talking to him.
The last five days he was in New York, we talked every day, usually more than once a day.
Since he’d returned, we’d barely spoken.
When we did speak, he was on a constant seduction offensive; naturally, I was perpetually defensive as I endeavored to deflect his advances.
But he was wearing me down. I felt it in my bones.
I was losing the will to do the right thing because I wasn’t sure it was the right thing anymore.
I wasn’t sure whom I was protecting. I thought I was protecting him from big, bad Elizabeth Finney and her unreachable heart.
But with each passing minute, I wondered if Rose had been right—was I just trying to protect myself?
I mulled over this as I waited for the knock on my door when I would have to face my horrible, horrible mistake.
And yet, when Dr. Ken Miles arrived, I opened, exited, then locked my door. I walked to the elevator. I pressed the button for the elevator.
Then, Dr. Ken Miles spoke. “You look so beautiful, Elizabeth.”
I glanced at Dr. Ken Miles from the corner of my eye. He was leering. I sighed. “Thanks. You also look very pretty.”
He laughed lightly. “I’m really, really looking forward to tonight.”
I might have thrown up a little in my mouth. What am I doing?
He leaned close, invading my space. “And I brought some flavored condoms for us, for later....”
That was the moment it happened. That was the moment I knew with absolute certainty that I couldn’t go through with it.
I shuddered in revulsion, not at the flavored condoms, because, with Nico, that sounded like fun, but at the idea of seeing Dr. Ken Miles’s wang in a condom—his pasty, white wang. Gross.
In fact, penises in general grossed me out in that moment; but one penis in particular still held my interest. And by interest, I meant flaming hot mad lust. I wanted to find Nico. I wanted to find him and maul him and attack his penis. I wanted to kiss him and touch him, but he still terrified me.
I knew what I wanted, but I wasn’t certain if wanting Nico was enough. I’d wanted him in the past and had allowed him to invade my heart, and then I’d left him. I hurt him. Neither of us had quite recovered.
Regardless, whatever I ultimately decided, I first needed to extract myself from this horrible situation and send Dr. Ken Miles—and his wang—far, far away.
“Oh God.” I drew in a long breath, then sighed. “I can’t do this, Dr. Ken Miles.”
“Uh, what?”
I shook my head and met his confused stare. “I can’t do this.”
“Is this about dinner?”
The elevator dinged, marking its arrival.
“No, but I can’t do that either. The thing is, I don’t want to have sex with you.”
He blinked at me, and I couldn’t help but notice that his pretty, pale blue eyes—vapid in their near colorlessness—didn’t heat nor cool, and they certainly did not twinkle.
“Uhh….” His mouth fell open, a disbelieving sound rushing forth.
He shifted a step closer, and I stood my ground; I lifted my chin to maintain eye contact so that he could read the seriousness of my expression.
However, before Dr. Ken Miles could speak, the elevator doors opened and revealed a man. And that man was Nico Manganiello. And I wanted to die, right there, in my cotton underwear and uniboob bra.
His eyes moved between me and Dr. Ken Miles then back again. His expression morphed from slightly confused to stunned understanding to drawing all the wrong conclusions in the span of three seconds.
The hurt in his glare splintered me into a thousand pieces, and I knew the precise moment that his heart split in two; I felt it because mine did too.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then I saw Dr. Ken Miles smirking at Nico, my Nico, with the smuggest expression I’d ever seen on his prissy face. He placed his arm around my shoulders.
I immediately recoiled, but the doors to the elevator were closing, and Nico was still looking at Dr. Ken Miles’s smirky face.
“No!” My single word was an involuntary whisper.
Nico’s eyes moved to mine and, without really thinking about it, I launched myself into the elevator just as the doors closed. I was in the elevator with Nico, and one of my pant legs was caught in the door.
He moved himself to the corner of the large lift, effectively out of my tethered reach, and gave me his shoulder.
His eyes were closed, his head rested against the red velvet wall, and he was laughing.
It was a maniacal, unbalanced kind of laugh.
I held my hands up and tried to reach him, to touch him.
“Nico, listen. Just listen to me for a minute.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “You already told me. At least you tried to, but I wouldn’t listen.”
“Listen to me now.”
“Ah, God, what’s the point?” He thumped his head once against the side of the lift, still not meeting my eyes.
“Nico, just—”
“How long have you been with him?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Never mind, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. Just—I need to get off this elevator.” Nico reached for the buttons on the panel, but I beat him to his goal, pressed the alarm button, and stopped the car.
A shrill ring pierced the small space, and we both covered our ears.
As abruptly as the screeching started it stopped, plunging the small car into a fierce kind of silence, made more complete by the absence of the alarm.
Nico charged forward again, presumably to start the elevator once more, but I blocked his path with half my body.
He recoiled backward, as though dreading any contact with me and disgusted by the thought of it.
“Will you listen to me? Please?” I was yelling, mostly because I was panicked by his inability to meet my gaze.
“How long have you two been together?” His shout matched mine in volume and vehemence.
“We haven’t….”
“Then it’s a recent thing? You like him?”
“It’s not like that! Not with him.”
“So, explain it to me!” His eyes finally met mine and nearly knocked the wind from my lungs.
“He doesn’t…he doesn’t care about me. Not like, not like y—”
“Just say it, Elizabeth!”
“Fine. Not like you do.”
His eyes were flaming with something between disbelief and outrage, but his voice was eerily quiet. “I don’t just care about you. I’m in love with you.”
“I know that!” I hollered in response, my hands balling into fists. I didn’t know why I was so angry. Nico’s anger made sense. Mine did not. But I couldn’t help it. I was angry and, dammit, I wanted to yell at him.
“So…?” His eyes widened mockingly.
“So…that’s why!”
“So, let me get this straight. That guy…” Nico gestured to the elevator doors behind me, “…doesn’t care about you.
” Then he pointed to his chest with both hands and said, “I’m in love with you.
” I flinched at his words and the raw intensity in his voice.
“He gets to sleep with you and I don’t. Did I get all that right? ”
I tried unsuccessfully to swallow the building thickness in my throat and shook my head, but said nothing. My warring emotions rendered me mute.
I was an idiot. I was an idiotic nitwit.
I’d convinced a small part of myself that the stirrings or feelings or whatever mojo voodoo was going on with Nico would magically become irrelevant if I could just get myself laid.
It was a shred, a hope, a flicker of proof that I wasn’t, in fact, already in love with Nico.
It was a lie.
I was in love with him.
All attempts at avoiding it were too late.
In retrospect, even though I put the brakes on the nondate early, actually stepping outside my door with Dr. Ken Miles was probably the dumbest thing I’d ever done.