Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SAGE
My head was going to explode. And when it did, I had every intention of being close to the people who were the cause of all my frustration so I could take them out with me.
In spite of having my dad back and spending all my free time catching up with him, I was miserable.
I’d made it through a week and a half of my final two weeks, and everyone in the office was going about their business like nothing was changing.
When I’d tried to show Roxanne the new filing system and the spreadsheet I’d created to show exactly when each invoice should go out, she’d walked right out of my office. Got up and walked out.
When I went to the guys and tried to get their casefiles so I could at least have everything up to date before I left, they’d all somehow miraculously lost them. Every single one.
Then they’d started coming to me, months and months in advance to tell me the type of cake they wanted when their birthdays rolled around, like I’d still be here when the time came.
And every time I repeated that I needed them to step up because I was leaving, they’d act like they hadn’t heard me. All of them.
On top of that, Linc had taken it upon himself to torpedo any chance I had at getting a job somewhere else. He’d actually contacted every business I could possibly get on at and informed them that if they hired me, he’d personally see to it that they regretted their decision.
I knew this because one very scared realtor in town told me he’d said as much when he called for a reference.
Shops and restaurants with Help Wanted signs in their windows had already conveniently filled the position whenever I’d go in to inquire.
Then there were my friends. Nona, Rory, and Danika had actually laughed when I asked about getting a job working for them.
Laughed flat out. In my face.
No one in town would cross Lincoln Sheppard, the cowards.
And to make matters worse, Xander had done a one-eighty . . . again. Only this time it was so much worse than before.
I had a coffee and scone waiting for me on my desk every single morning, whether I’d stopped and got one myself or not, and he was constantly finding reasons to touch me or brush against me every chance he got.
For a man gifted at avoidance, he seemed to suddenly be everywhere.
In the halls, the breakroom, coming into my office to ask me something he could have found the answer to all on his own in a matter of seconds.
Every time I came out of the restroom, he’d just happen to be strolling by at the same time and accidentally bump into me, and every time, he’d grab hold of my arms like I needed him to hold me up before sliding his hands down to mine and holding on for longer than necessary.
If he felt I had a hair out of place, he was right there to tuck it behind my ear. He even sat next to me in the last staff meeting, brushing his thigh against mine every thirty seconds.
If he wasn’t touching me, he was staring. Always staring. Those penetrating black eyes would sear into my skin, and when I turned to catch him, the man never once bothered to look away. He wanted me to catch him, to know he was watching.
The shadows were still there, plain as day, but so was the heat I’d grown so familiar with over the month we’d been together. But there was something else there too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Something that left me breathless every time our gazes met.
I was a total wreck because of him. I was barely sleeping, and the few hours I could manage to catch were riddled with dreams of him.
I was exhausted constantly, cranky even more often, and I couldn’t seem to keep anything in my stomach, so I’d reached the point where I was barely eating, living mostly on coffee to keep me going.
It was brutal because, even though I’d told Xander—and myself—that I hated him, I couldn’t make myself feel it. And Lord knows I tried.
But I just couldn’t stop loving the bastard.
It was ridiculous. I’d known the guy a few months, and the majority of that had been us fighting. We had one good month. No, that wasn’t right. We’d had one great month, but that was it. I barely knew him, and that was his choice.
So why was I feeling so miserable at the thought of not seeing him every single day?
Standing in front of the mirror in the ladies’ room, I took in my reflection. The shadows beneath my eyes made it look like my eyes had sunk in. My normally rosy complexion was a pasty white no matter how much makeup I applied.
I looked just as exhausted as I felt, and because I didn’t have the energy to hide my emotions and put on a brave face, everything I was feeling was written in my expression.
The only time I’d felt relatively normal in the past week and a half was when I was with my father. Until he started asking regularly if I’d talked to Xander. And if I answered in the negative he’d suggest I do just that.
He knew the source of my sadness, and he was of the very wrong opinion that my avoidance was only making things worse.
Needless to say, I didn’t agree.
But if people thought I was stubborn, it was only because I came by it naturally. Judge Winthrop made me look downright agreeable, and no matter how many times I argued with him, I couldn’t make him see he was wrong.
“Just a few more days,” I told my reflection.
Only that wasn’t really the case, was it?
I mean, it wasn’t like I could afford to quit without having something lined up.
I tried my hardest not to touch my savings.
That money was for emergencies only, and I didn’t think quitting my job because the man who broke my heart worked there constituted an emergency.
Even if my mental wellbeing was at risk.
Reaching down, I flipped on the water and quickly washed my hands before heading out of the bathroom.
My eyes had been to my shoes—even my badass black and turquoise cowgirl boots couldn’t pull me out of my funk—so when I ran into a massive wall of muscle, I hadn’t been prepared, and nearly went down on my ass.
Xander’s long, thick fingers came around my arms and held me in place as he murmured. “Shit, baby. You okay?”
I caught his eyes for only a moment before looking down and to the side. “I’m fine,” I muttered, trying to step past him.
He cut me off by gripping my arms tighter and sliding his hands down to mine. “You sure? You look exhausted, Shortcake.”
His fingers closing around mine was the last straw.
“Stop it,” I hissed, jerking my hands free and standing on my toes to get in his face. “Just stop. I can’t take it anymore!”
His brow creased with worry, but as I tried to shove past him, he grabbed me by the waist and pushed us both through the bathroom door.
And like that day a week and a half ago, he took the same position, pinning my back against the wall and leaning in close, his big hands to my cheeks tipping my face up.
“Baby, you look like a goddamn zombie. Talk to me. What’s goin’ on?” he asked, his gorgeous face lined heavily with concern.
“I don’t want to talk to you! Don’t you get that?
” I screeched. This time when I shoved him he was so shocked by my outburst he actually moved back.
“I look like a zombie because of you! I can’t keep anything down, so food is out of the question, and I can’t sleep because every time I do, I dream of you!
I’m trying to get my shit together, but every time you touch me or look at me it’s like a goddamn knife to my stomach.
And you just. Won’t. Stop! I can’t take it anymore.
It’s too hard. Trying not to love you is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, and it sucks! ” I finished on a shrill yell.
Xander looked stricken, and when he breathed my name and reached for me again, that emotion I’d been seeing lately that I couldn’t get a read on flashed in his eyes.
My voice dropped to a pained whisper as I lifted my hands to stop him. “Please stop. I can’t handle you touching me. I can’t handle you calling me baby or shortcake. And I can’t handle you looking at me like you miss me all the time.”
His tone was gruff and jagged as he said, “But I do.”
That familiar burn hit my eyes again, and I didn’t have it in me to fight it back, so as I looked up at him, the tears formed and slid down my cheeks.
“That’s your own fault, Xander. I tried.
I told you I loved you, that I wanted to be there for you, and you picked those demons over me.
You made your choice. Now all either of us can do is live with it, so I’m begging you, please, please don’t make this any harder than it already is. ”
He squeezed his eyes closed, his face pinching in a ravaged expression at my plea. His chest rose as he pulled in a deep breath through his nose, and when he let it back out and looked at me again, what I saw swimming in his gaze made me cry even harder.
He loved me. It was right there to see, clear as day.
And it fucking terrified him.
When he opened his mouth to speak, I expected another apology. But that wasn’t what I got.
“If I stop, will you stay?”
“What?”
“If I stop . . . touching you”—he gnashed his teeth together, like saying that caused him physical pain—“if I stop staring at you, will you stay?”
“Stay here?”
“Yes. If I make you that promise, will you give me yours? No more touching. You won’t catch me staring at you anymore, you have my word, but only if you take back your resignation.”
I shook my head, trying to clear the mess inside so this conversation would start making sense. “Why would you want that? Isn’t this hard for you?”
“It’s excruciating,” he confessed in a deep, ragged rumble. “But I’d rather feel it if it means I get to see you every day. You won’t catch me, staring, I swear, but I have to see you, ba—Sage.”
He was going to call me baby but stopped himself because I asked him to. And he was going to live with pain if it meant I was a fixture in his life every day.
God, this man was killing me.
“This isn’t healthy,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “Xander, this pain you’re inflicting on yourself, the guilt and the grief you hold onto like a shield, it’s not healthy. Please tell me you see that.”
He didn’t answer me, instead he asked, “Do we have a deal?”
As wrong as I knew it was, I felt myself nod. I was making another in a long line of bad decisions, because the truth was, the thought of not seeing him every day was torture.
And what a pair that made us.