Chapter 41
DEXTER
THE NEXT MORNING.
The second I wake up, I text her.
Me:
Hey, we need to talk about this.
Her phone’s never far, and she usually answers fast. But minutes pass.
Nothing.
I call. The phone only rings twice before going to voicemail. She declined the call.
Yeah, she’s still pissed.
The morning is a disaster from the second I’m up.
In the kitchen, I trip over her leather boots and spill coffee on my shirt.
I pick the boots up, carry them across the hall, and set them in front of her door.
Traffic is a mess. By the time I get to the office, I have over a hundred emails waiting.
I shove down the headache building behind my eyes and bury myself in work.
Barely an hour in, my intercom buzzes.
“Mr. Thorne,” Hermine’s voice comes through. “Mr. Murphy would like a word.”
“Send him in.”
The door cracks open. A white tissue appears first, flapping like a damn flag. “I surrender.”
“Keith, just fucking get in here. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
Keith steps in, tucking the tissue into his pocket. “Right. Clearly, still pissed.”
“You’re damn right I’m pissed.”
“Bad orgasm?” Keith pushes.
I level him with a glare.
“Thought as much. So, Holly’s givin’ ya the silent treatment?”
“She won’t even read my text. Declined my call,” I grumble.
Keith drops into the chair across from me. “I’m sure she’ll come around on her own. And if she doesn’t, get her something nice. A little present.”
I give him a look.
“I’m deadly serious,” he says. “She’ll come back runnin’ immediately, I’m tellin’ ye. Last time my one got mad at me, I sent her a vibrator. About two inches smaller than myself, of course. Can’t have her gettin’ ideas. Worked like a charm.”
I turn back to my computer.
Holly would straight-up murder me if I sent her a vibrator right now, especially one smaller than me. She’s never iced me out like this before. Not once. And now that she has, I’ve got no damn idea how to fix it.
I shake my head. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Fine, fine. Back to normal.”
After Keith leaves, I check my phone. She still hasn’t responded.
I shoot off another text.
Me:
Let’s meet tonight after work. Let’s go to that Titanic event.
No reply.
She passed on Titanic? That’s a first. Holly has never missed a Titanic movie night.
Not once. She once canceled a date to watch Jack drown for the tenth time.
If she’s skipping it now, I know exactly how bad I screwed up.
Also, she knows damn well I’d never offer Titanic unless I was guilty as hell. Which means I’m really fucked.
How am I supposed to put it right if she won’t talk to me.
I try to focus, push through the rest of the day, but my head’s not in it. The rest of the day blurs past, and by the time I finally get home, I notice the boots are gone. She’s not home yet.
I’ve never been the type to back off, but I know Holly. If I push too hard, I’ll lose what little ground I have left.
So I do the one thing I’m worst at. I wait, and give her the space she asked for.
It’s hell.
Two days later, I crack and send her one more message.
Me:
You alive?
I stare at the screen, not expecting anything. Just as I’m about to close the app, the typing bubbles appear.
Not blocked. Not ghosted. Not yet.
Holly:
I’m okay.
It’s short, but I take it.
I text back, asking if we can meet, talk this through, face-to-face. Nothing. Not even a pity emoji. That’s when it clicks: She only messaged to shut me up, to keep me from worrying. Not because she wants to talk.
Three days later, I snap. And yeah, I actually consider the vibrator thing.
Keith swears by it. Who knows, maybe he’s onto something and it’d make her laugh.
But in the end, I order a box of Jacques Torres New York chocolates (the kind that’ll ruin her for the cheap stuff she keeps in her cupboard), a single yellow long-stemmed dahlia from the florist, her color, and three bottles of apple juice, imported, packed in a brown paper box lined with yellow tissue, glass bottles snug in compartments so they don’t clink.
I call it the unofficial “How mad is Holly?” special.
I pay extra for early same-day deliveries to my office. Between meetings, I haul it all over and drop it in front of her door, and head back. If she won’t talk to me, at least this will tell her what I’m feeling.
I wait for a text, something more than “I’m okay.”
Hours later, still nothing.
Me:
Did you get it?
She doesn’t respond. That night, the dahlia and the bottles still sit untouched in the hall. Even the chocolates are unopened.
The only contact I get is one message a day: just enough to let me know she and the baby are fine. No more than that.
I work late most nights. By the time I get back, she’s already home. I knock most evenings, hoping maybe she’ll open the door, or at least say something from the other side, but there’s nothing.
No shadow behind the peephole. No quiet shuffle of her feet. No sudden breathless “hello,” even though I never heard her running to the door. Nothing to show she’s deciding if I get in. Just silence.
On Thursday, she doesn’t accidentally pop out on the balcony at midnight.
Or the Thursday after.
Before this, I could have counted on one hand the number of days Holly and I had ever gone without seeing each other.
And now it’s becoming routine. I don’t like it, not one damn bit.