Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Carley
One Week Later
It’s been almost a week since D last texted me. I haven’t received any more flowers or food deliveries, either.
Has he already given up on me? What if I’m making a huge mistake?
So much for following me to the bottom of the deep blue sea.
As each day passes, I’m increasingly consumed by thoughts of him.
Touching him. Fucking him. My agonizing sex dreams have returned with a vengeance.
It’s a thousand times worse than after I got home from Greece.
Sometimes I think my pride is at fault. Usually staying firm to my values and beliefs gives me a sense of fulfillment. Right now, however, I just feel empty.
Also absent recently are the letters and text messages from Blaine. He must have found a way around Ren’s additional security measure because he obviously knows I moved out.
Just like that motherfucker wanted.
“Carley,” Saylor calls my name from the living room. “Food is here.”
I’m not hungry, but I know I should eat. Groaning, I roll out of bed and drag my feet down the hallway to the living room. Saylor and Ren are laying the food out on the table in front of the television.
I curl up into a ball on the sofa and pull my baggy t-shirt over my knees for extra comfort.
“Here you go,” Saylor hands me a container of kung pao chicken, which I take but set back down on the table. This earns me an overexaggerated sigh from Saylor.
“Knock it off, okay? I feel too lousy to eat.”
“Listen,” Saylor begins, and I know she’s about to say something that will piss me off. “I get that you’re sad, and you have every right to be. I was angry at him at first, too.”
“At first? Meaning you’re not anymore?”
“You know I’ll always be angry with him as long as you are.”
I don’t miss the sarcasm in her tone when she says the word angry.
“As you should,” I reply.
“Should he have told you? Yes. He should have had the balls and the intelligence to know the truth may have been hard for you to hear, but ultimately you would have respected him more for being upfront about it.”
I think about that for a minute. If D would have told me in his office that day, or later that night when he brought me back to his penthouse when I was drunk, would I have given him—us—another chance?
Why do I even have to think about it? I know I would have. Just like when I left his office the first day I realized who he was, knowing I would be back the following Monday.
“But at the end of the day, you aren’t the one he cheated on.”
“But he still lied to her,” Ren interjects. “And he blatantly told her he was going to a meeting with a guy.”
“Who’s fucking side are you on?” Saylor shoots back at him.
“I’m on Carley’s side,” he shrugs, and I like knowing he has my back.
But once again, Saylor is right.
“Since the moment you laid eyes on him in Greece, there hasn’t been one second of one day that he hasn’t taken up space in your mind and in your heart.
If I thought it was truly over with you guys, then I would be stuffing my face with crab rangoon and chicken in garlic sauce instead of trying to beat it into your head that you need to give him a chance to explain, and then work things out with him. ”
“Say, you know what happened with my parents. The lying. The cheating. What if Lucas never died? I don’t think I ever would have met my real father, and I can’t imagine a life without him in it.
I don’t want to go through that. It’s why I told him outright those are hard limits for me.
Whether he lied or just omitted the truth, what’s to say he won’t do it again? ”
I watch as Saylor shakes her disappointed head at me.
“I just really don’t think lying and cheating come natural to him. Your mother? Yes. D? No. Sometimes people lie to protect those they care about.”
Yeah, or to protect themselves.
“I love you, Say. And I really appreciate the advice and everything you’re trying to do. But I can’t be with someone who is afraid to tell me their whole truth. No matter the reason. I’m a big girl, and I can handle it.”
At that, I stand from the sofa and take a deep breath. I know what I need to do.
“I’m going to get dressed and go to the office. D should be gone by now, and I’ll finally be able to get my things that are still there. When I wake up tomorrow, I am going to go out and look for a new job. It’s time I start to put all of this behind me and move on.”
I don’t stick around to wait for Saylor’s look of disapproval. When I get to my room, I change into jeans and a t-shirt, straighten my hair, and throw on some mascara and lip gloss. As painful as it’s going to be, I need to say goodbye in order to move on.
* * *
It’s about 7:45 when I get to the office.
I don’t see any reason why D should still be here, but just to be safe, I hang out outside of the building until 8 P.M. When I finally make it upstairs, I move quickly across the lobby toward my former desk.
As I get closer, the sight of D’s office door cracked open and light streaming out of it stops me in my tracks.
I stand, frozen to the spot.
Did he hear the elevator? I walk to the wall next to his office and listen carefully for any indication he’s approaching his door. That’s when I hear the unmistakable sound of moaning coming from inside the office.
What the fuck?
Does he have another girl in there? Is it Emma? Someone else? Another colleague? I want to march right in there and catch him in the act. Let him know he’s just proven to me everything I needed to know about him.
What the hell did I think I was getting in to with a man who is practically a stranger? I don’t really know a whole lot about him. Obviously, or else I at least would have known he has an ex-wife.
Instead of barging in there, I take a deep breath and try to calm myself down a little bit. Deep down, I know at the heart, D is a good person. He just chose to make a dumb choice. Now I need to check and see if he’s in the middle of making another one.
Pushing the door open, I peek my head inside slowly, until I know which way his attention is focused. When my eyes land on him, his back is to me, and I can see the top of his head resting on the back of the chair.
Another moan hits my ears, and based on his positioning, I’m having a hard time not visualizing a woman on her knees between his legs at this very moment.
But I can’t see past his desk to confirm that theory.
The sound of him, though, has my stomach stirring in a way only D can conjure.
I close my eyes and try to control my own breathing.
Before I have a moment to obsess over the maybe woman sucking his dick, he moans again. But this moan is a little different.
“Carley …” My eyes fly open, thinking he’s spotted me, but he hasn’t.
He’s turned his chair toward the door slightly. Enough for me to see he’s controlling his own pleasure at the moment. With his fist hugging his dick and my name on his lips, he’s jerking off to thoughts of me.
Me.
Now that the terror of him being with someone else has worn off, this suddenly feels very inappropriate. Like I’m some kind of sick voyeur. Before I have a chance to leave, he reaches for the pile of tissues on the top of his desk and uses them to cover the tip of his dick.
“Fuck,” he’s breathing even harder now. “Carley …”
He moans my name loudly as his orgasm rips through his body. With several more pants and a lot of shaky breathing, I watch him as he wipes off his tip and throws the tissues into the trash can under his desk.
I need to leave. I shouldn’t have come. As I turn to go, my elbow slams into the door, and you’d have to be deaf not to have heard it.
Damn it!
“Carley?” D’s voice is filled with shock.
I flee the doorway just as I hear him shouting behind me.
“No! Carley wait!”
But I’m already halfway across the lobby by that point. I make it to the elevators and press the button just as I feel D’s hand clamp around my bicep.
“Wait, please. I’m begging you, Carley.”
He swings me around and gently pushes me up against the marble wall next to the elevator.
Boxing me in with his arms, there’s nowhere for me to go.
But the pleading look in his eyes is what keeps me there.
His head falls as though weighed down by anguish.
The second I open my mouth to tell him to let me go, his gaze finds mine again, rendering me speechless.
His eyes speak to me, saying everything I’ve wanted to hear from him for the past two weeks.
He’s sorry. He was an idiot. He should have had faith in me. He knows he fucked up, and he will have to earn back my trust.
Then his gaze turns dark, and he removes his hands from the wall, gripping my shirt in both of his fists.
My breathing increases as my heart beats faster than it ever has before.
I no longer want to run. I don’t want to cast D from my life.
I lose my hold on the barricade around my heart I have struggled to keep in place over the last two weeks, and it comes crashing down.
“I fucking love you, théa.”
The ferocity in his voice heats me from within. There is a fire in his eyes I’ve only seen once before, when he chased me around his penthouse before completely and thoroughly ravaging my body in ways I never thought were possible.
“I protect what’s mine, and I will never apologize for that.
That’s all I was trying to do for you. I’m not always going to make the right choices, but my actions will never be against you.
Everything I do, I do it with you in mind.
With our future in mind. Because we will have a future together, Carley. ”
My heart swells at the thought of a future with D. It always has. Saylor was right, from the first moment I laid eyes on him, I knew. He is my future, and nothing else will ever compare to him.