AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The penthouse is yours while we’re here. If you need me, you’ve got my number and my email,” I said.
I didn’t give her a chance to respond as I slipped out the door.
I got to my room a couple of floors down and dropped my things. The key was already attached to the door, courtesy of Ines, according to the note taped to them. I pushed myself in and kicked my bags in with me, then let the door fall shut behind me. I wanted to call Mason. I wanted to unload on him and vent to him about what was going on. But if I did, the first thing out of his mouth would be that he told me so.
Then, he’d tell me exactly what he’d told me back in college.
That I needed to move on and forget about her.
I locked the door to my hotel room and made my way into the bedroom. I didn’t care that it wasn’t as big. I didn’t care that it didn’t have a view. I didn’t care that the carpet wasn’t soft or that the bed wasn’t donned with the satin sheets I was used to. I fell face-first, roaring into the pillow as it muffled the sounds of my anger. Of my hurt. Of my betrayal. Of my confusion.
I was more confused than ever before. And I had no fucking clue how to deal with it.
31
Olivia
I gazed out the window of the plane as we flew back to Seattle from Paris. And yet again, I was in the back of the plane and Brett was in the front. Everything went as well as could have been expected. I got an email from Brett yesterday saying that he’d found the building he wanted and was already in negotiations trying to haggle down the price. He had his personal assistant in the middle of drafting up an official press release to announce that his headquarters would most certainly be in Paris. And me? My job was to fill that Paris headquarters with consultants—interviewing and arranging their care packages to get them to Paris, if necessary. I needed to fly back and forth many times to hire people in the country who spoke the language so we had a handful of them on staff to help with translations.
But honestly, I didn’t want to be there.
I hadn’t communicated with Brett except professionally and via email ever since he’d relegated himself to a different hotel room. The air between us was so tense it was hard to breathe sometimes. I didn’t want to be around him. Hell, I didn’t know if I could even work with him any longer. It wasn’t as if we were on opposite ends of his business. We’d be working side by side throughout this entire project. Could I do that? Could I really work with all that tension swirling around us?
It wasn’t healthy for me or the baby growing inside of me. And it made me think about leaving my job altogether.
I fell in and out of sleep as the clouds rolled by. I felt more exhausted than I’d ever felt in my life. I had to excuse myself a couple of times to go to the bathroom, where I found out all sorts of ways to twist myself so I could throw up in the toilet without getting it on myself. And each time I got up, I felt Brett hovering. I saw his shadow outside the door, following me without interjecting. I didn’t understand it, and it made me angry. If he wanted to be here to help, he needed to fucking help, not stand around like a child and wait for me to ask for it. Like I could do anything like that with a mouth full of puke.
I washed myself up a few times on the plane ride home, and then we finally descended into Seattle airspace. I gathered my suitcases and hauled them off the plane, watching as Brett walked steadily in front of me. Great. Asshole. He wanted to hover when I was puking, but not help me in my exhaustion when I was hauling suitcases. It only served to make me angrier and want to leave my job sooner.
He got into one private town car, tossing his bags into the trunk. But soon, another town car pulled up. The driver got out and looked straight at me, but I was more focused on the town car pulling away. The one Brett was in. The one I wasn’t in with him.
He had ordered me a separate fucking car to go home in.
“Would you like some help, ma’am?” the driver asked.
“No. I’m good. Just hold open the trunk,” I said flatly.
I tossed all of my things in, not caring if anything broke. I slumped down into the car, then rattled off my address mindlessly to the driver. I wanted to go home. I wanted to face-plant in my bed and sleep the next several months away. I leaned my head against the back of the seat and fell asleep for a quick nap. I didn’t wake up until I felt someone rubbing my shoulder, and I jumped before I looked over to see who it was.
