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It’s like Asher can read my mind, because he crosses his arms over each other. “I’d like to take point on this one,” he tells me, and I shake my head.
“Hell no,” I say, glancing back at Emilia.
Asher follows my gaze and shakes his head. “Carter, I warned you.”
I sigh and look back at him. “I know. I know, Asher. I’m not doing anything. I’m not pursuing her. When the time comes, I’ll let her go. But she’s here now. I just want to spend a couple more moments with her.”
He looks so hurt on my behalf that I almost wish I didn’t speak at all. He nods and looks away. “Just be careful. In trying to protect her heart, you’ll end up breaking your own all over again. I’m the one that’s had to keep you together in the last couple of years. I don’t want to have to do it again, man.”
He’s right, of course. I was a fucking mess for years, but that’s one of the main reasons our company is so successful. Working is the only thing that kept my mind off her.
I sigh as I walk towards the meeting room, pausing by the coffee machine right outside it. I frown at the stack of documents and Emilia’s bag and phone on top of it. Where the hell did she even go?
I grab her phone and it lights up, the background photo one of her and John. What would I have done if she had a photo of her and Sam on the background? Back when she and I were dating, we always had pictures together as our screensavers.
I bite down on my lip and try to unlock it. I hesitate before trying her old password, a combination of her birthday, mine, and our dating anniversary. Much to my surprise, it unlocks. She’s still using the same code after all these years? I grin to myself and think about all the mayhem I can cause with this knowledge.
The very first thing I do is download the most obnoxious song I can think of and set that as her ringtone before taking her phone off silent. I grin to myself. I can’t wait to find out what expression she’ll have on her face the next time her phone rings.
Her phone buzzes as she gets a text from Sam, and I freeze. I hover over the notification with my finger, my stomach turning. He’s her boyfriend, and she says she’s happy with him. I can’t help but wonder what she’s like with him. She’s so closed off these days, and I wonder if Sam gets the version of her that I miss so much.
I click on the message without thinking, expecting the worst. Instead, all I find is the most mundane text messages imaginable. All she and Sam ever seem to talk about is how their day was or what they ate. Yet when she was with me, I could never open my messages in public, because I never knew what kind of naughtiness she was getting up to that day. I clutch her phone tightly and click on the photo icon, my entire body tense. Maybe this is exactly what I need to get her out of my mind. I just need to see something I can’t unsee.
I scroll through her photos, and sure enough, there are some cute ones of her with Sam that I fucking hate, but none of the type of photos she’d always send me. I can’t imagine being away from her for weeks and not having her keeping me on my toes. Has she really changed that much or was she just different with me?
I’m so caught up in checking out the contents of her phone that I don’t even realize that she’s returned until she snatches her phone out of my hand.
“What the hell, Carter?” she says, her eyes flashing.
I grin at her and cross my arms over each other. “You should really change your access code.”
“You— are you insane? That’s such an invasion of privacy. How… how… uncivilized.”
I chuckle, I can’t help it. “Uncivilized?” I repeat, amused. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
She grits her teeth and crosses her arms over each other, pushing her breasts out unknowingly.
“Can’t believe how boring you’ve become. You were never like that with me,” I murmur, my voice husky. “What did you have for dinner? Really?”
Emilia holds her hand out and I frown at her. “Phone,” she says, angrily. “If you get to go through mine then you’d better damn well believe I’m going through yours. Give it to me.”
I shrug and place my phone in her palm. I watch her as she tries to unlock it and succeeds in one go, my password still identical to hers. She looks up at me in wonder for a brief second, and I lean back against the wall as she scrolls through my phone. I know she won’t find a thing. There were some messages Layla sent me that I wouldn’t want her to see, but I deleted that entire message thread the day I called it quits with her.
The few things that I absolutely don’t want her finding are locked up in an app I created myself. I don’t entirely put it past her to manage to get into that too, since the password is her birthday. I really should’ve picked a more secure password, but then again, no one but her would ever dare touch my phone, or like Emilia just did — straight up demand it from me. I’m nervous as she scrolls through my apps. I really don’t want her to find out that I still have old photos of her and of the two of us locked away.
She glances at me before clicking on the photo gallery icon, her eyes filled with insecurity. She frowns as she scrolls through my photos, finding nothing other than photos of documents and family. She goes through my texts next, and I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or relieved when she finds that they’re equally boring.
She hands me back my phone, her lips forming a pout that’s far too cute on her. “And you call me boring,” she murmurs, amusement dancing in her eyes.
I shrug and put my phone in my pocket. “You’re always welcome to do something about the boring contents of my phone,” I murmur, winking at her. “Matter of fact, I can already imagine it. Some hot photos, even hotter text messages…”
Emilia looks at me through narrowed eyes and brushes past me. I grin as I follow her into the meeting room. My phone buzzes just as I sit down, and I frown at it in surprise when I realize it’s a text from Emilia. I glance at her, but she’s staring at her phone, an amused smile on her face.
I open the text to find a photo of red chili peppers, along with at least a hundred emojis of fire and chilis. I snicker, I can’t help it. “So lame,” I tell her, and she giggles. “Seriously, so lame,” I repeat, but I can’t get the smile off my face. I’ve missed her. I’ve missed this. Lame jokes and that smile of hers.
I can’t keep my eyes off Emilia throughout the meeting. This has got to be the most boring meeting I’ve been in, but she’s taking notes as though she’s scared she might miss a critical piece of information. It’s so her. She was like this at school too. Her notes were always ridiculously detailed. It’s no wonder she became a lawyer.
I bite back a yawn as the meeting wraps up and scroll through my contacts, pausing on her phone number. I glance at her, wondering just how pissed off she’s going to get when I do this, and then I do it anyway. I press dial, and all of a sudden, Crazy Frog, the most annoying song known to mankind, starts to play. Emilia jumps in shock, and it takes her a good couple of seconds to realize that it’s her phone that’s ringing. I burst out laughing, her expression too priceless, and she looks at me.
