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11
Right. I’ve moped long enough.
I wake up bright and early the next day and put on my war paint. I do my makeup to the nines, professional as hell. I put on a pencil skirt, a formal blouse, and even switch my belongings from my usual slouchy old hobo purse to a structured, tailored bag that I bought a few months ago. It looks like a briefcase, all professional lawyer-chic, but I’d been too lazy to switch purses ever since I bought it.
Today, however, calls for the new purse. It calls for breaking out all the big guns, in fact.
Today, I’ve decided I’m going to get my job back.
I can’t stand sitting around this apartment any longer. I need to pull my life together and put it back on track, and that starts with a polite, face-to-face, professional conversation with my boss. I fire off an email to her just as I’m strapping on my heels—the demure, mid-height ones that are perfect for business meetings, but not high or sexy enough to be suggestive. The last thing I want today is to come across as sexy in any manner. I want to be professional, family-friendly, and the face of everything my company stands for.
After all, that’s how I plan to convince them to let me come back.
I write the email in a deliberately straightforward way. I have to stop by the office today, so I was hoping we could speak about the situation and ways in which we may look to remedying it.
I don’t ask her for a meeting, because if I ask, she could say no. Instead, I’m going to just show up and not take no for an answer.
I’m not sure it will work. I’m not sure anything will, at this point. But I have to try.
Battle armor donned, I square my shoulders in the mirror and give myself one good stern nod for good luck. Then I wrench open my door, and nearly trip backwards over myself in surprise.
Zayne rolls into my apartment, his head drooping to one side, neatly pressed uniform crumpled and wrinkled. As soon as his body touches the ground, he startles awake, pushes himself back into a sitting position and rubs sleep from his eyes. But there’s no disguising what happened here last night.
He clearly spent the night sleeping on my doorstep.
“Zayne…” I bite my lip, shaking my head. I don’t know what to say to him. Nothing seems right. I step over him and stride across the hall toward the elevators. “Try not to drool on my welcome mat,” I call over my shoulder.
“Clove.” His voice sounds almost as bad now as mine did last night. Scratchy and thick with sleep. “Please, wait, I need to talk to you.”
“Anything you have to say to me, you can say to my voicemail. I’ll delete it right along with all the creepy messages the other assholes are leaving me, but still. You can get it off your chest there.” I press the elevator call button decisively.
“What happened?” He struggles to his feet and staggers across the hall toward me. He catches my hand just as the elevator arrives at my floor. He holds my wrist, not too tightly, gently enough that I could pull away if I wanted to. But his skin against mine reminds me of things I don’t want to remember. Of all the ways he sets me on fire, ignites me in a way that nobody else can. “Yesterday morning when I left, we were great. Then I got back from work, and you refused to see me, just kept telling me to leave. Clearly something happened, Clove, so please, tell me what it is. We have something real here, a connection, don’t we?” His eyes bore into mine. I can’t stand the sincerity in them. I can’t stand the way my heart screams at me to trust him when the proof of his untrustworthiness is sitting just inches away in my phone, damning, impossible to ignore.
“You owe me this much,” Zayne murmurs, his voice dropping low with feeling. “At least tell me what’s going on.”
I swallow hard. “I could ask you the same thing.” I can’t meet his eyes. Not with all these thoughts racing through my head. I stare at the floor between us instead. “Why do you have two dating profiles?”
Silence.
I look up, after it stretches on long enough, and find Zayne grimacing, running his hand through his hair. “Well? Are you going to deny it?”
He meets my gaze, and I ignore the shock of pain in my gut. Hold his eye, because dammit, he should at least need to look me in the eye while he lies to my face. “No,” he says. “I won’t deny it.”
The blow lands hard. At least he didn’t lie, I think, distantly. But it doesn’t help very much. The truth still hurts.
I pull my hand free from his. The elevator doors have long since closed again, but when I stab at the button, they open once more, ready to whisk me away from here. From him.
“Clove, please, wait.”
I step into the elevator, but he steps in with me, pins me against the back wall with his hands on both of my shoulders, gripping me tight, desperation in his eyes. “I can explain,” he says.
I laugh once, sharp and bitter. “Right. Like you’ve explained everything so far.”
“I only made the new profile for you.”
My eyebrows shoot up so high that it’s a wonder they remain attached to my face. “You think that’s helping your case? You made a whole profile to trick me? Great.”
“No, that’s not… Not to trick you, Clove. To match with you.”
