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I put the phone down. I’m not texting her. I’m not going back early. I’m staying here to do my fucking job and praying that sometime between now and the flight home on Friday, I get my shit straight.
IMAKE IT TOTHURSDAY. It’s been nearly a week since I’ve seen her.
A week since she begged for more when I was doing my level best not to come; a week since she deep-throated me as if she was hungry for it, as if there was nothing she wanted more than my cock in her mouth.
Jesus, I’ve heard her say ‘more’ a thousand times in my head now. I’ve relived all of it a thousand times: pushing her dress around her hips, sliding my fingers under the elastic of her panties to discover she was absolutelysoakedand...
Fuck.
A week away hasn’t done a goddamn thing. I want her just as much as I did.
I give up and cancel every meeting. To return to a girl I can’t keep for myself.
27
LUCIE
It was hard to breathe when I left Caleb’s room, and a week later—waiting on my lunch at the deli down the street from the office—it’s still hard to breathe.
I knew what I was signing on for when I slept with him, but it’s as if I’ve lost something, and the ache from it is nearly palpable. It’s as if I’ve losteverything, and now the normal bullshit I deal with every day feels as if it’s simply too much. Jeremy’s texts are too much. The downstairs toilet flooding is too much. The twins’ hopeful little faces as they glance toward Caleb’s house are way,waytoo much.
Molly’s on the other line while I wait for my order, spelling out her latest Michael-focused plan, one she prefaced with“It’s perfect. I just need someone to kidnap me.”
“Molly, don’t you think he’d call the cops if he thought you were locked in a shipping container?” I ask when she concludes.
“Not if time was of the essence. But where am I going to find a kidnapper?”
“Dark web?” I suggest. “That was a joke. For the love of God,do not go on the dark web if that’s something you know how to do.”
“Of course I know how. I’ve got a hundred and sixty IQ, which you would not guess based on my driving ability. I knocked the side-view mirror off my car in the garage this morning, by the way, so can you drive tonight? And wear something sexy. Something that shows a lot of cleavage.”
Molly has insisted that I need to ‘get back out there’ while the twins are celebrating their grandfather’s birthday tonight. I guess it’s better than staying home alone, reliving that afternoon in a hotel room, an afternoon against which nothing could ever compare, but I was sort of hoping she’d cancel.
“Fine, butyou’dbetter be wearing something that shows a lot of—”
There’s a tap on my shoulder and I discover Wyatt standing behind me and not appearing to care that I’m on the phone, which doesn’t win him any points. “Let me call you back,” I tell her.
“It’s cool. I’ll just be over here on the dark web looking up mercenaries.”
I laugh as I drop the phone in my purse and turn to Wyatt.
“I’ve been hoping I’d run into you down here,” he says, “but you never eat lunch out.”
“I don’t, but my kids got in the way this morning, so I couldn’t pack anything. How are you?”
“That depends,” he says with another unmuted grin. “Are you ready to go out with me yet?”
I cancelled on Stuart already because of Caleb, and Wyatt appeals even less. I probably need to move on, but I’m not ready.
He grins. “What if we don’t call it a date? What if it’s, like, the prologue to a date?”
I grab my to-go container as it appears in the window. “That still sounds like a date.”
“Here’s why you should go on a prologue to a date with me,” he says, holding the door. “A. I’m fun. B. I’m very hot. C. I have superior bedroom skills.”
I raise a brow. “Would that matter on aprologueto a date?”
“Just thought I’d try to slide it in there,” he replies, as the building comes into view. “But I promise if you go on the date prologue, I won’t try toslide inanything else.”
