AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Am I sure if I don’t want my coffee cup littered with the phone number and heart-shaped doodles of your next conquest?” she asks, her fingers pausing their rummaging through the documents I brought to her. I have no doubt she is looking for something I missed so she can call me incompetent and tell me to come back when I’m more prepared. Good thing I triple-checked the requirements before I walked in today. “Yes, in fact, I’m quite sure.”
She turns her eyes and attention back down to the documents in front of her, checking a list she must have pulled up on her computer screen to ensure I brought in everything the HR manager requested.
“Is this really how you want things to be between us?” I ask.
I know it’s a fucking ballsy question to ask an already unhappy Penelope. I can see the light skin of her chest starting to blotch with redness beneath the zipper of her fleece jacket.
Her eyes dart back up to mine. The coolness of her icy blue eyes makes me almost shiver at the coldness of her stare.
“If I had a choice, Matthews, there would never be anything between us at all, and you wouldn’t be here,” she says, straightening her spine now that she’s checked a half dozen times and can’t find fault with my paperwork.
“I’m sorry for everything I did that hurt you, Penelope. I swear it wasn’t my intention.”
She shakes her head like she has no interest in hearing what I have to say and then walks out from around her desk. I half expect her to keep walking out of the office and down the hall of the corporate offices, but she doesn’t.
“Save your apologies for Chloe and whatever puck bunny comes after her… because your sorry is wasted on me. All I want from you is your driver’s license to make a copy,” she says and then hangs a quick left inside a small walk-in closet-sized room.
Chloe?
Puck bunny’s?
I don’t want any of that.
The only thing I want is the woman who barely holds eye contact with me and flees the area whenever I show up. But I know better than to think that will ever happen.
Forgiveness and Penelope not hating my guts for the rest of my life—that's the best-case scenario here.
I follow her, reaching for my wallet in my back pocket.
I walk through the door jam of the tiny space.
It’s a small printer room and it’s barely big enough to be a coat closet.
If I sat down against one side of the wall and stretched out my legs, they’d touch the other side.
“Don’t let the door shut,” she warns me.
I’m right behind Penelope’s back as she stands in front of the tall printer that reaches just to the middle of her rib cage.
She pushes a button to bring the printer out of hibernation.
“License, please,” she says with a slight grumble in her voice.
She’s not happy about being stuck in this small space together, that I’m sure of.
But even though she can’t stand me, she’s too polite not to ask nicely, even if her tone suggests that she’d like to plunge my license into the side of my throat and watch me bleed out.
I reach my left arm over her shoulder with ease. In her ballet flats, she’s at least eight inches shorter than my six foot two.
The moment I outstretch my arm, I realize the image I just offered up for her to view. In only a t-shirt, my tattoos are easy to see, and the inside of my left forearm is right at her eye level. Pulling back is not an option at this point. It will only cause her to wonder what I have to hide.
And besides, it’s too late.
She grabs for the license and her eyes magnetize to the tattoo on the inside of my arm.
I had a pair of figure skates tattooed with peonies surrounding them. It lays etched permanently into my skin, serving as a reminder that making things right with her is my end game. Not that a single day has gone by that I’ve forgotten what my actions cost her… and cost me.
Hoping for more is a losing proposition.
