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Even the memory of that sent this searing knife-to-the-gut sensation through me, making me pause mid-stride before I forced my legs to keep going, to keep carrying me.
The next day was much the same.
Busy work.
Fielding questions from Mike and my coworkers.
By the third day, they stopped asking.
I, however, didn’t stop obsessing.
How could I? When that damned clawing sensation only seemed to get worse as the days went on.
I saw a pitbull on a commercial and cried for twenty minutes.
I accidentally caught a few seconds of a guy confessing his feelings to a woman on some cheesy-ass primetime drama, and felt that knife in my gut twist again.
To make matters worse, apparently having sex once just reignited my long-buried libido. Because I woke up from hot and heavy sex dreams, twisted in sweaty sheets, with an aching need between my thighs.
I didn’t even bother to reach down to try to ease it.
I knew it wouldn’t work.
I didn’t want an orgasm.
I wanted him.
“Ugh!” I growled, reaching for the closest thing to me—which happened to be a plastic cup—and hurling it at the wall, where it landed with an unsatisfying click before dropping to the floor.
I needed to get a grip.
I needed to… work through this shit.
I knew what my parents would say, both of them unofficially in psychological positions at their respective jobs. That I needed to talk it out. That I needed to find someone to unburden myself to.
But I couldn’t fucking do that.
Because I would be damned if I told my friends and family that Andres fucking Alcazar had bruised my ego, let alone my damn heart.
No fucking way.
So I just had to endure.
Deal with it on my own.
Bury it in work.
On that note, I abandoned the bagel I had been smearing cream cheese on, knowing that food had only been making me queasy anyway, and made my way toward the office.
I was saying a silent prayer for a new case a few hours later when the door suddenly opened.
And there he was.
I hadn’t been prepared, damnit.
I knew I’d run into him again eventually. This was Navesink Bank. And he was friendly with my friends and family.
I figured, by then, though, that I’d have been able to knock some sense into myself, to get over it.
I just hadn’t anticipated him coming back into my work. So there was no way to keep the shock from my face.
And, damn him, he’d seen it before I could bring my guard down, finding it was harder to do than ever before. But I swore I could feel it snapping into place.
His gaze barely even moved over me, though, as he zeroed in on Mike.
“Let’s talk,” he said, waving toward the back room.
If I wasn’t so freaked the hell out, I would have laughed at the way my coworkers all hopped to and scurried behind him.
My stomach twisted into an aching knot as the door closed, cutting off any way for me to know what was going on, what was being said, if my name was getting further smeared in this office.
As stubborn as I was, as determined as I had been for so long, if A told them we’d fucked, then he’d none too ceremoniously kicked me out, well, I wasn’t sure if I had it left in me to stick it out, to finally prove my worth.
I think I’d rather just start all over than deal with that shit from these guys.
On that very depressing thought, I sat there, tapping my feet, shifting things around on my desk, twisting myself into tighter knots.
Twenty minutes passed.
Then thirty.
Finally, the door opened, and out they all walked.
From what I could tell, nothing on my coworkers’ faces implied they knew about the fucking and betrayal, or anything at all negative about me.
“It’s lunchtime, yeah?” A asked, looking at Mike.
“Did you want us to order you something?” Mike asked, ever the ass-kisser.
“Why don’t you all go out for something. I gotta talk to your girl for a minute,” he said, and I swear I felt the way my heart stuttered, making the blood slow in my veins.
“Oh, ah, sure, yeah,” Mike said, nodding to the guys, who all filed toward the door.
I watched it close, made sure they were half the way down the street before I stood, and turned to look at Andres.
I was surprised I could speak with how tightly my jaw was clenched.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I told him.
“No?” he asked, head tipping to the side in that way I used to think was kind of sexy. But I was too hurt and humiliated and fucking enraged by how he’d treated me to think those kinds of thoughts. Or, at least, that was what I was telling myself.
“No.” The sound was clipped, definitive.
“You can listen then,” he suggested, walking over to the door, and sliding the lock before turning to look at me again.
