I knew I couldn’t say anything to Derek.
He was in the middle of the chaos, and an embrace from me would only anger him. There was nothing I could do for him, and I knew I should excuse myself and give him space. I took Lizzie out of the building and to the SUV where Ronnie was waiting.
Lizzie was quiet, the dismal mood from the room absorbing into her skin. “Will Derek be okay?”
“I’m sure he will be.”
“I know how much that rocket meant to him.”
“I’m sure that whatever went wrong wasn’t his fault. Once he gets that confirmation, he’ll feel better.” At least, I hoped that was what would happen. I knew this would provoke him into a deep hole of depression, and it would consume him just the way the Odyssey did. He viewed the world in black-and-white. That rocket exploded—and he was to blame.
“I hope so. He looked so devastated.”
“Yeah…”
Ronnie and I pulled up to the curb, but Derek didn’t come out.
We waited a couple minutes, but he still didn’t show.
Ronnie turned to look at me. “I have a feeling he won’t be in the office this week.”
I pulled out my phone and texted him. Derek, we’re outside.
His response was instant. Go without me. I don’t need a ride this week.
I knew this was bad, really bad. I wanted to say something good, or just hop out of the car and go to him in his penthouse.
But he sent a preemptive text. Don’t come up here, Emerson.
I turned away from the window and looked at Ronnie. “Let’s go without him.”
I went into the lab, and it was the one and only time I’d stepped inside without Derek present. Jerome and Pierre were there, and they immediately turned to me when I walked in, like they were hoping it would be Derek. “He’s not coming in today.”
Jerome exchanged a look with Pierre. “Yeah, we thought that might happen.”
“How is he?” Pierre set down his things then walked toward me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Honestly, I don’t really know. I was at the launch, but I didn’t speak to him after the rocket…didn’t make it.” I didn’t want to use the world exploded. Seemed kind of harsh. “I went home because I knew he wouldn’t want to talk.”
“Yeah, probably not.” Jerome walked over. “I’m not sure if he’ll come in at all this week…or next.”
“Yeah,” Pierre said. “I can only imagine how hard he’s taking this. Normally, I would say getting back to work would make him feel better, but if he has no confidence in his abilities, that would be pointless.”
“It was a test rocket,” I said. “This shouldn’t cause him to lose his entire identity.”
“That’s not how he sees it,” Jerome said.
“Yeah,” Pierre said. “He’s a perfectionist.”
“There’s no such thing as a perfectionist,” I said. “No one does everything perfectly.”
“That’s not the way Derek views the world,” Jerome said. “The Odyssey really fucked him up.”
I knew that all too well. “Got any advice for me? How to handle him?”
Jerome shook his head. “No. I’d say leave him alone…and let him come out of his hole when he’s ready.”
“But he has classes to teach,” I said.
Pierre shrugged. “That’s the number one place where he won’t show his face. If he can’t build a successful rocket, what business does he have teaching the next generation of engineers? He’s way too harsh on himself, but that’s why he’s the best.”
He was way too hard on himself, and it was wrong. It made him unhappy, made him take unnecessary blame, made him have standards he couldn’t possibly meet. “Do they know anything about the rocket yet? Why it failed?”
“They’re still doing their investigation,” Jerome said. “But we’re eager to know that answer as well. Was it a design flaw or an installation flaw? It would make a huge difference for now. Maybe not for Derek because he considers himself solely responsible for everything that goes wrong.”
I wished he would get that out of his head. The Odyssey wasn’t his fault, and this probably wasn’t either.
“He’ll recover,” Jerome said. “It might take a while, but he will.”
He’d never really recovered from the Odyssey, so I wasn’t so sure about that.
I had dinner with Derek’s parents. It was just the three of us.
“He hasn’t been at work all week?” Cleo asked, the stress in all her features.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve texted him a couple times, but he doesn’t really say anything.”
“Same here,” Deacon said. “I went by his penthouse, but he wouldn’t answer the door.”
“Have you seen him?” Cleo asked.
I shook my head.
“Do we know anything about the rocket?” Deacon asked.
“The report came back, but I couldn’t understand it. I asked the guys at the lab, and they said it was undetermined at the moment.” I felt like I’d lost my best friend, and when Lizzie asked about him, I had to say he wanted to be alone…for over a week. I went to his class and told them that his classes were canceled for the rest of the semester since they only had a few weeks left. “I’m scared.”
Cleo stared at me.
“He pulled away because of the anniversary of his mother’s death, but he slowly came back to me. But this time, it’s different. This time, I’m afraid he won’t come back to me.” I wished Derek didn’t respond to trauma this way, pulling away from people instead of bringing them closer. I still didn’t really understand why behaved like that. He seemed to run from his problems, which was weird because he wasn’t a coward.
“He will,” Cleo whispered. “He just…likes to withdraw and feel nothing. That’s the only way he knows how to cope with these things. He started doing it as a child with his birth mom. It wasn’t this bad, but then…some other things happened.”
“He told me there’s this old friend he has to see with Ryan’s wedding festivities, and every time he comes home, he’s a different person. He’s angry and aggressive and just not himself. So, dealing with that, then his mother, and now this… I’m afraid it’s too much for him.” I was afraid I would lose the love of my life and watch him slip back into his old ways, refusing to feel after I’d worked so hard to get him to experience emotion once more.
“He’ll get through it,” Deacon said. “He’s a strong man…and he’s not going anywhere.”
27
Derek
I didn’t leave my penthouse for almost two weeks.
I dropped everything because I lost all my drive.
I lost all my belief in myself.
The report from the investigation came back, but the exact cause of the explosion was undetermined, and that made the situation worse. Not knowing was far worse than knowing it was all my fault.
I hadn’t shaved. I showered occasionally. I survived on my groceries and takeout. I ordered so many deliveries that the guys started to recognize my voice whenever I called to make an order.
Fucking pathetic.
But I didn’t want to see anybody. I didn’t want to hear that everything was fine when it wasn’t fine.
I got a text from Ryan. Hey, I know this is stupid, but you’re going to be there on Saturday, right? You should have gotten the invitation two weeks ago, and you haven’t RSVP’d.
I sighed and dragged my hands down my face. “Jesus fucking Christ…” I haven’t checked my mail. Yes, I’ll be there.
Cool. So, how did the rocket go?
It exploded.
Oh shit. You doing okay?
I stopped texting him back because the conversation was too much work. I sat there with my elbows on the table and stared at the other wall, my dining table empty of papers and calculations because I hadn’t done a single thing since that catastrophic day.
My phone lit up with another message, this time from Emerson. I’ve given you enough space.
I want to see you.
I didn’t want to see her. I was fucking ashamed.
I’m standing outside your door.
I sighed loudly, knowing this moment was inevitable. I was surprised she’d left me alone as long as she had. I left the dining table and opened the front door.
She stood there, her eyes emotional despite her attempts to hide it.
I stared at her, hating myself for a lot of reasons. I hated myself for fucking up that rocket. And then I hated myself for the way I treated her afterward.
She moved into me and wrapped her arms around me, holding me close, giving me a tight hug like I might slip away.
I stood there with my arms by my sides, like I didn’t deserve to hug her back. I was a bit numb, unable to feel anything at all. I completely shut down, and all those good feelings inside my chest seemed like a distant memory.
But I shut the door behind her and hugged her back. My arms locked around her, and I rested my chin on her head, holding her in silence, feeling her frantic heartbeat against my bare skin.
She didn’t say anything.
That was nice because I preferred the quiet. I preferred not talking because talking always made me feel worse. It was nice not to think about anything at all.
She eventually pulled away and looked into my gaze. “My mom is going to watch Lizzie tonight. I was hoping…I could stay over.”
I’d never had her sleep in my penthouse before. She always had to leave when we were finished. But I wasn’t excited about the prospect. “I’m really not in the mood, to be honest.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to be. I just want to be with you.”
I wanted to push her away and ask her to leave, but I didn’t. She’d given me enough space, and I really couldn’t ask for more. “Alright. But I really don’t feel like talking about anything.”
“That’s okay.”
I turned off the lights, and we went to bed. The place was a mess because I didn’t let the housekeeper in to clean. The bed wasn’t made, the sheets were two weeks old, and I knew I didn’t look that great because I’d only shaved a couple times.
But she didn’t seem to care.
I got into bed, and she immediately came to my side, wrapping her arms around me, holding me close, her face in the crook of my neck. We sat there in the dark, just breathing. My eyes were open and focused out the window.
Her arm tightened on my torso. “I love you.”
I turned my chin her way and automatically pressed a kiss to her forehead without thinking twice about it. “I love you too.”
Immediately, she went to sleep, like all she needed was to hear me say those words.
A nightmare woke me up.
I stood on the asphalt where the rocket launched and stared up at the sky as I watched the rocket explode. Then body parts rained down on me, soaking me in the blood of innocent people who’d trusted me not to kill them.
My eyes snapped open, and the dream ended.
I breathed hard as the images continued to flash across my mind, fading slowly like smoke from an extinguished candle. I looked beside me and saw Emerson still deep in sleep.
I left the bed and walked back into the living room. My laptop was at the dining table because I’d been working on emails since that was the only thing I could bring myself to do. I closed out of it then saw that my document with the book was still there. I hadn’t written anything in a while, and I had no idea when I would have the drive to start again. I closed out of it and saw the recent documents there. There were two that were untitled. I had no idea what they were.
I clicked the first to make sure it wasn’t important before I deleted it.
My thighs squeezed his narrow waist as my nails sliced down his back, leaving marks that would be visible when he walked to the bathroom once we were done. They would be there the following day, and if anyone saw him shirtless, they would know that a woman had recently claimed him. Imagining those marks made me so wet that I came around his fat dick. “Derek…”
My eyes opened wide. “What the…?” I continued to read, watching the fantasy unfold from her point of view, seeing the way she described me to a T. He sucked my nipples before he whispered my name against my skin. “Emmy…”
I sat back in my chair, far more disturbed than I was aroused. I accessed the data about the file and realized she’d written it before I told her how I felt about her. And it was a shared document…from her to me. She’d written a porno about me, just the way I wrote one about her. There was no way that was a coincidence, but how could she have known about the short stories I wrote?
I click on the other untitled document.
It was the dirty stories I’d written about her.
And then I realized what had happened.
I wrote my darkest and most private thoughts…and shared it with her the entire time. It was popping up on her computer, and she read it. Clearly, I hadn’t intended to share the stories with her. Otherwise, I would have mentioned it—and she never mentioned it.
It was a huge breach of privacy.
I had at least fifty pages here, and she’d read them all.
This whole fucking time, she knew. She knew how I felt about her.
I remembered when she got on her knees in my living room and sucked me off just like in one of my stories. She even told me to fuck her mouth, exactly as I had written. She used my fantasies to please me, so her actions weren’t genuine.
I felt violated, embarrassed, stupid.
I continued to stare at the document but didn’t read it. I was paralyzed, overwhelmed by the information that had just smacked me in the face.
Footsteps sounded behind me. “Everything okay?”
My hand immediately closed the laptop so she couldn’t see what was open on my screen. I’d never hid my screen from her before, but the movement was an impulse. She couldn’t see my face, so I continued to sit there as I considered a response. “Yes, just couldn’t sleep.” I was angry, but I didn’t tell her I was angry. I didn’t know why I kept it from her. I didn’t know if it was because I was embarrassed, or if I just didn’t know how I felt about it yet.
“When Lizzie can’t sleep, a glass of milk usually helps.”
I didn’t like milk. “I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
She turned around and walked back to the bedroom.
I returned to staring at the opposite wall…and feeling nothing.
28
Emerson
I picked up his outfit for the wedding then placed it in his closet. The rehearsal was on Friday, and the wedding was on Saturday. As far as I knew, he was still bringing me as his date. Derek had remained cold and distant all week, but he’d finally gone back to work. He didn’t say much to Pierre and Jerome. Just kept his head down and worked.
I didn’t like it when Derek was this way, but I didn’t want to push him. His mind was never present when we were together and we hadn’t had sex in weeks, but I still didn’t pressure him or question him.
This was just something I’d have to accept. When Derek was in a dark place, this was his reaction. I loved him enough to wait for him to come back, to be understanding rather than impatient.
He rarely gave me affection. He hardly kissed me. And he hadn’t told me he loved me in a while. He stopped tutoring Lizzie because he was too distracted, and Lizzie understood he just needed time. The semester was pretty much over, so it didn’t really matter at this point anyway.
At the end of the workday, I joined him at the table.
He kept his head down and didn’t acknowledge me.
We never talked about what happened with the rocket. We never discussed his mother. We didn’t really discuss anything at all.
I stood there and watched him work. “I got a dress.”
He stilled then looked up at me. “A dress for what?”
“The rehearsal dinner.”
His eyes filled with annoyance, like just the mention of the event infuriated him.
�
��Unless you don’t want me to come with you.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said coldly.
I hated this so fucking badly. I missed the man I loved so much. “Derek, I know you’re going through a hard time, but you said you would always make me a priority—”
“I’m not in the mood for this shit, Emerson.” He stared at me with pure loathing. “I gave my mom a heart attack, my rocket was a disaster, you don’t understand the meaning of privacy, and now I have to go to this stupid fucking wedding tonight and see a bunch of assholes I’d rather not see. No, you aren’t the priority right now.”
I did my best to keep my expression controlled, but that was really difficult right now. I hated it when he screamed at me, unable to control his anger, but the biggest issue I had with his rant was something he said. “I don’t understand the meaning of privacy? What does that mean?”
He dropped his pencil and rose to his feet so he could stare down at me rather than up. “It means what it literally means. You violated my privacy when you had no fucking right to do that.”
“Derek, I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
“You’re going to look me in the eye and act like you didn’t read all the stories I wrote about you?”
My heart clenched tightly when I realized my secret was out—and at the worst possible time.
“Don’t act like I meant to send that to you. That was a fucking accident, and you knew it. But you read it anyway. Then you wrote your own? So, this whole fucking time when you were just my assistant, you knew how I wanted to fuck your brains out a million ways to Sunday? You were my assistant, Emerson. You knew how I felt about privacy more than anybody. You shouldn’t have opened that document, and when you did, you should have immediately closed it. The only way you would have known it was you was if you read to the end. Yes, a huge violation of privacy.”
I felt like I wasn’t being sentenced in a courtroom but on the steps of the gallows with the noose around my neck. “Derek, let me explain—”
The Boy Who Has No Belief (Soulless Book 7) Page 26