“Where are you going?” Ford asks as I dash towards the door.
“To find her. To make this right.”
An eruption starts in the pit of my stomach and creeps through my body. The fire courses through my abdomen, then my chest, and creeps up my face as reality, the truth of everything, slams into me with no mercy.
I dial her again but it goes straight to voicemail.
“Fuck!”
Mallory
“I’M GOING TO BE FINE,” I lie as Joy pulls me into a hug. “I just want to be alone for a while.”
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Joy admits, letting me go. “Should you really be alone right now? I could just go fold towels or wash the front windows or something.”
“You? Wash windows?” I laugh through my tears. “That I want to see.”
“Well, I’d probably just sit there and read a magazine, but it sounded good,” she shrugs. “Besides, you’re crying.”
I wipe my face with the end of my shirt. “It’s not a sad cry.” I look at her and shrug. “Not completely, anyway. I’m so mad at him.”
“You have every right to be.” She picks at a pink fingernail. “You don’t think he lied to you though, right? He wasn’t talking to Vanessa.”
“I don’t think so. I think he would’ve mentioned that to me.”
“Sure he would’ve.”
I blow out a breath. “You know what I’m mad about? That he wouldn’t listen to me. He just looked at me like I was a piece of shit because I made a mistake. Like nothing else mattered in that moment except for what he was feeling.”
“That makes sense and it’s not unreasonable.”
“If this would’ve been a few weeks ago, I would be completely heartbroken. I’d feel like a failure. But now . . .” I shrug again. “Now I’m pissed off.”
“That a girl!” Joy laughs, almost making me smile. “Are you sure you want me to leave? There are no classes tonight. You’re going to be alone.”
“That’s the plan. I just need to think, and I think best here.”
She nods, looks at me like she thinks I might jump off a bridge, and picks up her bag. “Call me if you need me.”
“I will.” I sit and wait for the front door to close.
Tears stream down my face, soaking the girl power t-shirt I tossed on haphazardly in the parking lot. It’s wrinkled and had been in my backseat for who knows how long, but I wasn’t planning on coming here after work today. I wasn’t planning on any of this.
Facing the mirrors on the far wall, I start my stretches. Silently begging for the peace I usually feel here to come, I go through the motions. One pose leads fluidly into the next, followed by the third. Then fourth. By the fifth, I’m not finding any serenity.
The silence is loud, every buzz from the refrigerator in the back sounding like a swarm of bees. The drip in the bathroom sink is relentless. Sounds I’ve never heard before, never noticed, build on the fear that’s knotting my stomach in the worst way.
Maybe I shouldn’t be alone.
Crawling across the floor, I dig my phone out of my bag and turn it on. There are missed calls from Graham. I know that before they show. But I don’t expect him to call in right as I press the call button for Joy.
“Mallory?” His voice is a rush—ragged and pained and uneasy. It hits me hard in the feels. So hard, in fact, that I fall onto my back and just hold the phone to my ear. “Mallory? Are you there? Please, talk to me.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Shit,” he groans. “I’m sorry.”
“Not good enough,” I sniffle.
“Where are you? Let me explain.”
I sit up, watching myself in the full-length mirror. “I don’t feel like listening to you explain right now, Graham. You hurt my feelings.”
He groans. “Please . . .”
“You know what? I wanted to explain and apologize to you earlier and you didn’t have the decency to listen to me.”
He sounds like the wind just got knocked out of him.
“I made a mistake,” I continue, fueled by the strength I see in the mirrors. “People do that. We aren’t all perfect like you.”
“I’m not perfect,” he groans.
“Guess what? I know that. I know you’re just as far from perfection as I am.”
“You’re wrong,” he says quietly. “I’m much farther away than you are.”
My heart pulls at the sadness in his voice. I just have to remember that he made me sad today too. It’s easy to recall that when Vanessa’s face shoots across my mind.
“I forgot to mention something.” I glare at my own reflection. “Actually, I didn’t forget. You didn’t give me the chance.”
“Vanessa . . .”
“Yeah. She was in to see you.”
“I knew nothing about that. I swear on my life, Mallory, I knew nothing about that.”
“She said you talked a few days ago. I’m assuming since you didn’t mention it that she’s full of shit.”
He doesn’t respond right away and I think I gasp.
“Well, I think I stand corrected,” I say bitterly.
“No, Mallory,” he rushes. “Just listen to me.”
“Why should I?” I say, standing. My heart is racing too hard to stay sitting. I need to walk off some of this energy. “Because you were so kind to me today? Because you treated me with such respect? Because you gave me the opportunity to explain, so I should afford you the same?” He starts to talk, but I just laugh. “You know what? Fuck you, Graham.”
And I end the call.
Graham
I take my eyes off the road just long enough to double check the address on the building in front of me with the one on Ford’s text. They match.
My SUV slides to the curb of the pale yellow complex with black shutters hosting more paint chips than a hardware store. I barely get it in park and the ignition off before I’m out the door.
“That’s a fire lane!” someone shouts behind me.
The front doors are security-less and I let myself in. The lighting in the foyer is barely decent. Tapping repeatedly on the “up” button, I pace a circle.
I can barely breathe. If I don’t find her and talk to her and make her see how wrong I know I was, I’m going to lose control in an epic, newsworthy way.
“Hey, buddy.” I spin around to see a man in an eighties band rock shirt leaning against a pillar. A cigarette hangs out of his cracked lips. “If you need to go upstairs, take the stairs unless you want to still be waiting in the morning.”
“Where are they?”
He motions down a hall and I give him a little wave as I race down the tile. My shoes slapping against the floor, I pop open the door and race up the stairs to the second floor.
I go over a million things to say, a thousand ways of apologizing as I knock over a table with a flowerless vase and don’t stop to pick it up.
The carpeting lining the hallway is reminiscent of a cheap hotel with stains that make me nauseous. I find her number and knock as loudly as I can get away with.
“Mallory?” I call. When no one answers, I pound again. “Mallory!”
Reality hits that she might be inside and I can’t actually force her to come to the door. Trying the handle, I find it locked. I jiggle it more quickly before my fist hits the wood veneer again, harder this time. “Mallory! Open up! Please! I’m sorry.”
The door across the hall swings open, the smell of stale cigarettes flowing towards me. I cough, fanning my face, shooting the guilty party a nasty look.
“Keep it down out here!” A woman snarls, a pair of oversized glasses on her face. “Some of us are tryin’ to sleep.”
“Do you know if Mallory is home?”
“Who’s Mallory?” she asks.
“Never mind.”
I lean against the wall, my cheek pressed against the door. My eyes squeeze shut as I imagine her on the other side, listening to me. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I say. “No, so
rry isn’t the half of it. Please open the door and talk to me. Please.”
“She ain’t there!” the woman grimaces behind me. “Get on out of here or I’ll call the po-lice.”
“If you’re in there, I beg you, open this door.”
I give her a long moment to answer, but nothing happens. Giving the door one final glance, I head back down the hall to the stairwell. I try her number again. “Pick up,” I mutter as I climb into my SUV, ignoring shouts from the fire lane monitor. “Come on, Mallory. Come on, baby.”
I can’t lose her. Not now. Not before I ever really had a chance to have her.
As reality hits and I realize there’s a chance she won’t want to see me again, I know what Lincoln and Barrett were talking about: you know when you love someone when it’s not easy and you’d happily take the frustration before you’d consider not having them.
If she throws this in my face every day, if she teases me or makes me pay for this for longer than I care to imagine, I’ll do it. I’ll sign on that dotted line with a flourish because not having her is not an option.
“This is Mallory Sims . . .” Her voicemail begins and I have half a notion to listen to it, just to hear her voice.
Tearing out of the parking lot, my tires squeal as I hit the highway.
Mallory
MY LEGS ARE TOGETHER, MY head nearly touching my knees, when I hear the front door open. Lifting my chin, my breathing hiccups.
He’s standing in the doorway, his suit jacket in his hand, his tie askew and halfway unknotted. The silky black strands I love to touch are sticking wildly up in all directions. But it’s his face, the tautness of his lips, the hesitation in his eyes, that I see most clearly.
Our gazes connect in the glass in front of me as he ambles slowly across the room. All I can hear is my heartbeat thrashing in my chest as anticipation of this moment bears down on me.
He removes his shoes and socks near mine, adds his jacket to the pile, and then joins me on the floor.
He settles in beside me, mirroring my position. He grabs his calves through his dress pants and stretches. I feel him looking at me, his gaze asking me a million questions. I just look at my red-painted toes that I had done for Lincoln’s wedding.
After a few minutes, the tension gets to be too much and I roll away from him and onto my stomach. I press up with my hands like a cobra. He follows suit.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his tie dragging the ground, the sleeves of his shirt unbuttoned and rolled to his elbows. His forearms flex, the vein in the side of his neck pulsing. Everything about this image is as un-Graham-like as it could be.
“I expected you to rip my ass when I walked in. Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” he says, dropping to the ground as I do.
“No.” I roll away from him again, sitting in a butterfly style.
“Good. I’d prefer you listen, too.”
“I didn’t say I was going to listen to you either.”
He chuckles, which only angers me. Glaring at him straight away, I suck in a breath. Mistake. I can smell his cologne and the energy rolling off him, and I have to exhale it as quickly as I took it in. I won’t just brush this under the rug, no matter how I feel about him.
“Mallory, I’m sorry.”
That’s all it takes for the tears to haunt my eyes again, blurring the outline of his chiseled face. His own eyes are filled with so much emotion that I have to look away.
“You’ve said that already,” I reply.
“So I have.” There’s a note of insecurity in his voice that I’ve never heard before, a hint of hesitation that seeps in the words. He blows out a long, strangled breath. “I shouldn’t have acted like I did today. It was childish and I’m completely mortified that I did it. To you of all people.”
“You should be,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “What you did today was bullshit, Graham. Complete bullshit. Be mad at me. Point out my fuckup. Fire me, for heaven’s sake. But talk to me like I’m an errant child worthy of no respect? Nope.”
“Mallory . . .”
“I’m not done.” I turn to face him, the words flowing. “As your employee, I won’t stand for you to talk to me like that. As your . . . whatever I am to you—”
“Mallory—”
“Stop interrupting me,” I demand. His lips close, his eyes going wide. “I don’t know what I am to you. I don’t know how to define it. But I will tell you one thing: there is no role I’ll play in your life, or anyone else’s, where I will overlook this.”
My chin lifts and I look him in the eye. “I spent too many years being silent about what I wanted. I went with the flow, didn’t rock the boat. Sure, it made for smoother waters for a while but that was at the expense of my happiness and confidence. I know you were angry today and you verbalized that in a way that you wouldn’t normally. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit back and not say a word. No one is going to talk to me or take me for granted like that again.”
“No one talks to me like this either,” he chuckles.
“I do.”
“Which is why I love you.”
The words are out in a flash and we both recoil just a bit as they land on our ears. I still, my eyes going wide, matching his.
“I was angry today,” he says softly. “I own that. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I wasn’t or that you misunderstood the situation because we both know you didn’t. I didn’t stop and think and separate everything out. I just flew off the handle.”
“Yes. You did.” My shoulders sag even as I fight them to stay strong. Just thinking about it hurts—my pride, my feelings, my heart.
The light in his eyes dims. “What you don’t know is that today was a day of firsts for me.” He takes a deep breath. “The first day I woke up and stared at a woman before getting out of bed, wishing she would never leave. The first day I failed at something as the head of Landry Holdings. The first day I felt the complete and utter fear of losing someone.”
“You felt that way with Vanessa,” I remind him. He grins as I spit her name like the piece of poison she is.
“No, I didn’t,” he emphasizes. “With her, I felt confused. Fooled. Betrayed when she left. I didn’t feel anything like I felt today. Not close. When you left and I realized what I had done, I felt crushed, Mallory. Absolutely slaughtered.”
That softens my fury and I give him a tipoff by the grin threatening to break out across my lips. His eyes go to my mouth, almost pulling it up by sheer will.
“Vanessa did call me a few days ago. Before Lincoln’s wedding,” he says, his words measured. “I intended on telling you after the wedding. You were threatening to quit and I was so focused on figuring things out with you first. I knew if I told you before, it would be an added thing to deal with.”
“But you didn’t tell me,” I point out, my tone heavy with annoyance.
“Because I forgot.”
“Sure you did. I’m so sure it just slipped your mind because that’s a normal reaction.”
He scoots closer, but doesn’t touch me. I feel my body wanting to reach for him, needing the comfort I’ve come to find in his arms.
“I did. It’s the God’s honest truth. Think about it: you’ve been at my house since the night of Linc’s wedding. Having you in my home, seeing you in my kitchen, in my bed, having you to talk to, to kiss—Vanessa was the last thing on my mind.”
That whittles down my anger a little more. “What did the letter say?” I’m afraid of the answer and hate that he has some kind of connection with this woman in any way.
He leaps to his feet and digs in the pocket of his jacket. He’s nearly frantic, his hands flying through the pockets until he lands on the one in the inside lining. “I don’t know what it says,” he says. “By the way, Raza told me what you said to her.”
“I don’t care if it was out of line—”
“Baby,” he says, turning around and giving me a sexy smile, “that made my day.”
“Re
ally?”
“I’m always the one going to battle for everyone else. You could’ve had her wait or called me in to deal with it, but instead, you did it. You went to battle for me.” He crouches next to me, his eyes now glistening again. “Here.”
In his hand is the envelope from my desk. He shakes it in the air. It rustles like an unwarranted tax paper or court summons.
“I don’t want that,” I grimace.
“I don’t know what it says and I don’t care. If you do, here, have at it.”
When I don’t take it, he stands and walks to the garbage. Eyes on me, he rips it down the middle and deposits it in the can. “Satisfied?” he asks.
“Kind of,” I shrug, trying not to grin.
He’s back in front of me in a flash. He takes my hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over my palms. “I’m warning you—I’m not leaving here without you. I told you once that I wouldn’t pretend we didn’t happen.”
“You were talking about fucking me,” I laugh.
“That statement has been amended to mean more.” He stands and tugs me up too. “I want to take your favorite things about me—my passion and intellect, as you say—and apply them to you every day. If you give me a chance, I promise to make you feel like the most treasured woman in the world.”
“You make a lot of promises,” I tease.
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me towards him. His lips hovering over mine, he whispers, “Only the ones I intend on keeping.”
“Forgive me,” he breathes. “If I ever act like that again, you can leave and I’ll help you pack your bags. But that won’t happen. You have my word.”
“Pack my bags?” I say, lacing my fingers through his hair. “That sounds a little much, don’t you think?”
“I was at your apartment today.” He pulls away. “I’m going to have a hard time letting you go back there.”
“I am,” I insist. “That’s a deal breaker. We’re taking this slow. While I love Danielle’s gung-ho attitude with the marriage and a baby, that’s not me.”
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