Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66753 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66753 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
My father didn’t believe in expressions of love. My mother, on the other hand, learned to overcompensate for his flaws by throwing around the word “love” as lightly as “hello” or “good morning,” which is why I often ignore the endearment. But today, it reads differently.
“I love you, too,” I say, the statement awkward on my lips, unnatural to me, but not without truth. My mother won’t win mother of the year, but I also know much of her behavior is a product of my father’s behavior. She developed coping mechanisms just as I did with him. I learned to shelter myself, to avoid intimacy, because those closest to us can hurt us and try and take our money.
“When are you coming back?”
“I need a little more time. I’m trying, though. Maybe you can come and see me?”
“I have a test to pass. When I win.”
“Yes,” she says. “Win.” She hangs up.
I set the phone on the table and watch the rain race past me.
Funny thing about winning is that it looks different now than it did a few months ago.
Because now there is no win that doesn’t include Bella.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bella
I don’t sleep.
I lie in bed and listen to the rain on the roof, pitter-pattering about, and thinking of that night I went to Tyler’s apartment. It was raining then, too. And now what am I doing but standing in my kitchen, in my robe, sipping coffee while the pup eats, and I’m still thinking about it. I’d needed to go to the bathroom, and I just didn’t see it anywhere. Maybe I subliminally wanted to see his bedroom. I don’t anymore. He’d knocked on the door and when I’d opened it, his anger had been brutal.
“What are you doing in my bedroom?” he demanded.
I’d been flustered and confused. We’d had a disjointed exchange and he’d grown impatient and snapped at me. “Coming here was not a smart decision. You need to leave.”
“You’re being a jerk,” I’d declared, but then he knew that. He excels at being a jerk, and yet, I chose him to fall in love with. Of all the men I’ve crossed paths with, who I didn’t even say yes to dating, I chose him.
I’d followed my brilliant “jerk” insult with a statement of fact. “You’re being a bastard.”
“Because I am a bastard, Bella,” he’d proclaimed. “You’ve been warned. I won’t warn you again.”
He’d warned me all right, and I listened about as well as a two-year-old listens to anything. I need to step back from what is happening between me and Tyler and think about that warning a little harder. I’m going to work from home today, I decide. I need to put off Morgan’s interview. I can’t hire her when I don’t even know what I’m doing right now. I might have to leave the company. My stomach knots at the idea. I press my hand to the churn in my belly. I love my job. The problem is that I also love my boss. And hate him. The fine line and all prove true.
He lost his professionalism over Becker.
Maybe that means I’m not nothing to him, or maybe it means he really is worried about how he looks when I’m on his arm.
I grab my phone and text the nanny: I’m working from home, but please do come. I can’t be on a call when the pup needs to pee.
Right about then, Molly starts sniffing the floor and I scoop her up. Fifteen minutes later, I open my laptop and email Morgan to reschedule our interview. The next email is the harder one. It’s to Tyler, only why does it have to be hard at all? Short and simple, I tell myself.
Tyler,
I’m working from home, but I have my pet nanny here with me so the puppy won’t interfere with my work.
—Bella
The nanny line was to deter him from showing up here and thinking we’re going to end up naked, and then I’ll bend to his will. I won’t, even if we ended up naked. Except while we are naked, but after, I’d come to my senses. Okay, I can’t let the naked thing happen. Maybe he’s like a drug and the more I have of it, I have to have more.
I’m angry with him.
I won’t sleep with him.
Said every woman who was in love with a man who was using her.
***
It’s mid-morning and I’m at my desk, talking to the client with the cheating scandal when my phone buzzes with a message from Tyler. When I don’t answer, a message pops up on my computer screen: Call me back on my cell.
I grimace and type a reply that is tapped down with the tone of a submissive—okay, not submissive—respectful employee: On the phone dealing with the cheating scandal. I’ll call you as soon as I hang up.