All of that was gone.
I stared at him in the mirror and didn’t rise to my feet. “Again, I don’t see any papers…”
He walked to my side and placed the single rose on my desk.
When he was close to me, I could smell his cologne. The scent immediately brought me back to the memories of his sheets. They smelled just like him, with a touch of laundry detergent. I rose to my feet and ignored the gift he’d brought. “I have a phone. You could call.”
“You never answer my calls.”
“Still would save you a lot of time.” I moved past him to pull my coat from the back of the chair.
He grabbed my wrist and steadied me, possessing me while a crowd of people moved around us without understanding how intense things had just become. His hand rested on mine on top of the chair, and he slowly came closer to me. “Let’s talk in private.”
“What is there to talk about, Maverick?” I pulled my hand from under his then picked up my coat.
“A lot of things.”
“You had plenty of time to talk, but you chose to fuck instead.”
He cringed slightly, like that insult actually wounded him. His gaze fell to the floor, his usual confidence not as prevalent as it normally was. He slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and he lifted his gaze to look at me again.
“Why do you keep doing this?” Just when I thought I understood Maverick, I realized I didn’t understand him at all. He was the one who ruined our relationship, yet he was the one still fighting for it. But why? “You obviously don’t want to be married to me. If you did, you would have said you loved me too, and we would have gone to bed as husband and wife. That option was available to you, but you rejected it. So why do you keep showing up on my doorstep? Why are you here now?”
He stared at me for a long time, ignoring the people walking around in the background. “Let’s talk in private.”
“No.” I wasn’t taking him back to my apartment like he was part of my life. He was part of my past now, and that was where he needed to stay. “We had all the time in the world to talk about things when we were together. You chose to push me away. Accept the consequences of your actions and leave me alone.”
He kept the same expression, but his eyes narrowed when my coldness caused him pain. His hands stayed in his pockets, and he didn’t try to touch me. Cornering me in a crowded room worked out in my favor because there wasn’t anything he could do.
“Goodnight, Maverick.” I turned to walk away.
He grabbed me again. “Arwen, listen to me.”
I pushed off his hand. “Listen to what? What do you want? Don’t stand there and tell me you want us to be together because that’s never going to happen. You don’t get to cheat on me to figure out what you want. That’s not how it works. I deserve a man who doesn’t have to sleep around to determine what he wants.”
“I didn’t cheat on you—”
“That’s how it felt, Maverick.”
“Look, you hit me with some serious shit—”
“I’m tired of going in circles. You keep making excuses for what you did, and that’s fine. But if you’re trying to get me back, that’s not going to work. Your excuses don’t impress me. They don’t make me second-guess my decision. Nothing will make me reconsider going back to you. I suggest you sign those papers and just let it go. I don’t want you, Maverick. You’ve been dumped.”
6
Maverick
My week passed with agonizing slowness.
I had the same routine every single day, taking in a few drinks throughout the day. I spent a couple hours at the gym, took care of the cheese production, and then sat in my office with a cigar in my mouth.
The estate was so large that I always felt like a small ant in a large hill. But once Arwen had come there, the place felt a little smaller, a little fuller. She filled the empty halls with her lovely presence.
Now I felt alone in this castle.
The isolation had never bothered me before. I thrived in it. But now the quiet sounds of the ventilation system and the vacuum cleaner down the hall reminded me she wasn’t there. Her bedroom had been cleaned out, so there was no evidence she’d been there at all.
Only her memory remained.
Every time I tried to talk to her, her hostility was always the same. She never wanted anything to do with me, never wanted to have a conversation with me. She used to look at me like I was the most important man in her life.
Now she hated me.