“Are you busy right now?”
“No. Just had a rough day.” I put the movie on mute but watched the action sequences anyway. The bloodshed was just as potent without the sound.
“Oh.” When she realized I wasn’t in the greatest mood, she turned quiet. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” I didn’t want to dump my personal bullshit on her. I hardly knew her.
“Alright…”
It became silent. Awkward. Now I regretted making this phone call. “I’ll talk to you later, alright?”
“Um, okay.” She faltered for a moment before she spoke again. “Bye, Damien.” She hung up without waiting for me to say goodbye.
I cringed as I lowered the phone. She’d called at the worst possible time, and I should have just ignored her. Or I should have called her sooner instead of waiting for an entire week to go by.
Goddammit.
6
Annabella
Damien blew me off.
I didn’t know what happened. He was so hot for me, and now he was ice-cold. Did he meet someone else? A woman who slept with him right away? Maybe I was too much work and he lost interest.
I shouldn’t care…but I did.
I’d started to really like him.
But he was a jerk like the rest.
I needed to forget about him, to pretend like he hadn’t hurt me, to pretend I wasn’t devastated that our kiss would never turn into something more. I’d been fantasizing about him all week, imagining him between my legs, while I took orders at the restaurant. I couldn’t get him off my mind at all. It was the first time I was actually excited about a man since my husband.
But I’d been wrong.
Whatever.
I was home in my pajamas when there was a knock on the door. I was enjoying a bottle of wine in front of the TV when the hard knuckles echoed against the wood. I knew the sound belonged to a man, so I assumed it was Damien.
Maybe he’d had a change of heart.
I jumped to my feet and checked myself in the mirror.
Ugh, I looked like shit.
I fixed my hair as much as possible, but there was nothing I could really do. My makeup was off, and my shirt had a wine stain on the front. It was my worst look.
He knocked again.
“Ugh,” I whispered under my breath.
I headed to the door and pulled it open, in a sour mood that Damien had picked the worst time to show up at my door. I wasn’t in the mood to hit the sheets when I looked like trash. I opened the door and gave my best smile.
When Liam watched me smile at him, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’m surprised you answered the door.”
Liam was the last thing on my mind even though he was the most logical person to show up on my doorstep. “I wasn’t expecting you.” I pushed the door closed.
He stuck his boot in the crack so I couldn’t shut him out.
Dammit.
He pushed the door back open and helped himself inside. He was muscular and over six feet in height, so he forced me to back up with his enormous presence. He stared at me with intense blue eyes as he invaded my apartment. “Then who were you expecting at this time of night?”
A beautiful man with lips from heaven. “Not you.” I turned around and moved farther into the apartment. Now I was glad I looked like shit so he would lose interest and leave, even though he’d seen me without makeup thousands of times.
He stopped in the entryway and surveyed the area. He glanced at the wine bottle and the bowl of popcorn. His hands slid into the pockets of his jeans, and he turned his gaze back on me. Heartbeats passed, and he said nothing. In dark jeans and a tight t-shirt, he looked just as fit as ever.
“Please leave.” I stood near the door to my balcony with my arms crossed over my chest. “I’m tired of repeating myself.”
He tilted his head down slightly and continued to stare. “I’m tired too.”
I waited for him to walk out.
“I’m tired of living without you.”
I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. “It didn’t seem like you were thinking about me much when your dick was in someone else.” Like a snake, venom was in my mouth. I wanted to bite him and let the poison sink into his flesh. It’d been a long time since our relationship had fallen apart, but I hadn’t let go of my bitterness yet because he kept showing up everywhere. He wouldn’t let me go, and that forced me to deal with the past over and over again.
He cringed slightly at the insult. “It was a lapse in judgment.”
“Lapse in judgment?” I hissed. “The situation is black-and-white. You either cheat on your wife, or you don’t. Doesn’t need much judgment.”
He sighed. “She meant nothing to me.”