Callie waited, her keys in her hand, her purse on her shoulder. She was sure that whoever was down there would figure out they had the wrong number and the buzzer wouldn’t sound again. She was wrong. The buzzing ripped through the apartment, shrill and annoying, three more times.
“What the hell?” Callie muttered under her breath. “Seriously? Take the hint already.” Whoever was down there clearly wasn’t in tune with her mutterings, because the buzzer rang another four times. “Unbelievable!”
Callie stalked over to the intercom panel and pressed the TALK button down hard, so hard, that her index finger stung. “Hello there,” she said in a tightly controlled voice. It would do no good to scream into the thing. “I think you have the wrong apartment.”
There was a second’s pause, then a deep voice drifted over the speaker, crackly because the thing was a piece of shit, but unmistakable. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I have the right one.”
Callie nearly fell over. “Matt,” she breathed before she thought better of it. She realized she was still pressing the button down and he could hear her.
“Yeah,” the answer drifted back. There was a hell of a lot of snapping and crackling mixed along with his heavy breath.
“What- what are you doing here? How do you even know where I live?”
“Are you going to let me come up? I just want to talk.”
“No. Not a chance. How did you get my address? If HR gave it to you, I swear that I’m going to file a-”
“They didn’t. It was Chantara who gave it to me.”
“What?” She nearly died of shock. There was no way in hell her best friend would have given Matt Hilbert their address, not knowing fully well that Callie never wanted to see him again. He’s lying. “Look, I don’t know how you really got my address, but I don’t want to see you. I thought that was pretty clear.”
“Quitting your job isn’t the answer.” There was more static and crackle. “Will you please just let me in? If you don’t, I’ll stand our here for the rest of the afternoon ringing your buzzer.”
Callie considered how angry the neighbors would be if that happened. The walls were paper thin and there was no doubt they could hear the buzzing. She knew it wouldn’t be long before someone was banging at her door asking why it was so hard to obtain a few minutes of peace and quiet.
“I’ll call the cops if you do that.”
“No, you won’t.” Even past the static, she heard the smile in his voice. It annoyed her that he sounded like he was laughing at her.
“I will! I’m going to call them right now.”
“No, you won’t. Now, will you please just let me in so we can talk? Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for and then I’ll leave.”
Callie hesitated. She didn’t want Matt there. She didn’t want to see him again or talk to him again. Liar. Yes, I do. I want to see him more than anything. She hated that. She hated that it did something to her stomach to recall his face, that her skin burned with the feel of a touch she’d never forget, that her lips tingled and her legs suddenly felt like water and her stomach hollowed out and that throbbing was back in all the wrong places. He’s dangerous. This isn’t right. It was never right. She knew that, but she’d done it anyway. Now, I have to clean up the mess. She thought she’d done her damage control by resigning from her job, but clearly not.
“Fine,” she ground out. “Five minutes and that’s it. If you aren’t gone by then, I’m locking myself in the bathroom and I really will call the police.”
“Alright. Deal. I’ll start timing myself the minute I walk through the door. No, wait. That’s hardly going to work. I’ll set the timer on my phone from the minute we start talking because you need to hear what I have to say.”
Callie really doubted that she really did need or want to hear what Matt was going to tell her, but her finger moved, pressing the button that released the front door lock. He’s probably just going to come up here and try and convince me that what I did with him wasn’t a mistake. Or that I don’t need to feel ashamed about it. Maybe no one has ever left him before. Maybe he just wants to have the last word. If that was true, she could deal with that. Even if he tried to come up and change her mind, she could deal with it, because she knew that there was no changing her mind. She might want to have a repeat of that night with Matt, minus the end when she told him things she shouldn’t have, but it was never going to happen. The sex might be good, but that didn’t mean anything. Well, it shouldn’t at any rate.