Final Call by Emma Hart
Chapter One
You know life has taken a shit turn when your underwear doesn’t match.
And the quality of that underwear is a guide to measure the shitness on.
Me? I’m pretty sure I have a hole on the waistband of these boy shorts, so, yeah. My life is at Epically F*cked with a heavy dose of Heartbreak Hell on the life quality guide.
But what can you do?
Tuck your change from the cashier into the pocket of your sweatpants and grab your ice cream—that’s what.
I get into my car, my ice cream snug on the passenger’s seat, and pull away from the store. Tonight is my final night of the allotted seven-day mourning period after the breakdown of a relationship, so basically, it’s my last chance to be a miserable bitch in public. Okay, so I added a couple of days onto the mourning period, but whatever. I plan to milk it for everything it’s worth—ice cream, wine, and my best friend.
It doesn’t matter that I never wanted the relationship in the first place. It doesn’t matter that it was only a handful of days that the relationship had felt truly real to me—like it was something I could hold on to and something I could really change my life for. What matters is that it was real and it happened.
It doesn’t matter that a small part of me wishes it hadn’t. That I was stronger.
I press the button on the keys to open the garage and drive in. The door shuts behind me with a whir, and I rest my head on the steering wheel. I wish I didn’t still feel it—that keen sting of betrayal reminding me of what he kept from me.
Since I stepped foot on the plane—his plane—I’ve wondered if I have been overreacting. More so since I touched back down in Seattle. Should I have stayed the night? Talked to him? Listened to the full story? The same one he couldn’t get out because of my angry hysteria?
The part that loves him says yes. It says that he deserved that—to tell me what happened. To tell me why he didn’t say anything.
The part that is still ruled by common sense says that I was absolutely right to walk away from the secretive bastard.
I dump the ice cream in the freezer, barely glancing at my aunt’s state-of-the-art kitchen, and find her in the front room.
“More ice cream?” She looks at me over the top of her book. I peer at the title. It’s a romance. Figures.
“Yep. I’ll just kill myself in the gym tomorrow to make up for a few days of bumming around.”
She shakes her head, her dark hair swishing over her shoulders. “Honestly, Dayton. I don’t understand all this nonsense. You knew the risks when you took the job.”
“When I was forced to take the job.”
“Oh, come on, honey. You know as well as I do that Mon can push and push, but she won’t make you take a job you’re truly not comfortable with. You knew exactly what you were getting into.”
I raise an eyebrow at her placid expression. “So it’s my fault he hid his wife from me?”
Aunt Leigh opens her mouth, pauses, then closes it with another shake of her head.
“Exactly. Did I know I could fall in love again? Yes. I knew that. Did I think he would hurt me this way? Keep something so important from me? No. Never in a million years did I think the man I knew would keep secrets like that.”
Her dark eyes regard me, never changing, and she rests the book in her lap. “Well, maybe the man you knew isn’t the man he is today.”
I swallow and look out the window. Isn’t she right? Every day I was finding a little something about Aaron that had changed despite all the things that were so familiar to me. Every day I realized that he was different from the person I fell in love with the first time around.
“Yeah.” My gaze finds my aunt’s again. “I think that was the problem. Maybe I was in love with a memory.”
***
“I can’t believe he’s married.”
“Mm.”
“I mean, he has a wife.”
“Yep.”
“Married. A f*cking wife.” Liv shakes her head.
I slam my spoon on the coffee table. “Say it again. Go on. I don’t think it quite cut deep enough the first ten times.”
Her eyes soften when they find mine, and I jab my spoon into the ice cream tub.
“I’m sorry, babe. I just can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, well, take a number and join the line.” I look flatly at the laden spoon and drop it into the tub. Nothing like the reminder of your broken heart to sour the taste of your comfort food.
“I can’t believe Monique didn’t tell you.” Liv runs her thumb over her lips. “You’d think she would because of your past.”
“Monique has her own reasons for doing things,” Aunt Leigh butts in, entering the room. “And my niece is the only person to ever question them.”
I fix my aunt with a hard stare. She’s definitely not one for comfort. Nope. I told her what happened, and she asked me when I was going back to work.
Welcome to the glamorous world of an escort.
“That’s because her reasons are bullshit. Client confidentiality?” I laugh bitterly. “She can shove that.”
“Dayton.”
“No. I have every right—every…f*cking…right—to be pissed off with her, Aunt Leigh. She deliberately withheld an important bit of information from me. For what? Money? That money means shit when it’s at the expense of me.”
She sighs and picks up her book, tucking it under her arm. “Why don’t you try talking to her instead of ignoring her?”
“How do you know I’m ignoring her?”
“She called me an hour ago. Despite your current emotional upheaval, she’s still your agent and you still have a job to do.”
See? Apparently balding men’s need for sex is more vital than me soothing my broken heart. Oh, sorry. Emotional upheaval. Like my f*cking cat just died or something.
I stare after my aunt with the expression equivalent of a ‘f*ck you’ and jam the spoon in my mouth. What do you know? I got my appetite back.
Liv pours two glasses of wine and hands me one when my aunt has left the room again. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going home tomorrow. Then I’m going to have a hot bath and call Monique, I guess.”
“Really?”
“No. I’ll probably have a hot bath and curl up in front of some trashy TV show. There’s plenty of them to choose from.” I lick the spoon clean. “Then I’m going to call Monique and go back to work.”
My best friend raises her eyebrows with a shake of her head.
“What?”
“How can you do that? Leave the guy you’re in love with and think about sleeping with other guys?”
“I’m kidding myself that maybe there’ll be a hot hunk of a guy waiting for me this weekend and he’ll f*ck all the heartbreak out of me.”
Liv stares at me blankly.
“Kidding. I’m kidding. Geez.”
“I wondered there for a minute.” She taps a long fingernail against her mouth. “Do you have to go back to work? You have savings, right?”
“I’m not retiring at twenty-four because of a f*cking guy, Liv. I’m going to have one hell of a good cry tonight, let it all out. Then, tomorrow, I’ll get my shit together. If I sit at home every day, I’ll spend my life wondering if I made the right decision or not.”
“You did. Make the right decision.”
“Thank you. So I have to get on with it. I can’t spend forever on the past.”
“You’re missing one huge point though.”
“How am I? It’s over. He’ll go back to New York and his cushy little rich-guy life, finalize his divorce, take over the company, and find a second wife that isn’t me.”
I think it before she says it.
“No. No, Liv. Don’t even.”
“Or he’ll come looking for you. He knows where you live, remember?”
F*ck. F*ck. Fuuuuuuuck. “He won’t,” I say through shaking hands. “I told him never to contact me again. He wouldn’t.”
Her lips twitch. “He paid three times your rate just to keep you in his life. You think he’s gonna let you walk away now?”
“Shut up.”
“Get back to it, Day. You can try and live your life like you never happened, but you’re gonna be fighting him the whole way for it.”
“You’re a really shitty best friend, you know that, right?”
“Just keeping it real.” She grins and grabs her jacket. “Besides, you’d kick my ass if he does exactly that and I didn’t warn you.”
True that. Oh, how well she knows me.
I hug her before she goes. “Thanks for coming over tonight.”
“It’s my job. By the way, you need that bath.”
“Bitch.” I shut the door behind her. She isn’t exactly wrong.
Heartbreak does funky things to you.
Her words in mind, I jump under the shower before climbing into bed and snuggling under the covers. I cocoon myself between the thick sheets, my legs still wet from my lazy towel drying, and my mind runs rampant.
It’s the same thing it’s done every night since I left. This time though, it’s not going over every word of our conversation. It replays the final night in Paris like I’m watching it in HD and slow motion, but there are no words. No sounds. Only feelings and emotions and the truth of them.
Without reminding myself of the words that shattered the possibility of a future we’d never set in stone, I see more. Everything. I see the raw pain in his eyes when he realizes I’m going. I see the shake of his hands that lingers all night and only intensifies when he finds me packing my suitcase. I see the brutal agony and guilt swamping him, and I see the defeat that beats against his usually determined and assured stance.
And I hear through the silence. I hear the begging through the desperate way his mouth forms his words. I hear the anguish every time his lips say my name. I hear his realization that his secret did the very thing he was trying to avoid—that it was all for nothing.
But mostly, I feel. I feel the shattering pain all over again, this time combined with his. I feel his desperation to keep me there and my need to go. I feel him reach for me at the same time I step away, and I feel the heaviness that settles when I walk through the door. Away from him. Again.
I feel the crushing of my hopes, the helplessness of my heart, the rapidly increasing flow of my tears. And I realize that I’m not remembering anymore. The tears cascading down my cheeks are real, so very real, and so is the hollow ache in my chest. The twisting of my stomach with bitterness is the same as it was then, and the hopeless feeling penetrating my bones hasn’t eased a bit.
I miss him. Despite the pain, I miss him as much as I hate him, and I hate him as much as I love him. I miss his body next to mine at night. His breath on my neck. His arms around me. His legs and feet tangled in mine. I miss the gentle way he’d whisper my name to wake me up and the look he had reserved just for me and the notes I never knew he was leaving. Everything. Every. F*cking. Thing.
I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t miss him at all. But I do.
I miss him the way I love him.
Entirely.