I brought my hand up to my neck, remembering the thrill I got whenever he kissed me there, and I didn’t even notice when Henley walked up behind me.
“Holy moly. Your man definitely knows how to make a statement,” she laughed. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing sweats with a t-shirt that said, ‘How about… NO.’ Without skipping a beat, she tossed her duffle bag on the sofa and asked, “What does the card say?”
I handed one to her and said, “He wants me to answer the phone when he calls. I’ve kind of been ignoring him.”
“Why have you been ignoring him?”
“I don’t know… maybe because he crushed my heart and soul when he kicked me out of his hospital room and told me I could never be his Ol’ Lady if I couldn’t follow basic freaking orders. Remember any of that?” I sassed.
She rolled her eyes and asked, “So… you’re saying you don’t want to be with him anymore?”
“No… I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you’d be lying if you did. I know you’re crazy over the man. He acted like an asshole, but can you blame him? He was about to have major surgery, and he was scared he might never walk again. He was freaking out, and he took it out on you.”
“I know all of that,” I mumbled. “He still didn’t have to go about it like he did.”
“No, but in his mind, he was probably thinking he was protecting you or something. You know how stupid men can be sometimes. You should just forget about what he said and call him,” she smiled.
“Call him? No… I’ll just wait for him to call me.”
She grabbed my purse and started sifting through it until she found my phone. Once she’d found it, she handed it to me and said, “Suck it up, Buttercup. Time to call your man and get this thing sorted.”
I took the phone from her hand and nervously pressed the button for Cotton’s number. My stomach twisted into knots as I listened to it ring over and over again. After the fifth ring, a woman’s voice came through the line, “Hello.” My heart sank. When I didn’t respond, she spoke again, “Hello?... Cassidy? Are you there?” Even though I’d never heard her voice, I knew it was Sara, and just before I hung up the phone, I heard Cotton shout, “Sara, hand me the damn phone!”
I quickly hung up, and after I turned off my ringer, I slipped my phone into my back pocket. I looked over to Henley and said, “He didn’t answer. I’m sure he’s busy.”
“Yeah, Maverick said he spends most of the day working with some spinal therapist. Apparently, they think she’s trying to kill him,” she laughed.
“I bet Cotton’s loving that,” I told her as I forced a smile, trying my best to disguise the fact I just wanted to crawl into my bed and hide. Luckily, she was too busy gawking at all the flowers to notice the tears that threatened to fill my eyes. Before she figured out I was about to cry, I turned toward my bedroom and said, “I’m gonna take a bath. Go put your stuff away and I’ll be out in a little bit.”
“Okay,” she answered. Before I closed the door, she shouted, “I’ll order us a couple of pizzas for dinner. We can catch up on our shows tonight.”
Without answering, I shut my door and fell face first onto my bed, burying my head into one of my pillows. I tried to block out all the thoughts racing through my head, but it was impossible to stop thinking about Sara’s voice on Cotton’s phone. A part of me knew I was being irrational. Cotton had never given me any reason to be jealous where other women were concerned. From the beginning, he’d made no advances towards anyone, and even when the club girls would throw themselves at him, he’d turn them away. When I asked him about it, he’d laugh it off and say he only had eyes for me. But things were different with Sara. For whatever reason, he’d pushed me away and allowed her to stay there with him. I couldn’t help but feel jealous about that. I’d always tried to be there for the people I cared about, doing whatever I could to help, but Cotton wouldn’t let me do that for him. The day I went to the hospital, I had all intentions of supporting him, helping him… just being there for him, but he turned me away—basically banishing the very part of me that made me the person I am. He didn’t want that from me, and that left me wondering what I was supposed to do.
It was pitch black in my room when I heard Henley shouting for me from the living room, “Pizza’s here, hooker!”
I rolled over, quickly wiping the sleep from my eyes and said, “Coming!”
“I may have gone a little overboard with the pizzas. My eyes were bigger than my stomach,” she yelled.
I opened my bedroom door, and when I found her standing in the kitchen, staring at four large pizza boxes, I said, “Yeah, you definitely went overboard, Lee Bug. There’s no way we can eat all this,” I laughed.