“No. That’s all right.” It was hard to force the words out past the lump in my throat.
I hung up, pushed back from my desk, and snatched my phone off its surface. And then I was moving without thinking, through the office, down to the lobby, and out the door. The town car idled at the curb, and I got in.
“HRM?” Louis called from the front.
“The penthouse. Now.”
It didn’t take me long to get absolutely wasted that day.
“No, Sarah. I don’t remember you being here Friday.”
“You wouldn’t let me in. You were in quite the state, from what I could gather.” She puts a hand on her hip and cocks it to the side. “Get into the shower, Mr. Pierce. It’s almost noon. Time to go to work.”
Chapter 41
Quinn
Carolyn didn’t give me a spare moment to wallow all weekend and my insurance company called to tell me that the check for my burned-down house would be disbursed in thirty days or less, so when I arrive at the office on Monday, I’m not a complete wreck.
My heart feels hollow, wasted, empty, but my mind is clear—well, clearer, at least.
I know what I have to do.
I have to keep doing this job for just long enough to get out of it.
Adam is already at his desk when I stride past, head held high. Nobody is going to know that I got involved with my client. Nobody is going to know that he shattered my heart into a thousand tiny shards and left it there for me to sweep up.
The only saving grace is that I don’t have a meeting scheduled with him today.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the next few weeks are going to hurt like a motherfucker.
This is exactly why you don’t date clients, I think, settling into the chair behind my desk and wading into a million reminders about Christian and his lies. His name is on every document and my computer is filled with press pictures.
I spend the morning sending bright and chipper responses to charity after charity, shoving my heartbreak deep down where it can’t touch me.
It works…for a while.
By noon, I’m trying to tread water while waves of turmoil suck me under the surface.
Thank God for Carolyn.
I switch off my computer screen and breeze out past Adam. “I’ve got a lunch date,” I say to him with as much of a smile as I can force onto my face. “Be back in an hour.”
Carolyn meets me at a hole-in-the-wall Thai place halfway between the HRM offices and her boutique. The service is lightning fast. It seems like the waiter brings the food out as soon as we’ve handed back the menus. Normally, that kind of speed would be cause for suspicion—can a kitchen at any restaurant cook anything that fast?—but I’m so desperate to unload some of this heaviness from my heart and soul that I don’t care. I just dig in.
“What’s on your mind, Q?” Carolyn says between bites. I haven’t said a word about Christian yet. I thought I was playing it cooler than that.
Guess not.
I search for the words as I swallow a bite of pork noodles.
“I’m not over him.” My voice comes out low and strained, and Carolyn frowns.
“It’s only been a few days. Give yourself time.”
The feelings I’ve been struggling to keep at bay all morning crash through me again.
How can I be so conflicted?
What Christian did—is still doing—is unforgivable.
I open my mouth to tell Carolyn what he did, what he revealed to me last week, but I choke on the words.
Even though he’s in the wrong, and even though I’m furious with him, I can’t bring myself to betray him.
Not entirely.
I close my mouth again and shake my head, then I lift another bite to my lips. It turns to tasteless mush in my mouth. I force myself to swallow anyway.
Carolyn puts down her fork and leans back in her chair. “What happened between you two?” She gives me a hard look, and I wait for her to put her hands in the air between us, to tell me that we don’t have to talk about this.
She doesn’t.
“He—he admitted something to me that is unforgivable, so I left. I turned my back on him and left.”
I expect Carolyn to look confused, but instead her eyes narrow, and she looks to the side, her jaw working. “So he cheated on you. God, what an asshole. That is so typical—”
It would be so convenient to let her believe it. It would be an answer everyone would accept, expect even, but I just can’t let it lie. I cut her off.
“He didn’t cheat on me.”
Now confusion does settle in over her features. “Then what was it?”
This is my opening, my big chance. But I’m looking across the table at Carolyn, who has known Christian since they were teenagers. She was among his closest friends in school. If she doesn’t know already, it’s just not my place to tell her.
“I can’t tell you, Care.”
She looks a little pissed off with me now.
“Seriously, Q? I’ve known him for years. What are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?”