Graham
I take my eyes off the road just long enough to double check the address on the building in front of me with the one on Ford’s text. They match.
My SUV slides to the curb of the pale yellow complex with black shutters hosting more paint chips than a hardware store. I barely get it in park and the ignition off before I’m out the door.
“That’s a fire lane!” someone shouts behind me.
The front doors are security-less and I let myself in. The lighting in the foyer is barely decent. Tapping repeatedly on the “up” button, I pace a circle.
I can barely breathe. If I don’t find her and talk to her and make her see how wrong I know I was, I’m going to lose control in an epic, newsworthy way.
“Hey, buddy.” I spin around to see a man in an eighties band rock shirt leaning against a pillar. A cigarette hangs out of his cracked lips. “If you need to go upstairs, take the stairs unless you want to still be waiting in the morning.”
“Where are they?”
He motions down a hall and I give him a little wave as I race down the tile. My shoes slapping against the floor, I pop open the door and race up the stairs to the second floor.
I go over a million things to say, a thousand ways of apologizing as I knock over a table with a flowerless vase and don’t stop to pick it up.
The carpeting lining the hallway is reminiscent of a cheap hotel with stains that make me nauseous. I find her number and knock as loudly as I can get away with.
“Mallory?” I call. When no one answers, I pound again. “Mallory!”
Reality hits that she might be inside and I can’t actually force her to come to the door. Trying the handle, I find it locked. I jiggle it more quickly before my fist hits the wood veneer again, harder this time. “Mallory! Open up! Please! I’m sorry.”
The door across the hall swings open, the smell of stale cigarettes flowing towards me. I cough, fanning my face, shooting the guilty party a nasty look.
“Keep it down out here!” A woman snarls, a pair of oversized glasses on her face. “Some of us are tryin’ to sleep.”
“Do you know if Mallory is home?”
“Who’s Mallory?” she asks.
“Never mind.”
I lean against the wall, my cheek pressed against the door. My eyes squeeze shut as I imagine her on the other side, listening to me. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I say. “No, sorry isn’t the half of it. Please open the door and talk to me. Please.”
“She ain’t there!” the woman grimaces behind me. “Get on out of here or I’ll call the po-lice.”
“If you’re in there, I beg you, open this door.”
I give her a long moment to answer, but nothing happens. Giving the door one final glance, I head back down the hall to the stairwell. I try her number again. “Pick up,” I mutter as I climb into my SUV, ignoring shouts from the fire lane monitor. “Come on, Mallory. Come on, baby.”
I can’t lose her. Not now. Not before I ever really had a chance to have her.
As reality hits and I realize there’s a chance she won’t want to see me again, I know what Lincoln and Barrett were talking about: you know when you love someone when it’s not easy and you’d happily take the frustration before you’d consider not having them.
If she throws this in my face every day, if she teases me or makes me pay for this for longer than I care to imagine, I’ll do it. I’ll sign on that dotted line with a flourish because not having her is not an option.
“This is Mallory Sims . . .” Her voicemail begins and I have half a notion to listen to it, just to hear her voice.
Tearing out of the parking lot, my tires squeal as I hit the highway.
Mallory
MY LEGS ARE TOGETHER, MY head nearly touching my knees, when I hear the front door open. Lifting my chin, my breathing hiccups.
He’s standing in the doorway, his suit jacket in his hand, his tie askew and halfway unknotted. The silky black strands I love to touch are sticking wildly up in all directions. But it’s his face, the tautness of his lips, the hesitation in his eyes, that I see most clearly.
Our gazes connect in the glass in front of me as he ambles slowly across the room. All I can hear is my heartbeat thrashing in my chest as anticipation of this moment bears down on me.
He removes his shoes and socks near mine, adds his jacket to the pile, and then joins me on the floor.
He settles in beside me, mirroring my position. He grabs his calves through his dress pants and stretches. I feel him looking at me, his gaze asking me a million questions. I just look at my red-painted toes that I had done for Lincoln’s wedding.
After a few minutes, the tension gets to be too much and I roll away from him and onto my stomach. I press up with my hands like a cobra. He follows suit.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his tie dragging the ground, the sleeves of his shirt unbuttoned and rolled to his elbows. His forearms flex, the vein in the side of his neck pulsing. Everything about this image is as un-Graham-like as it could be.
“I expected you to rip my ass when I walked in. Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” he says, dropping to the ground as I do.
“No.” I roll away from him again, sitting in a butterfly style.
“Good. I’d prefer you listen, too.”
“I didn’t say I was going to listen to you either.”
He chuckles, which only angers me. Glaring at him straight away, I suck in a breath. Mistake. I can smell his cologne and the energy rolling off him, and I have to exhale it as quickly as I took it in. I won’t just brush this under the rug, no matter how I feel about him.
“Mallory, I’m sorry.”
That’s all it takes for the tears to haunt my eyes again, blurring the outline of his chiseled face. His own eyes are filled with so much emotion that I have to look away.
“You’ve said that already,” I reply.
“So I have.” There’s a note of insecurity in his voice that I’ve never heard before, a hint of hesitation that seeps in the words. He blows out a long, strangled breath. “I shouldn’t have acted like I did today. It was childish and I’m completely mortified that I did it. To you of all people.”
“You should be,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “What you did today was bullshit, Graham. Complete bullshit. Be mad at me. Point out my fuckup. Fire me, for heaven’s sake. But talk to me like I’m an errant child worthy of no respect? Nope.”
“Mallory . . .”
“I’m not done.” I turn to face him, the words flowing. “As your employee, I won’t stand for you to talk to me like that. As your . . . whatever I am to you—”
“Mallory—”