“Good, you’re here.”
Thatch slammed the door behind her and held it shut. Unable to resist, she ran to it, testing the effectiveness of all of his muscles with three sharp tugs. He didn’t budge, one hand on the knob and the other still free to throw her a jaunty wave and a smile through the window.
She growled as she turned to me, stomping her foot in the most adorable way, and then made every effort to kill me with her eyes.
I put everything I had into not smiling and glanced at my watch.
It almost worked.
“And for the first time in your life, you’re on time.”
She pinched her eyebrows together in question and didn’t do it lightly. There was real anger there, harnessed between them. She was raging, and every single piece of her wanted me to know it.
I nodded to the tattered remnants of the contract, another victim of her wrath, clutched in her hand. “The meeting at ten?” I explained with the lilt of a question. “It was all outlined in the contract.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “The fucking contract. What kind of a sick fuck does something as mentally unstable as this? Your company?! The whole motherfucking company,” she shouted and rambled. “An insane person. You’ve obviously lost all your marbles. Maybe Walter stole them, I don’t fucking know.”
She shook her head, her wild brown hair cascading and swinging and reeling me the fuck in. A handful of days without her, and she’d dyed it again.
She sure was something.
“What I do know is that if the meeting is at ten—” she glanced at her watch “—and it’s nine fifty-nine, that makes me early.”
I bit my lip and pressed my palms into the top of the desk to keep me there.
Her eyes shot to mine at the jagged sound of my whisper. “I’m so sorry, Benny.”
Her slender throat jerked with a forced swallow.
“I know I fucked it all up,” I admitted, working the edge of my tooth into my bottom lip to keep the pace of my words in check. I wanted to race and ramble like her, but I knew it wouldn’t do me any favors.
“But I’m begging you to listen. Watch. Take it all in.”
She shook her head and clenched her hands into fists.
“You don’t have to change your mind,” I offered—a desperate man clinging to whatever scraps he could get. “I want you to.” I closed my eyes and prayed as I spoke. “God, Georgie, I want you to.” When I opened them again, done with wasting any opportunity to see her, I made sure I didn’t even blink. “But all you have to do is this. Be here for a few measly minutes. At least I’ll get to fucking look at you. After that, you’re free to go.”
I shook my head, staring at the ground. I needed a reprieve from the havoc that pleading look on his face was doing to me.
“Please, baby, just five minutes of your time.”
Immediately, I looked up, glaring at him. “Do not call me that.”
He lifted both hands in the air. “I’m sorry, Benny.”
I cringed. He knew what he was doing, the clever bastard, and that wasn’t much better.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Me fucking too. I’m sorry about a lot of things.”
His face looked pained, but he quickly pushed the emotion down, forcing a soft smile onto his handsome lips instead. “Just fifteen minutes and then you’re free to go. I promise.”
“Promise?” I scoffed. “I’ve heard your promises. They’re about as empty as my pathetic heart.”
He couldn’t hide that pain, couldn’t push it down like he had before. His eyes creased at the corners, his lips mashed in a tight line. My chest ached as I watched him inhale a shaky breath.
I knew I wasn’t being nice and I should have stopped, but I couldn’t help myself. Awful words just kept flowing past my lips. Deep down, I wanted to throw knives his way until one of them stuck, cutting him as deep as he cut me.
“I know you’re mad and you have every right to be.” His voice was calm and composed and it only pissed me off more.
“I don’t understand what this is going to help,” I spat. “There is nothing you can show me that will change my mind, that will make me trust you again.”
He ignored the tight lines of my body language—back stiff, fists clenched at my sides—and guided me to a chair. He gripped my shoulders, urging me to sit down. “Just a few more minutes of your time, Georgia. That’s all I’m asking.”
I sat, but I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to be anywhere else but in that room with him. The simple touch of his fingers on my shoulders, his voice, soft and caressing near my ear, and those blue eyes, fucking slaying me with their pleading intensity—it was too much.
My heart was a rubber band and Kline was pulling too hard. Another glance into his saddened gaze, another tug on my emotions, and it would snap. I would end up doing something I regretted. And I’d be left with nothing.