After You (Because of You 2)

“The other man is an asshole. Trust me, he did not send them as a nice gesture. After he fucks with me, he likes to scare off any other man who might paw at me. He made me break up with the last boyfriend I cheated on with him. This time he doesn’t have any ammunition to use against me, so he had to get creative.”

“He sounds hot.”

“He sounds like a sociopath,” I reply.

Shrugging, she says, “I’m doing dark romance over here today, it might be getting to me. If only he’d kidnap you and whisk you away to his elegant mansion, where he would gently imprison you until you fall desperately in love with him. Then he’d be perfect.”

“He’s not above kidnapping, trust me,” I mutter.

“Well, now I have to turn on some Lady Gaga while I work. God, here I was thinking you’re an agoraphobic workaholic, and you have this whole secret life with sexy, sociopathic suitors and the hot lawyer determined to rescue you from his evil clutches and keep you for himself. It’s hard not to hate you right now. You don’t even appreciate any of this.”

“Too much excitement for me. I like my boring life. Derek can sweep Henry off his feet and they can both leave me to my work,” I tell her.

Louise shakes her head at me as the sounds of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance fill my living room. “You are not normal.”

Chapter Thirteen

On Wednesday, another dozen roses arrive on my doorstep. The first draft of Dreamcatcher is pouring out of me. I’m approaching the halfway point, and I do not have time for Derek’s drama.

This time, there is a card tucked between the silky soft flowers.

Can I have your number now?

Here’s mine.

And then he gave me his number, because he’s an asshole. He thinks he must have sufficiently scared my boyfriend off now, though why he

thinks that would make me any more eager to talk to him, I cannot begin to imagine. Refusing to give him my number had absolutely nothing to do with Henry. It’s not “I don’t want to talk to you because I’m not single,” it’s “I don’t want to talk to you because you do bad things to my life, and I don’t want the chaos you’re peddling.”

I’m working by myself today, otherwise I would give the roses to Louise. I take them straight to the garbage can, but before I toss them, the sliver of stupidity that occasionally takes possession of my brain convinces me to pluck the card with his phone number on it out of the flower arrangement. I stare at it for a moment, my thumb running over the ink that reveals his phone number.

Shaking it off, I go back to my desk, open up a drawer, and drop the note card inside. Then I get right back to work.

Not interested in another fight, I do not tell Henry about the second flower delivery.

Instead, I conserve my energy, reach out to the editor who worked on my Nikki Reid books with me to let her know I might have a standalone soon, if she’s interested, and reach out to Bethany to see if she can model her wedding dress for me before she and my dad leave for their honeymoon trip this Friday. Bailey doesn’t see her biological father, so Bethany and my dad have her all the time. Bethany’s mom has to watch her for their honeymoon, and she couldn’t do it the weekend of their wedding, so they had to push it a week.

It occurs to me that Bailey and Cassidy are around the same age, and both only children as far as I can tell. I know Derek and Kayla must not have any other kids or he would have had the other one for the weekend, too.

God, just thinking about that level of contact with Kayla makes me feel bitchy. This is one of the 8 million reasons Derek and I can never work. If I were some sweet little daffodil ready to forgive and forget, to swallow down my bitterness twice a week when he has to pick Cassidy up and drop her off—and inevitably see Kayla, the evil bitch whose demise I legitimately desire—then sure, maybe Derek and I would have a shot.

I’m not, and I never intend to be again. Last time I tried to do that, he abandoned me for that skank, so fuck them both. Since he has a child with that evil whore, I would have to be nice about her. It’s not Cassidy’s fault her mother is my mortal enemy, but I’m not interested in bumping elbows with her at Cassidy’s school events, either. And I’ll be damned if I stay home and let Derek and Kayla be parents together while I’m just some third wheel.

I’m getting angry just thinking about it. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I want no part of that mess.

Henry has no children and he’s wonderful. I can make this work with Henry. I thoroughly enjoy Henry as a human, I just have to get past this Derek issue and foster some real intimacy between us. The problem is, knowing Derek is set on making waves damages my confidence that things will work out with Henry. That, in turn, makes me even more reluctant than I already was to take the next step with him. I know I can have emotionally detached sex, but if I sleep with Henry, that’s not what I’m aiming for. It’s not about physical gratification. I want to make the emotional connection, I want to let myself open up and let him in. I want to let him into whatever part of my heart he needs access to for fireworks to explode inside my head when he kisses me.

I can’t do that when I know we’re on shaky ground. This Derek thing might have actually brought us together if Derek had just gone away like a normal person, but I know Derek. If he’s decided he needs to scare Henry off, he will. He’s a possessive asshole, and it doesn’t matter that I’m not his.

It kind of pisses me off that he’ll put in the effort to appease his male ego, but not to keep me.

Shoving Derek and Henry both out of my head, I open up my email and get back to work.

---

“I’m taking you out tonight.”

I am the epitome of fugly right now, sitting with my legs crossed in my lap, yesterday’s sweatpants on my body, my hair pulled up in a greasy bun, not a stitch of make-up on my face, and Henry decides to send me a summon.