My phone lit up with another message, this time from Emerson. I’ve given you enough space. I want to see you.
I didn’t want to see her. I was fucking ashamed.
I’m standing outside your door.
I sighed loudly, knowing this moment was inevitable. I was surprised she’d left me alone as long as she had. I left the dining table and opened the front door.
She stood there, her eyes emotional despite her attempts to hide it.
I stared at her, hating myself for a lot of reasons. I hated myself for fucking up that rocket. And then I hated myself for the way I treated her afterward.
She moved into me and wrapped her arms around me, holding me close, giving me a tight hug like I might slip away.
I stood there with my arms by my sides, like I didn’t deserve to hug her back. I was a bit numb, unable to feel anything at all. I completely shut down, and all those good feelings inside my chest seemed like a distant memory.
But I shut the door behind her and hugged her back. My arms locked around her, and I rested my chin on her head, holding her in silence, feeling her frantic heartbeat against my bare skin.
She didn’t say anything.
That was nice because I preferred the quiet. I preferred not talking because talking always made me feel worse. It was nice not to think about anything at all.
She eventually pulled away and looked into my gaze. “My mom is going to watch Lizzie tonight. I was hoping…I could stay over.”
I’d never had her sleep in my penthouse before. She always had to leave when we were finished. But I wasn’t excited about the prospect. “I’m really not in the mood, to be honest.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to be. I just want to be with you.”
I wanted to push her away and ask her to leave, but I didn’t. She’d given me enough space, and I really couldn’t ask for more. “Alright. But I really don’t feel like talking about anything.”
“That’s okay.”
I turned off the lights, and we went to bed. The place was a mess because I didn’t let the housekeeper in to clean. The bed wasn’t made, the sheets were two weeks old, and I knew I didn’t look that great because I’d only shaved a couple times.
But she didn’t seem to care.
I got into bed, and she immediately came to my side, wrapping her arms around me, holding me close, her face in the crook of my neck. We sat there in the dark, just breathing. My eyes were open and focused out the window.
Her arm tightened on my torso. “I love you.”
I turned my chin her way and automatically pressed a kiss to her forehead without thinking twice about it. “I love you too.”
Immediately, she went to sleep, like all she needed was to hear me say those words.A nightmare woke me up.
I stood on the asphalt where the rocket launched and stared up at the sky as I watched the rocket explode. Then body parts rained down on me, soaking me in the blood of innocent people who’d trusted me not to kill them.
My eyes snapped open, and the dream ended.
I breathed hard as the images continued to flash across my mind, fading slowly like smoke from an extinguished candle. I looked beside me and saw Emerson still deep in sleep.
I left the bed and walked back into the living room. My laptop was at the dining table because I’d been working on emails since that was the only thing I could bring myself to do. I closed out of it then saw that my document with the book was still there. I hadn’t written anything in a while, and I had no idea when I would have the drive to start again. I closed out of it and saw the recent documents there. There were two that were untitled. I had no idea what they were.
I clicked the first to make sure it wasn’t important before I deleted it.
My thighs squeezed his narrow waist as my nails sliced down his back, leaving marks that would be visible when he walked to the bathroom once we were done. They would be there the following day, and if anyone saw him shirtless, they would know that a woman had recently claimed him. Imagining those marks made me so wet that I came around his fat dick. “Derek…”
My eyes opened wide. “What the…?” I continued to read, watching the fantasy unfold from her point of view, seeing the way she described me to a T. He sucked my nipples before he whispered my name against my skin. “Emmy…”
I sat back in my chair, far more disturbed than I was aroused. I accessed the data about the file and realized she’d written it before I told her how I felt about her. And it was a shared document…from her to me. She’d written a porno about me, just the way I wrote one about her. There was no way that was a coincidence, but how could she have known about the short stories I wrote?