Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

mister,” calls the cab driver from the curb. “You want me to wait? We going somewhere else?”

I look up at the building’s façade, rising like an urban fortress to the sky, one I cannot breach.

“We’re going,” I tell him, getting into the backseat of the cab. “Take me home.”

I take out my phone. It shows the last text I sent was the one I sent to Steph, asking her how her Regatta cooking job had gone. How long ago had that been? An hour now? Usually, I’m flooded with texts, but it seems like life wants to keep reminding me of how far south this day has gone. There have been no other messages, so that last one is right there when I look at the screen.

Back at the house, Curtis can tell right away that something is wrong, but he keeps any questions to himself, thank goodness. I make myself a drink and aimlessly pace the room, thinking. Before I know it, enough time has passed that the ice in the liquid has melted and the glass is overflowing. I set it down and return to my pacing.

I can’t believe Steph is making such a big deal over this, the proverbial mountain out of a molehill.

Yes, I did orchestrate some events that affected her, I will admit to that, but my intentions were only the best. I had thought I was doing a good thing.

If it was such a good thing, my interior voice wants to know, then why didn’t you tell her about it beforehand?

I didn’t have an answer for that one. Or rather, I had an answer but didn’t want to give it, which was that I knew she would be furious if she found out. Prophecy fulfilled, then.

So what to do about it?

It occurs to me that I will have to do the one thing in the world that I have the least tolerance for—I will have to wait. For now, I’ll have to tie myself to the mast and wait for the storm to pass, or at least lessen in intensity.

I have a bad feeling that I may be in for a long wait, though.

I rattle around the house for a while, making calls, sending emails and texts, just as I normally would on an early Saturday evening, but I’m aware that I’m coming across as vague and distracted, not like myself. I decide that the only person I can keep council with at the moment is myself and get Curtis to drive me to the office.

Walter, the security guard, doesn’t bat an eye as I enter the lobby. He knows my habits.

“Evening, Mr. Stone,” he says, raising a hand. “Burning the candle at both ends this week again, huh?”

“Both ends and the middle, too,” I tell him, continuing on to the elevators.

I sit behind my desk in my office on the top floor. It seems like nothing can really hold my attention. At this rate, I’ll be reduced to making paperclip sculptures or seeing how many pencils I can imbed in the ceiling tiles.

I call Steph.

To my surprise, she picks up. Maybe she didn’t notice that it was me calling.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says by way of greeting. Maybe she did notice that it was me calling after all.

“Steph,” I say, “I understand that you’re mad.”

“Really? Good. I’m glad I got that point across.”

I still took this as encouraging. At least she was talking to me.

Then she hung up on me again.

I was angry myself all over again. Clearly, we were at a point in our relationship where we needed some “space.”

“Fine,” I say to the otherwise empty office. “We’ll do it your way. You want space; you’ll get it.”

I make a few more calls, pointedly not to Steph. The last one is to the airport.

Chapter 21 - Steph

The next two weeks drag by as much as the previous two had flown along. I get up every morning and go in for work, the same as always. I come home late every evening, the same as always.

I do not call Trent.

He does not call me.

The days pass slowly.

If there’s fallout from my humiliation aboard the Wavebourne, I can’t tell, either because it really isn’t there or because I’m too tired and in my head to notice.

I haven’t had a lot of experience with depression, having thought myself too busy for things like that in the past. It seems I have unconsciously decided to make time for feeling like the underside of the pavement, though.

The days continue to pass. My houseplants slowly die from lack of watering.

One evening, as I’m listlessly eating handfuls of cereal right from the box, I decide to call Tira. I’ve been ducking her calls, along with everyone else’s, for days now, but I think it’s time to reach out and connect with someone who’ll give me some sympathy.

“You’re being stupid,” she declares.

“Not exactly what I wanted to hear,” I say.

“Well, you’ll hear it anyway. So Trent overstepped your boundaries with some grand gesture. Guys like him only know grand gestures. They never do anything small.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

I can hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “Because I’ve dated some guys with money before. The operative word being ‘dated.’”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you’ve got almost no experience to put this in context. How many other guys have you gone out with in the last five years?”

We both know the answer to that one. “Not that many,” I admit.

“Hmm?” Tira prods.

“Okay, hardly any.”

“Better. A little self-honesty is going to go a long way towards resolving this.”

“And what is it that I’m supposed to be honest with myself about?”

“That you’ve been on your own for so long, you’re used to