all day.”
“Good idea,” he said as we paid our tabs. “Let me walk you to your room and I can pick you back up in an hour or so.”
As we rode up to my floor in the elevator, we talked more about the power of Instagram.
“People scroll through their feeds so mindlessly now, you have to grab them as quickly as possible,” I said. “Every image has to be its own story.”
Andrew nodded and I could tell he was listening, but I also knew that he was focused on what would happen at my hotel room door. If I asked him to, he’d probably come right on in. All I had to do was give him a sign that I was interested.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. I hesitated.
“Shall we?” he said.
“Right. I’m just at the end of the hall,” I said.
We headed toward my door, and I could feel a subtle tension building between us. I couldn’t help fantasizing about how different it would be to kiss a man who was actually interested in me. Who wasn’t doing it because of some stupid hoax. Who wanted to kiss me because I was me. Not because I was the solution to some problem he had.
But even in my fantasy, and even with Andrew right in front of me, when I imagined kissing him, he ended up looking like Ford.
We reached my room. I slid my keycard into the reader, and the green light blinked. Andrew was lingering just a little too close.
“I’ll, umm, see you soon?” I said, looking up.
And that was when he made his move.
Leaning in, it was obvious he meant to kiss me. Without even asking. Startled, I put my hand on his chest to push him away.
It was at that exact moment that the door—my hotel room door—opened.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
I turned and found Ford standing in the threshold of my room.
Had he seriously flown to New York to surprise me?
Well, I was definitely surprised.
And I wasn’t the only one.
Ford
Chapter 22
There wasn’t enough time to savor the “I told you so” moment in my head before I realized it was Andrew Homewrecker Apellido who was moving in on my wife.
Nor was there enough time to fully enjoy the look of total shock and awe on that slimy asshole’s face when he realized what was happening.
As he stood there in the hallway gawping at me, my fist went flying. Straight for Andrew’s face, and practically of its own accord. It wasn’t even planned. I punched the guy purely on instinct, and damn did it feel good.
“Ford!” Emzee cried out.
Andrew staggered back, stunned. “You son of a—”
He lunged forward to throw his own punch. It hit me square in the jaw.
Which was unexpected, truth be told. But fun. Because a good fight was exactly what I needed right now.
“Andrew!” Emzee scolded. “Both of you, stop!”
Our blood was up, adrenaline pumping. Neither of us paid her any mind.
Andrew swung again but I twisted out of the way just in time, then delivered my own shot to the gut, which had him gasping. When he threw an elbow, it knocked me backward into the hotel room. He charged in after me like a raging bull, wrapping his arms around my waist and trying to knock me down.
Instead, I used his momentum to shove him into the desk—a desk I’d spent the last few hours fantasizing about fucking my wife on top of—and then leaned over him to see if he was still conscious. That was when his fist came up and connected with my brow bone.
I barely registered what was happening. Everything was a blur of pain and triumph as we rolled around on the floor trading blows.
My frustration and rage, my disappointment, the pressure to succeed and the ever-looming fear of failing—my marriage, my job, my parents, my ex-girlfriend—all my warring emotions and the things in my life that I couldn’t control were boiling over inside me. Fueling me. It didn’t matter that Andrew Apellido himself had little to do with my problems.
In the background, I could still faintly hear Emzee yelling at us to stop, and I wasn’t entirely sure whose blood was on my shirt, but it wasn’t until Andrew held his hands up and stopped fighting that I finally stopped, too.
Both of us were panting and disheveled, furniture was upturned, a smear of blood marred the cream and gold pattern of the carpet. My anger was fading, but Andrew had gotten