Big Bad Boys A Romance Collection - Penny Wylder Page 0,234

impossibly handsome as ever, dashing in his pressed uniform, hat off and cradled in one hand, his hair messy from being underneath it all day.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and the frown on his face is so sincere, his concern so convincing, that it makes me sick to my stomach all over again.

“Just go away, please.” I force myself to speak loud enough to get through the door. It takes effort. My voice is scratchy from sleep, my throat thick with emotion.

“Clove, talk to me. What’s going on? Did something else happen with the photo?”

“Go. Away. Zayne.”

“Please, just tell me what’s wrong, Clove. Whatever it is, we can talk about it, work through it.”

Almost without thinking about it, I realize that I’ve turned on my phone. Pulled up the app and scrolled to the message. I stare at the images of the texts he’s been sending, the dates stamped across them. I glance back and forth from that damning evidence to the handsome, desperate-looking man outside my door. Is he faking this? Is he this good an actor?

My gaze lands on one message in particular. An exchange with a girl whose username is MissMisMatched. Half of me wants to laughingly appreciate the pun, especially given who she’s talking to.

Zayne’s message to her is the one that sticks in my head. The one that stings. The one that makes me realize this isn’t a joke or a fake.

Trouble sleeping? he asks her. That opens the conversation, which quickly turns to flirty talk of what they’re both doing up so late. (Him: I work the graveyard shift some nights, so I’m always up late looking for intriguing distractions). The words resonate, a little too familiar.

I open up my conversation with Zayne. Scroll up to the top, past all of our sexts and flirty back-and-forths, and even the photo image I sent him that started this whole mess.

I scroll all the way up to the top, and I stare at those two words, written in damning black-and-white on the screen.

Trouble sleeping?

It’s how he first started talking to me. The opener he used after we matched, when I was still trying to figure out how to respond to him. And here he is, just a couple of days later, using that same opener on another girl, after he told me he wanted to delete this app altogether.

“Goodbye, Zayne,” I tell the door loudly.

He protests, calls after me to wait. But as I turn and trudge back to my bedroom, I pause just long enough to turn the volume of my speakers up all the way. Music blasts through my rooms, drowning out his knocks and shouts. Eventually, even the distant faint ring of the doorbell fades away, as I presume he finally gives up on me as a lost cause and heads up to bed.

He’ll get over it. He can find some other girl to string along. Someone else to mess around, while he messes with a few dozen other girls’ heads at the same time. Me, I’m over it.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I crawl into bed and bury myself in the covers. But I’ve already slept a lot today. I know I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep, not for a long while. So I just pull the comforters up around my head and stare at my ceiling, willing time to pass faster. If it does, then maybe this bruise on my heart will heal faster, too.

11

Right. I’ve moped long enough.

I wake up bright and early the next day and put on my war paint. I do my makeup to the nines, professional as hell. I put on a pencil skirt, a formal blouse, and even switch my belongings from my usual slouchy old hobo purse to a structured, tailored bag that I bought a few months ago. It looks like a briefcase, all professional lawyer-chic, but I’d been too lazy to switch purses ever since I bought it.

Today, however, calls for the new purse. It calls for breaking out all the big guns, in fact.

Today, I’ve decided I’m going to get my job back.

I can’t stand sitting around this apartment any longer. I need to pull my life together and put it back on track, and that starts with a polite, face-to-face, professional conversation with my boss. I fire off an email to her just as I’m strapping on my heels—the demure, mid-height ones that are perfect for business meetings, but not high or sexy enough