The Man Who Has No Love - Victoria Quinn Page 0,53
you didn’t tell me. I had to hear it from Valerie, of all fucking people. But if you’d told me, I could have told her I already knew. But I had to stand there like a fucking dumbass, like a deer in the headlights. You humiliated me.”
“I’m sorry…”
He bowed his head, sighing loudly.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I said through my tears. “I am…so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was just a complicated situation, and I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“After all that shit with Dr. Hawthorne, it seems even dumber now.” He raised his head and looked at me. “Being worried about someone replacing you when you were keeping this from me.”
“Not the same at all—”
“How would you feel if I’d slept with her in the past, in graduate school, and never told you? Now, we work together.”
“I…”
“Would you have been pissed off?”
“But I would get over it. I trust you.”
“Why would you, when I lied about it in the first place?”
I closed my eyes again. “Deacon, I’m sorry. I love you so much, from the bottom of my heart. Nothing like this will ever happen again. I would never lie to you. I have nothing to hide from you.”
He shook his head. “Valerie was going to rat you out, and the only way I could stop her was by telling her I was in love with you. So, she knows now. And that’s just fucking wonderful.”
That hurt even more, that he’d still covered for me after what I’d done. “Thank you.”
He didn’t look at me. He looked away, like my face was too difficult for him to see. “I looked like a fool, Cleo.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as fucking sorry as I am.” He stepped back, rubbing the back of his neck again. “Fuck, I woke up this morning happy…and now it’s gone.”
“It’s not gone, Deacon. We’ll work it out.”
His eyes didn’t move to mine.
“Okay?”
Still, nothing.
“Deacon…” No. I wouldn’t be able to move on if I lost him. He was my world. He was my everything.
“I need space.”
Oh god. “Deacon, please. You and Derek…are my family.” They filled the big crevasse in my chest. They wiped away all the pain from my losses. They gave me a place where I belonged, where everything was right in the world. “You’re my family.” Tears blurred my vision and made it hard to see the coldness in his eyes.
He stepped back and glanced at the door. “Please leave.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe I’d just lost him. “I love you—”
“Cleo.” He turned to me, his stare impenetrable. He didn’t feel anything for me—at all. He spoke to me the way he spoke to Derek when he wouldn’t listen, like he was disciplining my unacceptable behavior. “I asked you to leave. Now, leave.”
I couldn’t go. My feet wouldn’t move.
“I want Matt to take care of me for the foreseeable future. I don’t want to see you.”
He stabbed me over and over.
When I didn’t leave, he got tired of waiting. He turned around and walked down the hallway to his bedroom. His door shut a moment later, followed by the click of the lock.
I didn’t want to go into the hallway in case I ran into anyone, not when I looked like this. But I had no other choice. I couldn’t stay here. I stifled my tears, forced the sobs to stop jerking in my chest, and walked out of his residence.
It was a long night.
My stomach ached while I lay in bed because I was hungry but too distraught to think about raiding my fridge. My phone was on the nightstand, and it lit up every few minutes. I always grabbed it, hoping to see a message from Deacon.
But they were just emails from clients.
The tears came and went, starting up suddenly then drying out. Then the process would repeat over and over. At some point, I became dehydrated and developed a migraine, so I had to take a couple pills just to get through the night.
When morning came, I called in sick.
“I can’t come in today. I think I caught a bug.” I lied into the phone, still in bed because I hadn’t moved.
Matt was surprised because I never called in sick. “Damn, that must be a pretty bad bug.”
“You have no idea…” Tears formed in the corners of my eyes and dripped onto the sheets.
“Will you be back tomorrow?”
I couldn’t hide in my apartment forever. I had too much on the schedule. Just taking one day off