The phone buzzed a third time, and I pulled a pillow over my head so I wouldn’t have to hear it.
I was not pining. I wasn’t. Kate Jameson did not pine. She pined less than a completely deciduous forest, and certainly not over jackasses who weren’t worth her time and emotion; jackasses who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on the ass; jackasses whose smiles had made me feel all fizzy inside, like I could fly, like I could do anything I set my mind to…
I was not pining.
I was just…tired. And disappointed. And the tiniest bit lonely.
That was all.
Not that I wanted to see Asher! I glared at the still-buzzing phone; I had nothing to say to that smug, deceitful snake. In fact, I was doing everything I could to keep from seeing him—my door was locked with all three bolts, my doorman’s memory of my reminder to turn him away was being refreshed with an amount of money I definitely couldn’t afford, and I was taking a different route home from the store every day.
The phone went silent, and I felt strangely hollow inside.
Despite all my precautions, Asher had almost cornered me once, at the bus stop around the corner from Kate’s Trifles. He had skidded to a halt in the Spacemobile, and begun frantically waving to get my attention. And seeing him so desperate to speak to me, his eyes wide with worry as car horns blared around him—I had almost given in, and walked over to listen to his side of the story.
But then I remembered the only two words of his story I needed to know: no hope.
So I had feigned social blindness and pretended to get onto the bus, only to bolt out the back door and down an alley to grab a bus at a stop two blocks down. And I’d doubled down on my paranoia as I went to and from work, which meant even longer commutes that in turn meant even less motivation for me to ever get off this couch of mine.
Hell, I was having trouble finding motivation to move my eyes from one line of my book to the next.
The phone buzzed again, but this time to the Season Four Avengers theme song, my ringtone for Lacey. My spirits lifted for a second, and then plummeted again. I couldn’t face another rehash of current events with Lacey. It had felt good at first, talking everything over with the most supportive friend of all time, but no matter how well-meaning Lacey Newman was, by the end of any of our conversations all I was able to think about was how off-track my life was compared to hers: my playboy billionaire conquest had ended in humiliation at the public event that should have been the crowning glory of my career, and hers was deeply in love with her and about to declare that fact to the entire world in a wedding ceremony that would make the entertainments of the decadent ancient Roman empire look like a game of Scrabble at a Quaker meeting house in comparison.
Lacey would hate that this was what I took away from our talks, but I couldn’t help it. And I didn’t want to be a burden, or a great big cloud of depression hanging over her parade, so I was avoiding her calls now too.
Maybe eventually she’d get the hint and stop calling me.
Maybe she’d find herself a new best friend, one who had attended that secret meeting everyone else seemed to have, where they told you how to be an adult, behave professionally, and never get your heart broken by someone who clearly didn’t deserve anything you had to offer.
I rolled off the couch and went to take a shower just to keep from hearing that phone buzz one more time. The hot water and the strong minty smell of my soap helped clear my head and energize me—until I emerged from the shower and saw by the blinking icon on my screen that Asher had left me a message.
Before I knew what I was doing I was picking up the phone, my thumb swiping along the icon as I brought my cell to my ear. Asher’s voice broke into the air like a knife across my heart: “Kate, this is the seventh message I’ve left. I’m starting to worry about you. I know that the way you heard about all this wasn’t ideal, so if you’d just give me a chance to explain—”
And that was as far as I got before my heartache and anger and loss hit me like a tidal wave, swamping me in a disorienting tsunami of rage and grief. I jabbed at my phone to cut off his voice and erase the message, and then flung it to the opposite end of the couch. I curled up at my end and cried, trying to muffle the sounds against my throw pillow. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Goddamnit all to hell.
He’d listened to me, respected me, supported me and my vision. And damn but he was indecently good in bed, and not so bad looking to boot. The fact that he was filthy rich wasn’t the worst thing in the world, either. He even knew how to deal with my family, and my occasional (so very occasional) unreasonable moments.
It killed me to admit it, but Asher Young was everything I’d ever wanted. That’s why this all hurt so bad. Because in the end, the relationship I thought we’d had was a lie, was based on a stupid bet. I’d been manipulated as easily as the supermodel Barbie clones he normally ran through faster than disposable razors.