“O-Okay. What will you be doing?”
I balled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the garbage can beside my desk before I grabbed my coat and hastily pulled it on.
“Fixing my fuck-up before it’s too late.”
13
Mallory
For a solid hour after it happened, I was completely numb. I left the building, waited for the bus, then stared out the window on the way home like some kind of zombie. I even marched up the steps in my building without the usual grumbling to myself about the lack of an elevator.
I shut my front door, clicked the lock into place, and turned around to lean against it.
The sound of my head thumping against the wood was what finally broke me. The humiliation came rushing back along with hot tears.
This time, I didn’t try to stop them. Not that I could have. They rolled down my cheeks as I struggled to understand what I’d overheard.
Had I been played? Was every moment I spent with Brian a lie? I certainly hurt like I’d been betrayed. I was so damn embarrassed that I couldn’t resist the urge to ask Vanessa to give him that paper.
I rolled my eyes and wiped at my tears. What a way to hand in one’s resignation. God, I was even more embarrassed thinking about my childish gut reaction.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there replaying what I’d heard over and over again, but it was long enough to take me so far out of reality that I screamed when a series of loud bangs sounded right beside my head.
I pulled away from the door—frozen in shock. I waited for another bang, but instead heard a soft, “Mallory?”
“Brian?” I croaked, cursing the tears lodged in my throat.
I could hear the relief in his voice as he said, “Open the door, sweetheart.”
“N-No! Go away.”
Great. Another childish reaction to be embarrassed about later.
His voice got low and I had to press close to the door to hear him as he said, “Your neighbors are starting to come out because of your scream. Please open the door.”
Sure enough, I heard a door down the way being opened along with some quiet murmuring. No matter what he had said in his office, I didn’t want anyone calling the police on him.
I hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped out, ignoring Brian as I waved down the hall to Harold.
“I’m fine. Sorry.”
He looked between the two of us a few times before nodding and ducking back into his apartment. The silence in the hallway was thick as I steadfastly refused to look at him.
Much as I wanted to keep my eyes on the floor, I didn’t bother to fight when his fingers hooked under my chin and tilted my head up.
“I made you cry,” he said softly.
I might have been having doubts about him, but there was no mistaking the real remorse in his voice. I stepped out of his grasp and whispered, “Come in.”
There was a flash of hurt in his eyes that made me angry as hell. After the door was shut and locked, I turned to him and pursed my lips together.
“How dare you.”
“Let me explain, please—”
“No. How dare you show up here with that kicked puppy look? You have no right to be the one who’s hurt here.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “No argument here. I’m so sorry, Mallory.”
“Just tell me what was real.”
“Excuse me?”
I was waffling between my anger and my sadness, horrified when I felt the tears coming back again.
“Just—” I tried to start, my voice breaking. Brian’s eyes flashed in alarm and he reached out, but I stepped back before he could try to console me. “Just tell me what was real. Do you care about me at all?”
His hands lowered to his sides as his throat bobbed with a rough swallow. “It was all real. Everything. What you saw was just... Fuck. It was me falling for the oldest trick in the book. He was jealous and he baited me.”
“And you took it.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you realize how bad it sounded? How many people were listening?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. “Ten bucks says half of those people would tell me that I’d be crazy to trust you right now. So why should I?”
Brian came closer again and I tried to dodge, but he wasn’t having it. He followed me until my back was against the wall and reached out to gently rest his hand on my chest, right above my heart.
“What’s this tell you?”
The tears fell harder as I admitted, “That you care about me.”
His free hand came up to wipe my tears away as he hoarsely said, “I won’t lie to you, Mallory. Ever. I care about you more than you know. Trust your heart.”
He was right. It felt like a safe bet for me to trust my heart—to trust him—because I was absolutely certain that he was the one. Whether I was embarrassed or not, he was still the one.