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Chapter Fourteen
Briar
After my afternoon class, I head back to Emmett’s, ready to take a shower. Maybe I’ll make him dinner as a thank you for being way nicer than I expected. My expectations of what it would be like living with Emmett compared to what it’s actually like are as opposite as you can get.
He didn’t lie about cooking. Most of our meals come from Jensen, but I’m not complaining. Emmett leaves early to work the farm, but he’s never missed a breakfast with Wren. At night, he watches television, or he’s on his computer, writing things down. Last Saturday, he went out, but he was home by midnight, since I heard his headboard hit the wall. He keeps his space, and I keep mine for the most part.
My phone rings in my bag, and I grab it. When will Gillian stop treating me like I’m thirteen?
“Gill? Thank God. Come and get me, Emmett showed me his pee pee.” I use a fake distressed voice, trying to freak her out.
“Briar?”
I pull the phone back to make sure the voice I’m hearing is actually who I think it is. Sure enough, the bastard is calling me.
“You need to lose this number.” I click End but I don’t dump the phone in my bag like I should.
It rings again, and I let it go to voicemail, but it rings again almost immediately.
I pick up. “Stop calling me. It’s over.”
“Wait!”
I don’t say anything.
“Briar, I… I know I should’ve told you. But I never knew how.”
“You had an entire year.”
“I know.” He’s quiet, which he should be. Cheating bastard. “I didn’t expect to fall for you, and when I did, I knew telling you would risk everything. I loved you… love you… you’re my everything.”
I hate that phrase. I’m not his everything. I was his regular hookup. His side piece. Only I didn’t know it. All the trips, the dinners, the lazy Sunday mornings. It’s too cliché now that I’m looking back at our relationship with a magnifying glass.
“Just stop. It’s over. We’re… over.” I shift the phone to hang up.
“Where are you? Let me talk to you in person. I can’t do this over the phone.”
“You mean you can’t manipulate me over the phone. Your charm isn’t going to work, Chad.” I sit on the porch steps of Emmett’s house, thankful his truck isn’t in the drive.
“I want to see you. I miss you.”
“Miss my body, you mean?”
He always complimented me on how fit I was and how great the sex was because I’m so flexible. Now I know who I was being compared to.
“Yes… no… you know what I mean. I miss us.”
I roll my eyes, bring my knees to my chest, and rest my forehead on them. “Well, I don’t.”
I’m lying, but not because I miss us. I miss who I thought we were and who I thought we were on our way to being.
“Yes, you do. How could you not? We were great together.”
“That’s your perception. Mine is different.”
I hear a muffled sound. “One minute, Janice.”
His secretary. “You’re fucking the secretary now? How cliché can you get?”
