Slade isn’t the type to mince words, so the fact that he is now tells me all I need to know. This—us—is too much for him, too real, when all he’s used to is casual dating, so now he’s trying to figure out how to move on. Exactly like Prisha said would happen.
Christ. This is why marriage was easier. You just knew to expect disappointment and disregard. You didn’t have to wonder and read into the silence.
“Heather is better to you now?” he asks, shifting the conversation away from our train wreck of a topic and toward something less treacherous.
“I still don’t trust her as far as I can throw her, but baby steps.” I laugh softly. “And you? Are you back to work? How’s Ivy doing?”
“I’m not officially back yet,” he says, his lack of answer about Ivy has me reading between the lines. “The person who oversees the program took pity on me and is letting me do some data analysis entry on a study he’s doing, but as for seeing patients, I’m still suspended.”
“I’m sorry. I was hoping you would have been back in the swing of things by now.” And, of course, my head goes there. To the place that overthinks how he hasn’t been exhausted from working twenty-four-hour shifts and discredits the excuses I made for why he hasn’t called me—that he’s been too busy getting back into the swing of things—now hold no weight.
“Me too. But I’ve been working nonstop trying to gain some favor by doing this. The good news is Ivy is slowly showing more signs of coming to: eyes fluttering open for minutes at a time, reaching for a drink before falling back under, that kind of thing. So fingers crossed she’ll wake up soon and will have weathered the storm without any long-term damage—physically, of course—and then we can all put this behind us.”
I think that, for him, it is going to be an empty win simply because getting confirmation that the girl was abused might validate his actions, but it won’t make him feel any better.
“That’s good though, right?” I ask, desperate to keep talking to him. I’m alone in this tower of an office building but he makes me feel a little less so. “That she’s responding. That she’s having moments of consciousness.”
“Only time will tell,” he murmurs. “You haven’t broken up with me yet. Why?”
His question throws me and I chuckle a nervous laugh. “I couldn’t . . . I didn’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
Do or die time, Blakely.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. “I feel like there is so much unfinished business between us. The to-do list. The . . . and I . . .”
“Me too.”
“You too?” I ask. What does that mean? What is he saying? “So, what do we do about it?”
“Well, I did win the bet, so isn’t there the last of our unfinished business to tend to? Like you owing me dinner?” The smile in his voice eases the vise gripping my chest until I realize that there is more to tend to than just the bet—like the last task on that damn napkin.
It was in jest. He said it from the beginning. And yet here I am, a ridiculous female still thinking I want it to be true and hurt that it isn’t.
My smile is bittersweet, and when I speak, my voice doesn’t reflect any of the turmoil that is roiling around inside of me. “Are you assuming you won? That I’m satisfied, Slade?”
His chuckle rumbles through the line. “You did get the promotion.”
“Maybe I need other things to feel satisfied.”
“Are you implying I didn’t deliver? We howled at the moon, Foxx,” he teases.
“Maybe I need to try out the goods again to be sure.”
This. This is what I need. The sexy banter. The playful flirting. This is what makes me feel like us again . . . not that there is an us, but it’s normal for us.
“How about Friday night? Does that work for you?”
I close my eyes and smile to the empty room. “Yes. Friday sounds good.”
“Should we meet up after you get off work? We could go to Metta’s and actually eat there or—”
“After work is fine.”
“I’m sorry.” His chuckle rumbles across the connection. “I’m taking over when this is supposed to be your date. Tell me what you want to do and I’ll make sure it happens. Hell, you’re the new take-charge Blakely, so I’ll let you take charge and shut my mouth.”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t mind. How about we meet at Metta’s, have a couple of drinks, and then I’ll figure out somewhere to go after that?”
“So, you’re going to surprise me?”
“Something like that,” I say. “How about seven o’clock? Is that too late?”
“It’s perfect.”
“Okay, then.”
Silence clings to the line because I don’t want the call to end. There’s something about him on the line that makes the day all that much better.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you, Blakely.”
“Me too.”
“Until then.”
And when the call ends, when the quiet of the empty office building settles around me, there is a smile on my lips and a pocket full of hope building within that maybe . . . just maybe, Slade and I can try our hand at whatever this is.
Still, I feel like a fraud because the new take-charge Blakely would have just told him how much I want there to be more than just a celebratory dinner.
She would have told him she wants that last task on the to-do list.
She would have laid it all on the line.
There’s always Friday night.
Blakely
“Huge bouquet of flowers for one Miss Foxx,” Minka says as she carries a vase filled with peonies into my office.
“Huh,” I say as I move over to them and pluck the card out of its holder.
“Who are they from?” She all but dances on her toes.
“No idea.” But I do know. At least the giddy female part of me thinks I do. I open the card, and my heart
