“The bathroom is all yours,” I said, and dramatically swept my arm across the doorway.
Malcolm knocked on the door while Waverly was still in the bathroom. I thought I’d escaped a showdown with her until she opened the door and stepped out. Of course, she looked runway ready. It was unfair how some people’s outsides didn’t match their insides.
Waverly’s soul was tarnished by years of both neglect and indulgence. In a way she never stood a chance to be a better person. We shared a mother, but she didn’t have the luxury of having my father. I wondered who I would have been without him.
My mother had always been selfish. She fancied herself a woman of society long before she had the resources to actually be one. My father made a good living. He was a well-respected professor, an expert in American Military History. He was one of the few who hit the bestseller’s lists with his books. The royalties from those publications augmented his more modest salary from the university.
Being comfortable wasn’t enough for my mother, and problems grew between my parents. Her ambitions drove her into the arms of an older man who was more interested in a pretty young face than the wife who’d stood by him for over a decade.
Colter and I remained with more stable parents. Waverly wasn’t so lucky. While he and I grew up in homes with love, she grew up with two parents more interested in appearance and the accumulation of wealth. I was only two when she was born, but Colt was fourteen. He tried hard to offset the horrible example set by our parents, but I’m afraid we all see now that his spoiling her hurt her in a different way than the emotional neglect she lived with at home.
She smirked at me when Malcolm knocked again. “Ah, dinner with the bestie, I see. You should probably let him in, his attention span isn’t very long.”
I ground my teeth together. I’d ask her how she even knew he was the one I was seeing, but Waverly was a notorious snoop. I wouldn’t put it past her to have gone through my messages, or hacked into my calendar.
It would be a lie if I said their history didn’t bother me. But, I also hated the fact there was some truth to her words. Hadn’t Jana said virtually the same thing? He was smitten with her, until his boredom set in and he strayed. Thanks to my mom, I hated cheaters. I mean, it’s not like there was anything to love about cheating, but I knew firsthand the devastation that kind of betrayal caused.
“You know I can pick a lock,” he called through the door, growing impatient. He was probably lying about that, but the last thing I needed was for him to get arrested because I was takingtoo long to open the door.
I opened the door and stepped aside so he could enter. I held my breath waiting for him to notice Waverly leaning against the doorway of the bathroom and change his mind about our date. My nerves eased when he never took his eyes off of me.
I watched his blue eyes darken as they traveled up my body. He reached out and took my hand, bringing it to his mouth and pressed a chaste kiss against my knuckles. “You look beautiful,” he said, low enough to keep Waverly from hearing.
With our hands still connected, he guided me back toward the door. I snagged my jacket from the hook on our way out. Before we exited my building, Mal took my jacket from me and held it open for me to slip my arms in. It turned out to be the perfect excuse for him to drop his arm around my shoulders.
I smirked up at him. “That was a pretty smooth move.”
He winked at me. “Only the best for my girl.”
ChapterTwo
Sabrina
Dinner was strange. Not uncomfortable, the opposite really, but still weird. First dates are usually filled with awkward questions to get to know each other. We didn’t need to do that. Not that I knew everything about him, like there were things he didn’t know about me, but the important details were already written into my life’s story.
There were awkward lulls in conversation, which we’d had before. Navigating from friends to something more was different. I’d stopped seeing his physical features long ago. Partly because I was convinced he’d never see me as anything more than a little girl with scraped knees and pigtails. Never in my wildest fantasies did I believe Malcolm would actually see me as a woman, let alone a woman he was romantically interested in.
Still, we managed to flirt a bit more than normal. There was enough chemistry between us that when he leaned in for a kiss at the end of the night, I didn’t turn away. It was a decent kiss, but it didn’t spur me on to invite him up.
I might have, if he’d done more than pull in front of my building. Parking in Seattle was difficult. My building didn’t have a parking garage and I was happy not to have to walk from the lot down the street, but it wasn’t very romantic.
There was a heaviness sitting on my shoulders. Every relationship I’d entered for the last several years went the same. The beginning was exciting, and I told myself this one would be different. I’d be able to find that missing spark, but it never came.
The last guy I dated, Aaron, was sweet. He made it clear he liked me and was constantly doing small things to let me know he was thinking about me. I couldn’t manage to drum up enough enthusiasm to continue seeing him. He worked in finance at Anderson Global, and when he was sent to head a project at the Portland office, I allowed our relationship to fade.
After we parted ways I was convinced there was something wrong with me. The truth I hadn’t told anyone was, I hadn’t been intimate with anyone since I was twenty. I was waiting for something or someone. I was sad to admit that for a while I’d convinced myself it was Malcolm. Now, I was starting to think maybe that part of me was broken.
There was no tragic backstory. I hadn’t been abused or attacked. The only thing wrong with me was an overly romantic heart. I wanted that moment of instant lust that makes your heart race and builds to a lifelong love.
I owed it to myself to give Malcolm a real shot. We had history. He cared about me, and I was attracted to him. So, when he called the next day, I took it as a sign he wasn’t playing games with me.
Over the next few weeks, we continued to see each other. It wasn’t really any different than hanging out as friends. He held my hand more now, but we had barely moved beyond that. I could tell Malcolm was getting frustrated with my tepid response to him, but I told him I was just having a hard time letting go of the way things were.
I tried to bury myself in work, but I was an executive assistant to a man who was not only a secret genius but family as well. Colt worked to live and refused to let me make work my life as well.
He knocked on the open door of my office. “Have you even taken lunch?”
I shook my head. I told Malcolm I had a lunch meeting with Colter, and then I felt too guilty to step out.