Page 122 of Plus Size Player

“What?”

I could hear the confusion in his voice.

“I asked you if we could talk on Monday and you played me,” I explained.

“I didn’t play you. I would never play you.”

“Russ, you didn’t even give me the courtesy of looking at me. You didn’t acknowledge me. You just said no.”

“Nina, look what happened yesterday,” he whispered sharply. “Hell, look what happened Friday. I told you no because I can’t be around you without wanting you. I can’t look at you without missing you. I can’t… I can’t act like I don’t want to be with you. And I don’t understand what you don’t understand about that.”

“I understand—”

“If you understood, you wouldn’t have blocked me,” he interrupted.

The vulnerability in his tone triggered something inside me. “I blocked you because I was mad… and hurt.” Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling. With tears stinging my eyes and my defenses down, I had no control over the words coming out of my mouth. “You bring out all of these feelings that—”

I was interrupted by the ringing of his office phone, and I stopped speaking abruptly.

“That what?” he demanded softly.

I swallowed hard, pushing down the words and emotions that threatened to spill out of me.

His phone rang furiously in the silence between us.

“Nina?”

The soft pleading in his voice almost got me to break.

“Shit,” he swore. “Just give me one second.” He seemed to move his cell phone from his face to answer his office phone. “Yes? Have the quarter four projections looked at one more time before my eleven o’clock. I have back-to-back meetings until four, so I can’t even squeeze that in today. But I have something to take care of before the Hampton meeting. Well, you should’ve led with that!”

When he ended the business call, he returned to me. “My eight o’clock meeting is here,” he informed me. “I’m sorry to cut our conversation short, but can we finish this tonight over dinner?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, that’s fine. Have a good meeting. Bye, Russ.” My words came out in a rush, and I ended the call as soon as humanly possible.

Tossing my phone to the other side of the bed, I buried my face in my pillow.

What the fuck was I about to say?

It was almost scary how little control I had over my feelings when he expressed his. I felt discombobulated. He made me feel things and want things I’d never felt or wanted before. And as impossible as it was for us to have more than we had, I wanted him—badly.

He really did fuck the common sense out of me.

All I could do was shake my head and get my ass up for the day to edit content.

Thursday, 10:56A.M.

Russ: I just walked into the conference room. I have back-to-back meetings until 4. Dinner tonight, seven o’clock, my place?

Thursday, 11:16A.M.

Nina: I’ll be there.

I sat my phone on my vanity and exhaled, committing myself to work for the rest of the day.

“I’m about to put it on!” I greeted the camera with my signature opening for the final time. “Get ready with me as I prepare for a dinner date…”

Two hours later, I was dressed, my makeup and hair were done, and the video was completed. I was overdressed for a dinner at his house, but there was so much we needed to talk about and looking my best made me less nervous about it.

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