Page 47 of Duke's Daring Bookworm
“I’ll go. See you later?” Lily asked. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked to the door before I could stop her.
She didn’t close the door on the way out, and a part of me wanted to believe it was from jealousy. Not that she had anything to be jealous about. Still, I could hope she felt something more for me. I damn well would have ripped the door off the hinges if the roles were reversed and my cum coated her while some random man asked for her attention.
I took a deep breath to focus and quell the illogical ragethat filtered through me.
Leaving the door open, I walked over to my desk to hear whatever Mercedes needed to say that couldn’t wait.
“Who was that?” she asked as she sat across from me. At one point, I’d considered her beautiful, and she had been angling for a date for months. I was an ass, but I wasn’t such a big ass as to think dating one of the executives here would be a good idea. She didn’t seem to have the same compunction.
“Don’t worry about it. What’s going on with the merger and what does it have to do with marketing?”
She toyed with the deep vee of her top, tracing the line where her blouse met skin, a move I knew was meant to entice me, but rather than arousal, all I felt was vague disgust. I turned to my computer, hoping she would get the message and get on with whatever this was about.
Eventually, she spoke up, and it was bad news. The company we were working to acquire ran an offensive ad several years ago that an influencer found and was now trending on social media. If we were going to buy and save this company, we needed a plan to address this.
As much as I didn’t want the drama, the green tech they were working on would result in a significant reduction in our company’s emissions, and I hoped to make it marketable. It was already a hard enough sell to the dinosaurs on the board who were more than happy to keep eating their own for a buck, even if it damned the future.
I rubbed my neck as she spoke, staring at the screen in front of me. This was so far beyond me. All of it. The pressure of taking over as CEO and this little game I played with Lily threatened to drown me.
Chapter Sixteen
Bright lights blared overhead, and yet another person ran into me. I wore my brightest shirt, an orange one with a little devil dancing on the front. As much as I wished otherwise, I didn’t have any powers of invisibility, so the other shoppers could see me. Still, everyone around me seemed to head straight for me, walking too close, jarring my buggy, bumping my shoulder.
The music over the loudspeakers beat in my ears, filling them so full that it was a physical pain, but the regular interruptions letting shoppers know about the sale on avocados were worse. Those sounds stabbed through the overstuffed cotton of the music and pierced my drums directly. Someone in the next aisle smelled like cigarette smoke, weed, and cat urine. Despite the distance, I wanted to vomit.
I stood there frozen in the chicken nugget aisle. I knew I needed to find the right brand and get the bag, but Icouldn’t seem to remember how to do that. Some piece of me whispered that if I moved, it would be over. The mask of a normal shopper would fall away, and I would crumble under the weight of my own senses.
This world was too much.
It wasn’t made for me.
Something as simple as grocery shopping was enough to break me, and the thought of that sent another wave of panic racing through me.
There was a reason I didn’t do this. Frankie hadn’t even blinked when we agreed she would do the shopping and I would do the staying home not having a panic attack when we became roommates, but she was on a trip looking for sasquatch or maybe aliens, and Duke had been so busy at work that I hadn’t seen him since I’d left him with that woman.
I didn’t want to think about her. She was so beautiful and sophisticated. She looked like she belonged there in that office, a stark contrast to my frumpy, awkward self. I couldn’t stand Duke seeing us side by side like that. What if that was why he stayed away the last few days? What if he saw her, dressed immaculately, even on a Saturday, and realized he made a mistake pitying me? What if even now he was with her, bending her over the desk, calling her a good girl?
Panic rose higher and higher.
Pathetic excuse for a human. My boss’ voice from earlier rang through my head. I overheard him talking to a new employee yesterday. He didn’t even hide that he was talking about me. I wanted to report him, I did, but the last time I tried, HR called me in and put me on a performance plan.
I couldn’t do anything right.
I couldn’t even feed myself.
Someone else brushed by me, bumping my shoulder as they opened the door I could only stare at. Their mouth moved, but all I could hear was my breathing, the blaring music, and the buzz of lights. All I could do was try to breathe.
Don’t let them see how useless you are.
A cold splat of something landed on my toe where it peaked out from my sandal, and I realized that I still held the ice cream I had grabbed earlier. Condensation built up enough to drip from it in great, big drops.
I looked down at my foot, wondering if it was even still there, wondering if I even still had a body at all as everything in me went numb, but all that greeted me were colors so blurred I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
So much for holding it all in.
I dropped the ice cream and my small basket where I stood. A store employee yelled something at me, but all I could think was that I needed to get out of there. I needed air. I needed?—
“Lily?” A low, startled voice cut through my panic. I knew that voice. I’d know that voice anywhere. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
