Page 64 of I Choose You
“Yeah, I think he might be,” she sighed.
We made our way back to the living room and settled on the couch. Claire leaned against the arm, her feet folded under her as she faced me. “He wasn’t this bad before. He must have a lot on his plate right now, and this project seems super important. I mean, it is super important,” she hurried to say. “But he’s acting like it has the ability to destroy him if it doesn’t go perfectly.”
“That must have been why he assigned it to you.”
“Well, that’s the thing. This is my first solo project as the project manager. It was supposed to go to Derrick originally, but he switched us out because he said this would be a good project to get my feet wet.”
“It’s a huge restoration job. He had to know that there would be a crazy amount of details and decisions that would need to be made. Hell, we’re going to need to pick out light switch covers at some point. You were writing those updates daily for weeks.”
“I still am,” she added.
“And has he at least started reading them?”
“No.”
“But he shows up here, criticizes every single thing, and threatens your job if I fuck up on my job. He’s fucking nuts.”
“I don’t know. That’s usually how it goes, right?” She shrugged.
“No,” I growled. “What makes you think that?”
Claire let out a strong breath, her shoulders sagging. I reached out to her and pulled her feet to me, tugging her closer until she was basically lying down.
“Talk to me.”
She adjusted the pillow behind her head, taking a moment. She was so beautiful I had to tear my eyes away from her before I got myself into a situation.
“It’s weird. Before I came down here, I knew that my relationships weren’t normal—well, that’s probably not the right word—not healthy. But being in Calla Bay, being around you, it’s put it into perspective.
“For me, growing up, I was often an afterthought. My parents would make these important plans that I would needto attend, but they never thought to tell me. So, the day would arrive, and I wouldn’t have a dress prepared, or I was knee-deep in homework, and my mom would freak out that I would ruin everything if I didn’t fix it immediately. Find a dress, wash and do my hair, full face of makeup, in like ten minutes before we had to leave. It happened all the time like that.
“And Will was no different. If we went to a dinner party that he deemed better than ours, I would hear about it for days. Why didn’t I throw parties like Heather, or when would I get my act together and start acting like a wife, even though he hadn’t asked me to marry him.
“It was always my fault if something went wrong, no matter where I was or who I was with. For a really long time, I believed it. College helped me see some of the toxic behaviors, but that was before Will and I even got together, so clearly, it didn’t help that much.”
“You were surrounded by losers and douche fuckers, but that isn’t your fault. You know that, right?” I asked her. My hands had been stroking her legs without me realizing it. I gripped her foot and used my thumbs to apply pressure to the balls of her soles.
Her moan was so lewd I instantly got hard.
“Tell me you know that you are perfect and everyone around you are dickweasels.”
She laughed through her moaning. “I’m far from perfect.”
“No. You are perfect.”
The doorbell rang. Slowly, Claire pulled her foot from my grip. “That must be the food delivery. I’ll get it,” she said, her face flushed.
She thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t. To me, shewasperfect. She was the only one who couldn’t see it.
21
Claire
“Can I ask you something?” I took a bite of my apple pie. I shouldn’t even go down this road. It wasn’t any of my business, but I had to know what happened with that girl from his mirror.
His gaze met mine, and he groaned. I had a feeling he knew where I was going with this, but if he told me that he didn’t want to talk about it, I would leave it alone. We’d slept together once, but we weren’t in a relationship. He didn’t owe me any of his history.
“Go ahead, ask away.”
