CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I return to work on Monday hoping that Derrick might have cooled down over the weekend. The text I sent him was proof that I'm ready to make amends. Now the ball is in his court. And from the looks of it, he's still not interested in patching up our relationship.
He doesn't even acknowledge me as he passes by my desk to go to his. It hurts that he's being so dismissive, and I'm beginning to wonder if he'll ever forgive me.
My inbox is woefully empty. Lucian didn't send me anything over the weekend, not that I expected him to. I spend the day playing games on my computer and glancing down at the little envelope icon on the toolbar at the bottom of my computer screen every few hours. The only time it shows anything other than a big fat zero is when Tyra sends me something. Each time I see the one pop up, my heart skips a beat, hoping it's Lucian. It never is though.
Monday passes, and Tuesday is another boring day with no friendly interaction from Derrick and no contact from Lucian. By Wednesday, I'm beginning to get worried. Apparently, so is Tyra, because she swings by my desk to see if Lucian has reached out to me. It makes me sick to tell her that he hasn't. Hopefully, she's not thinking that he's going to renege on his contract. Everything we've working on with him so far has taken a long time, so maybe this isn't so abnormal.
On Thursday, I finally get sick of waiting and send him an email.
Doctor Reddick,
It has been a while since anyone at Environ Design has heard from you. I am just contacting you to make sure that you're alright and to see if you'd like to schedule a time to go shopping for the furniture for the rest of your house.
Regards,
Amy Underwood
Interior Designer
Environ Designs
Short, sweet, and to the point. It's professional and not personal, so hopefully he'll respond.
I wait and wait, staring at my inbox, counting down to the end of the day. By the time my shift is over, there's still no response.
On Friday, I shoot an email to Derrick asking if Lucian has contacted him. He responds with a simple 'no'. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. Of course, I'm not happy that no one has heard from Lucian. But when Derrick is upset, he typically responds with something snarky or rude. 'No' is such an emotionless word coming from him. It's too impersonal—too careless. Like we're not friends anymore.
It feels like there's a heavy weight on top of me. Depression presses into me, making me sad and mopey. It's been an entire week without contact from Lucian or any sign that Derrick has forgiven me. I'm miserable the likes of which I haven't been in a while. My lips feel frozen in a downward curve, and I'm constantly on the brink of crying.
I'm worried that Lucian has forgotten about me, that he's decided to back out of his contract. The loss of his business doesn't bother me half as much as the loss of his interest. Maybe this is a sign that it's finally over. That it's all finally over. Both Janice and Derrick told me this would happen. Why didn't I listen? Why did they have to be right?
By the end of the day, I've stopped watching my inbox. Lucian isn't going to respond. I know that now. I would be an idiot to think otherwise. If he has any inclination to continue on with his interior design project, he'll contact me at his leisure with no regard to my feelings. There's no way I can rush his response. Even if I sent him something desperate, a text message begging him to reply, I doubt he would. He's cold as ice.
I shut down my computer, grab my purse, and trudge out to my car. By the time I've pulled out of the parking lot of Environ Design, tears are streaming down my face. It feels like meeting Lucian completely screwed up my entire life. He turned me on to pleasures that I never knew I could crave, then strung me along emotionally. Not only that, but he's wrecked my relationship with one of my best friends and has done things that could potentially threaten my job security. He's a monster. A beautiful, horrible monster.
It takes the entire rest of the evening for my sense of loss to melt into bitterness. The veil that Lucian pulled over my eyes is slowly being rolled away. My emotions were skewed with hope, hope that everything he said and did was sincere. That he meant it when he wanted me to belong to him—when he got jealous over Derrick. That his confession about all of the loss in his life was him opening up to me because he was actually interested in sharing a deeper part of himself, one that transcended his seemingly never ending lust.
It was all an act. An act to keep me hooked on him until he got his fill of me. His interest in me has obviously expired. No decent man would go an entire week without contacting a woman whom he has romantic feelings for.
It eats at me that he's left me hanging. There's no closure to anything. Not to what was going on between us. Not to his contract.
Never in the history of my working with Environ Design has a client gone a full week without contacting us unless we already knew that their project was going to be delayed for a specified amount of time. It's bad business for Lucian not to call the company if he's planning on canceling his contract. It's equally bad business not to let us know why everything is being so delayed.
Bitterness turns to anger. Never before has a man disrespected me to this degree. The passive part of me says to let it go, but the pissed off part of me is hungry to let Lucian know exactly what he's done to me. Not that I think he doesn't know. I'm probably the thousandth woman he's played like this. Guys like him have no conscience. They don't care that they leave bleeding hearts in their wake, that they irreparably scar women and make it hard for them to trust any man again.
I should go to his house and wait for him. Knock on his door and demand for him to explain himself. I'm not sure what he'd do though. If he's truly done with me, then he might not even open the door. It would fall in line with his pattern of avoidance.
I could go to his practice. All it would take is a quick Google search to have the address. There's no way to time that right though. If I show up and he's doing surgery on a patient, then I might have to wait forever to see him. He's certainly not worth that much of my time. Not anymore.
There's no winning for me—no way for me to engage him that he won't be able to avoid. And then I remember what Janice said about going to Flesh. About using a fake name to get to him so that I could see if he's sleeping with other women. The thought makes my skin crawl. Meeting him on his turf. I don't see any other way around it though.
I'm going to have to go back to Flesh.