Pushing Carter out the door was one of the hardest acts I’d ever done.

All I wanted was to keep him to myself, to hold him tightly and take care of him and have him take care of me, for nothing else and no one else to matter. Already, the morning after committing to each other, I wanted him to be my world.

It took every ounce of compassion and empathy in my body to muster the courage to send him to another woman. A woman I’d never met, a woman who needed him more than I did.

And I didn’t know if Carter would return to me. Physically, he would come back, but had I just lost his heart?

One phone call. That’s all it took to rip me from contentment and plunge me into chaos.

It was early enough that I still had a couple of hours before I was supposed to be at work. There was no point in going home, even though I didn’t have a change of clothes and my hair was a mess. I considered calling in sick. I wanted to be there when Carter got back from the hospital.

Rex had been neglected the previous night, ignored as Carter and I lost ourselves in each other, so I played with the puppy both to give him the attention he needed but also to brighten my own mood. It worked only on the most superficial level, but beneath the surface, my mind ran in circles stressing about what the future held.

“Everything will be okay,” I told Rex as a proxy for my worrying heart. “The worst-case scenario is that Carter gets back together with Mia, and then I’ll just continue on like I have been. So we saw each other a few extra times. It’s just the bump in the road that proves the rule. Three dates and done is what I need to keep my heart out of things. It’s a learning experience.”

The falsely cheery pep talk fell on deaf ears, and not just because Rex didn’t speak English. I couldn’t fool myself anymore. Not about Carter, and not about the great future we could have together. There was too much rightness in our connection. We fit together too well in too many ways to just forget about it.

I’d acknowledged truths about our relationships that I couldn’t put back in the box.

Tears fell that I’d been holding back since Mia’s name first left Carter’s mouth this morning, and I sat back against the couch.

Rex yipped and jumped into my lap, burrowing into me and butting his head into my hand. The puppy comforted me as if he knew what I was going through. He would never let me down.

My phone rang, and I reached for it, both hoping and dreading that it would be Carter.

Lorelei.

“Good morning, Lorelei. If you’ll calling for an update on the Livingston Management deal, I’m one more meeting away from having it on your desk to review.”

“That’s funny,” Lorelei said. There was no humor in her voice. “I just got off the phone with Gary Morris, and he said that he was going in another direction.”

Again. Again, he’d done this to me. At least this one, I’d anticipated.

It still hurt.

“Lorelei, I did everything I could. I swear to you, he was always going to do this to us just to mess with me. I warned you what he was like when you first sent me after this contract.”

The woman on the other side sighed. “You may be right, Madison. Unfortunately, it changes nothing. You’re a hard worker and you know your stuff, but without this contract, I can only afford to keep either you or Clara, and she has more experience and industry contacts than you do.”

My job was a vital part of my identity. Finding something I was good at when I got to the city was a big part of how I was able to build a new me. Becoming friends with Clara was a bonus. To have that snatched away after sending Carter off to his fiancée was too much.

“Hold on, Lorelei. Gary screwed us, but we can find something else. Give me a few weeks to score another contract. I’ve been focusing most of my energy on this proposal. If I go on the hunt for something new, I swear I can find something by then.”

“We’re out of time,” Lorelei said. “I’ve held off for as long as possible waiting on the LM deal. It’s either let you go or miss rent on the office this month.”

I lost my temper. “This is such bullshit. You know what happened at the end of my last meeting with Gary? He tried to get me to give him a blowjob in his office. I can prove it to you. I turned him down, and in return, he does this? What a fucking child.”

“I’m not saying you should have done it, but maybe if you had, we’d be celebrating rather than having this call. I’m sorry, Madison. I’ll be a reference for you if you interview somewhere else, but this is the end of the line for us.”

There was nothing else to say. I didn’t have the energy to fight with her over something she’d made her mind up about. It took effort to hold back a scathing retort. That wouldn’t help me, and it was a bad idea to burn one of the few professional bridges I had in the city. “That’s all I can ask, Lorelei. I’m sorry I couldn’t close the deal.”

After hanging up, I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I rested my chin on my knees and fumed about how awful the day had been so far. The happiness I’d woken with was as pure as anything I’d ever felt. Within an hour, it had been displaced by a sick dread.

First, Carter’s fiancée woke from her coma. I couldn’t be mad at her for that, and I couldn’t be angry at Carter. It was a sad situation with no easy answers.

Then Lorelei fired me. I couldn’t really blame her, either, but there was one person who deserved a level of pain for his actions. The only person I truly hated.

Gary.

A thousand fantasies of torture flashed through my mind.

Rex interrupted my thoughts with a soft whine as he put his forepaws on my legs and leaned up to lick my face.

“Hey, pup,” I said, pulling him in and scratching his belly. It was hard to entertain thoughts of inflicting ruthless agony on another person with such an adorable furry companion around.

Still, Gary needed to learn a lesson. There wasn’t much I could do, but it was better than staying here and stewing about Carter and Lorelei.

“Stay here and be a good boy for momma, okay, Rex?” I asked the puppy. “I’ll be back later.”