Page 13 of New Resolutions

“We very much are finished.”

I have her in my arms so fast that she doesn’t have time to move or try to block me. “I say we’re not and I don’t think you think so either, angel.”

I bring my lips down on hers and she instantly melts in my arms. Her lips become pliant and soft under mine. She might say she’s done but her body says otherwise. We get lost in one another for a blissful minute. Both of us go straight to tasting, searching for the other. Before she pulls back and pushes against me.

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many have there been, Barrett? Am I what, the thirtieth? More? If you do this every year at one of your little parties, what number am I?”

She surprises me so much that I let her go and take a step back. She thinks I just…pick some woman to spend Christmas with and…fuck? She doesn’t see how important she is. How different.

“Are you upset because we didn’t…? Why me? Why would you pick me?” Her face crumbles and I see the whole of her pain and sadness, and it breaks me.

“Angel,” I reach for her and pull her into me tighter than ever before, “it’s not…”

My doors are flung open sending light flooding into the room and stopping what I was about to tell Chairty.

“Let her go, you monster!”

A girl comes stomping over to me and Charity and pulls her from my arms. Javi follows right behind her.

“Sarah! I told you…”

“You shut up! You don’t get to tell me nothing! You used me!”

“What?” Charity looks between the two of them.

“He used me to get to you so this…dick could find out everything about you. They were in on it together!”

Her voice catches at the end and Charity turns angry eyes towards me.

“I didn’t….”

“You sent him to…”

The girl interrupts both of us, “That’s why you asked me about my friend? Because I was just a tool to you.”

The girl’s eyes fill with tears and Charity’s grow darker. She starts towards Javi but surprises the entire room by balling up her fist and using her momentum and anger to punch Javi in the face.

Me and Sarah have matching looks of shock on our faces. Charity turns to me with a righteous indignation written across her features. “You don’t have to fire me! I quit!”

She takes Sarah by the hand and both of them are out the door and down the stairs before either of us have the sense to stop them.

“What the hell just happened?”

Javi says it but it’s all I can think about as my angel leaves me for the second time.

“That didn’t go how I thought it would.”

“No shit,” Javi holds his eye as he looks at me, “sir.”

It might be one of the first times I’ve been knocked on my ass, totally taken by surprise. And my angel did it.

“Catch them before they leave.”

We both start for the elevator but not the one every employee takes, my private elevator which is faster.

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