Page 81 of Loathing My Boss
“You want me to see myself as an insane girl who hunted you down for years to make your life miserable through numerous minor inconveniences?”
A guttural sound rumbles from his chest. “Oh, my love, that is my favorite part.”
I think, maybe, I’m not the only one between us who’s insane.
“I need…time to think. I can’t…marry you if I don’t trust you. And I can’t even consider taking your money or blackmail if there’s a chance you’re serious. You deserve a better start to your marriage than that.”
He lifts a shoulder. “It doesn’t really bother me. After all, I trust you.”
“You trust me. Someone who has hated you. For a decade. And could immediately take advantage of you with what you’re offering on a more massive scale than I have ever had access to before?”
He presses his lips together, still smiling. “Yes. Exactly that.”
“Are you insane?”
“Probably. But it does not escape me that you’ve had access to my businesses and my bank accounts in very intimate and unchecked ways for two years. You’re brilliant enough to have made it all the way to my side; you’re brilliant enough to have been Sunset’s downfall already. There were violent ways to hate me, sweet pea. You…” Humor flits across his mouth. “…instead chose to remind me how I’m ever so geriatric…while I can bench press…five hundred pounds.”
I cuss.
As though he has something to prove, he sweeps me up off the ground like I weigh nothing, settling my rump on his forearm.
Gripping hold of his shoulders, I stop breathing.
“You need time to think?” he asks.
Dumbly, I nod.
“Okay. But…” He combs his fingers through my hair, draping the strands over my shoulder. “…while you think, understand there is nothing I wouldn’t do to prove I love you. And, if you get lost in your thoughts, stuck on how it’s unkind to be with me because you’re all the lies you’ve taught yourself for years, tell yourself that you hate me again. Despise me enough to make me suffer the blessing that is you.” He slides me to the ground, against his hard body, and I dissolve. “Can you promise me that?”
Pressed against him like this, I’m liable to promise him all sorts of things.
Because all I can do is nod.
Chapter 29
?
Two hundred thousand words is an awful lot of proof.
Crisis
“I finished my book today,” I murmur, while Viktor is pulling his fingers through my hair and looking for a new bedtime story. We finished the self-help book. Very informative. Very funny. I think the author and I could be friends. I hope she crunched her enemy’s heart real good. “I know I was supposed to finish my book days ago, but…things distracted me.”
Thingspauses running his fingers through my hair and looks down at me.
It has been three days since I asked for time to think Viktor’s proposal through and thirteen days since the start of his two-week-long writer’s retreat. Tomorrow is the last day filled with success stories, plans on how to take the motivation from these past two weeks forward, and also horseback riding.
Because why not, I suppose.
The success story time will take place in small groups, so everyone can really feel seen and heard when they share their great accomplishments. Mygreat accomplishmentis that I wrote a whole book, but it’s hard to see that as any sort of accomplishment when it’s not going to do anythingbut sit on my computer and rot. It’s hard to even want to share that information when I did it like I do most things—out of spite.
After all these years…I think I’m tired of the spite.
I snuggle my pillow. “It’s self-edit time now, isn’t it?”
“That depends on what you want to do with it. Self-editing sucks. If you’re just having fun, there’s no point.”
I like that Viktor’s logical.
