Page 96 of The Hookup
“My neck hurts,” he replied, closing his eyes, not wanting to think about it.
~ ~
“What the fuck happened?” Remington’s voice cut through the air like a heat-seeking missile.
“I—I got the dates messed up. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus Christ, Kay. What’s the matter with you?”
She swallowed. “It’s turned hectic all of a sudden—”
“You’re fucking paid to deal with hectic,” he roared.
“It won’t happen again.”
“It fucking better not,” he growled, “because if you mess up again, I’ll take you off this so fast you won’t know what hit you, is that clear?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t sleep last night. She couldn’t get Luke’s nasty, vindictive words out of her head.
A pity-fuck.
That’s what he’d told her she had been to him. She had been wide awake until the early hours of the morning, watching the clock blinking in the new minutes one by one.
She had gone over every conversation, and every interaction with Luke from the moment they had first met.
The logical part of her brain told her that he was lashing out. That Luke was angry, and bitter over his illness, but her heart told her otherwise. It convinced her that he was speakinghistruth, that this so-called relationship of theirs, the one where she had hoped to change him, and slowly win him over—had been nothing but a farce.
The truth came out when people were in a corner, and right now for Luke, it was the worst corner he could be in.
It seemed unfair, and her heart ached for him, but her sadness came in jolts because every now and then she would remember what he had said, and how he had said it all while lying in his hospital bed.
She had looked it all up online, wanting to understand what he was going through. The search engine results wibbly-wobbly through her tearful eyes as she dug deeper and deeper into the dark bottomless pit of the ‘net. She found herself wading through graphs and cancer stories, fearing for Luke even though this was supposedly a common and curable type of cancer.
Luke would be fine.
He wasn’t going to die.
And yet she was afraid, and hurt, and upset. She was torn between feeling sympathetic towards this man who was so hard to love, and equally as hurt by the way he had treated her yesterday.
She had gone to bed in tears, and had completely forgotten to look over the reports for the client; reports which contained a few errors that had been picked up by one of their analysts. Remington had had to apologize on her behalf because she’d woken up late and missed the 7am meeting.
She didn’t cry easily—a hardened woman like her. She was used to surviving in a man’s world and considered herself to be as able as the men. She had assimilated a man’s way of thinking because she’d had to in order to forge ahead with her career.
But last night had set her back, and her mind was a barrage of torn emotions. She had rushed to the hospital forgetting the slights she had suffered at his hands, and had felt only concern that the man she had started to have feelings for, the man who was so wrong for her, might be gravely ill.
And she had left that same hospital room deeply hurt by the nasty words Luke had hurled at her.
She had gone in worrying about him, and thinking long-term, as if he was her boyfriend, as if they had promised one another eternal life and togetherness forever.
And he had told her that he’d seen her as nothing more than a pity-fuck.
Against a background of such things, she couldn’t focus, at work, or at home. At work she was all over the place, and this morning it had culminated in Remington shouting at her across the open plan office environment because she had messed up big time. He’d yelled at her, ordering her to come into his office immediately. She’d rushed past the desks, feeling the heat of her colleagues’ stares on her face.
Once inside, she was sure they had all heard his continued yelling, and the walk of shame back to her desk had been pitiful.
She couldn’t afford to mess up again.
