Page 114 of Brat Baby
“This is never going to work, is it?” I ask, already knowing the answer to the question.
Hudson tries to answer, anyway. “Kitten, no, you have it—"
“Wrong?” I say on a laugh, hurt that he thinks I’m that fucking stupid. “You had the choice of meeting me at the apartment tonight or coming here. You came here. You didn’t even tell me you were coming here. Just left me, alone, in the apartment, again. Not much wrong to get about that.”
Behind me, thewhirof the elevator starts up, and my heart thumps in my chest painfully.
They look at each other, trying to come up with a plan, I’m sure, but then the woman from the front desk suddenly appears behind them, carrying my things.
“Excuse me, Masters, could I please get through?”
She doesn’t give them the option of moving out of the way, just forces herself through until she stands between me and them,and gives me my things. No smile, nothing. Just waits for me to gather everything.
As though the kink gods are looking down on me right now, the elevator doors open. I immediately take two steps backward, not wanting to turn my back on them, and enter the elevator.
The woman tries to block their path, but Derek manages to make his way around her, using his hand to block the door from automatically shutting. “Emery, wait. We were meeting with Thayne, he is Newton’s dean. Once we all agreed that we wanted to talk to him, we had to take a step back from you so that we didn’t cross anymore lines. I didn’t want to get your hopes up that he could possibly say yes, because we weren’t sure of what his decision would be. But baby, he said yes. There is some paperwork we must fill in, then you can be ours again.”
The smile on his face is so filled with hope that I feel sick, because all I see is the fucking betrayal.
“You came up with that plan?” I ask him, before focusing my attention on the other three. “And you all went along with it?”
If this wasn’t such a serious situation, I would laugh at the way they all nervously shift and glance at each other.
Hudson nods, with a tentative smile. “Yes, that’s what happened.”
I face Derek again. “No, I can’t be yours.”
His mouth drops open and the hope drains away. “Emery—"
I hold up my hand, palm out. “No. No more Emery or baby. No more keeping important information from me. You kept me on the goddamn hook this entire time by sending me the rewards. And paying me! All the stupid mind games. How the hell was that not getting my hopes up? I deserved to know. I deserved to fucking know!”
My chest is heaving as I yell that last part. Derek flinches back from me, but I keep going, driving in my point. “Just like in the chat when you told me to go try some of the easier dates anddidn’t trust me to know myself. You didn’t trust me to be able to manage my own emotions and actions. You took my choices away.”
“It wasn’t like that. We were trying to protect you.”
I straighten my spine and glare at him, because I see it now. I see the truth. “Trying to protect me? Or protect your careers?”
He stares back at me, a shattered look on his handsome face, like the math isn’t mathing for him. Good. Now he knows how I felt when they abandoned me behind Grinder. At least I’m giving them an explanation.
Oakley was right.
These men are just clients. They don’t actually give a fuck about me. If they did, they wouldn’t have left me at the apartment, waiting for them alone, without an explanation as to why they didn’t show. They wouldn’t have put me through the last three weeks of torture.
I am so done with humiliating myself for them, over and over.
I step deeper into the elevator, look at him through my watery eyes, and say a single word I’ve never said to him before. “Red.”
Shock registers on his face, his hand falls away, and the metal doors close.
I press the button that will take me back up to the ground floor, then press my back into the cool metal wall. Throat on fire, tears streaming down my cheeks, and the vicious urge to throw up everything I have consumed today.
Such a fucking idiot.
I am no one’s forever home.
Chapter 58
Emery
