The beautiful blonde beside me. Me holding the wrist of a woman as she smirks up at me as we slink out of the restaurant.
Vanessa—standing too close, looking every inch like a woman who just had a private conversation with a man she knows intimately.
Emma's expression goes painfully blank.
"Emma—" I start walking toward her.
She turns and walks in the opposite direction.
"Emma—" I bark again.
But she's already gone, disappearing into the lunch crowd with Carmen hurrying to keep up.
"Fuck," I hiss under my breath.
Vanessa’s chuckle is warm, raspy, as she pats a hand against my suit’s lapel.
“As I said,” she breathes out low, “good luck with that, Donovan. My team will be in touch.”
And I'm standing on a Manhattan sidewalk, with the woman I care about too far to reach, and the woman from my past too fucking close for comfort, knowing that I just made everything worse.
Again.
Chapter eighteen
~EMMA~
Thursday morning—the day after I watched Donovan exit a restaurant with a beautiful blonde who looked at him like she owned him—I arrive at Titan with one goal…
Survive.
Not thrive. Not excel. Just survive.
The July heat is oppressive, the streets of Manhattan smelling vaguely of hot garbage and broken dreams. My linen blouse is already sticking to my back by the time I reach the thirty-seventh floor of Titan Industries, my stomach doing that thing where it can'tdecide if it wants food or wants to rebel against the concept of food entirely.
I'm also showing.
Not obviously. Not enough that strangers would notice. But enough that my work pants are getting tight, and I had to safety pin the waistband this morning because the button won't close anymore.
Twelve weeks pregnant. Nearly three months.
And the father of my child was holding hands with another woman on a public sidewalk yesterday.
"Morning, Emma." Carmen appears at my desk with coffee—decaf, because she's thoughtful like that. "You okay? You look pale."
"I'm fine."
"You said that yesterday. Right before you saw Donovan with that woman and looked like you were about to throw up."
"Ididn't throw up."
"Only because I steered you into that bodega for chicken noodle.” Carmen sits on the edge of my desk. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Want me to slash his tires?"
I nearly smile. “I don’t think that’ll help.”
