I grab my suit jacket off the edge of the bed and swing it over my arm, moving to leave the bedroom. I hear her quiet “Okay” from behind me, and it takes everything in me to keep walking. But I need some space. I need to figure out what the hell she’s been doing all this time that we’ve been together.
The insecurities are raging strong deep inside of me. I mean, how could they not? I’m a thirty-six-year-old millionaire who still hasn’t found the right person to settle down with. And it’s not for lack of trying. Of course, that makes me feel as though I’m deficient in one way or another.
Then I find Whitney, and everything realigns in my life. Everything feels right.
Only for me to find out that she’s been grading me against every other man she’s been with to find that potentially perfect match.And thisDanielfellow, he only had one box less than me, but obviously that also wasn’t enough for her. So what did that mean for me?
The tiny voice in my head that I hate is rampantly whispering that maybe that’s the only reason she’s put up with me this long. Maybe she’s only with me because I check off her damn boxes.That I’m going to be her first ‘perfect ten.’
My thoughts fly to my past relationshipwith Lauren Farthington, and instantly I remember the unworthiness I felt when she told me over and over again that I wasn’t enough for her. That was what ultimately drove her to cheat on me. I didn’t give her enough, I wasn’t enough.
And now it seems that, yet again, I’m being gauged on my ability to deliver on expectations. Such is my luck.
As soon as I’m downstairs and in my car, I pull out my phone, dialing my brother.
He answers right away, but he doesn’t sound happy about it. “What do you need? I’m kind of busy right now.”
In the distance, I can hear a female voice asking him who’s on the phone. I jump to the conclusion that he spent the night with Leila.Again.
At some point, I’ll need to grill my brother about what the heck he’s doing with Leila. She seems to be able to match him in his wild child ways, and I suspect that anything between them could be perfect or catastrophic. But he doesn’t seem to be worried about any of that.
But at this moment, I’m too frazzled by the road bump in my own relationship to care about whatever he’s doing.
“Whitney’s apparently been keeping track of all of my good qualities,” I spit out. It sounds so comical when I say it out loud. And again, a part of me wonders why I’m so bothered by this, and another part reassures me that I should be bothered.
Chase laughs on the other end of the line. “That’s weird.”
I want to roll my eyes. Weird doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about this newfound information. “That’s one way to put it.”
He laughs again, and it grates at my nerves. “You sound pissed.”
“I am a little,” I admit, gritting my teeth so tightly my jaw starts to hurt.I force myself to release it and then take a breath. “I guess I’m more just confused about everything now.”
“I think you’re probably thinking too much on it. It just sounds like some weird, girly thing to me,” Chase says.
I glower out the window. “I just hate feeling like I’m being compared to every other guy she’s been with. There were pages of them with different names on the top of each one.”
“And?”
I shrug even though he can’t see me. “And I guess I meet more of her little requirements than all the others. I checked.” My mind keeps flashing back tofucking Danieland my irritation mounts again. I didn’t even know the guy, but somehow I figured I didn’t like him. In the back of my mind, I wondered if he had been the source of one of her disastrous date stories she had told me. Yet at the same time, I knew he had to have been more significant to her if she had enough time to check off seven of her ten little boxes.
“See, that sounds like a good thing to me.”
“Except the fact that she’s been tracking all these things throughout our entire relationship,” I grumble. “Like she’s been grading me on my performance as a potential suitor.”
“Maybe you’re looking at it wrong,” Chase says. I let out a frustrated sigh, knowing my brother—ever the voice of reason—is probably right. “Just calm down and try to think rationally about it. Will she be at the Board meeting today?”
“No, she has a dentist appointment. She probably won’t be in until after lunch.”
“Great, well, there you go. That will give you some time to mull it over and chill out about it.”
“As if I don’t have a million other things I need to be using brain power on,” I say.
“Well, I could argue that this is probably more important. At least to you. In the long run.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m always right,” my brother says smugly. “That’s why you called me.”
