Page 86 of The Law of Attraction
“You think?”
“I realize now that you’re treated with a double-standard that means a comment like that can have repercussions beyond what I intended.”
“Well, as long as you realize that now.”
He scowled at her sarcasm. “I regret it, Olivia, just like I regret not giving you that reference when you first asked. But I don’t understand why you’re so mad about this now. You knew how I felt before.” He sounded frustrated, like he expected her to just get over this. Like it hadn’t felt like a knife in her heart to find out he’d done that to her.
“You told me that you didn’t have any confidence in my management potential, but you didn’t mention that you disliked me so much you went behind my back to try and get me taken off this assignment. Christ, what do you think the CIO would have thought if Gavin had actually gone along with it and replaced me? He would have thought it was because I couldn’t hack it.”
The elevator doors slid open and she rocketed into the lobby. Adam followed silently as she tramped across the wide expanse of polished tile and through the door to the parking garage.
As soon as they were alone in the echoey garage, he surged ahead of her, bringing her to a stop. “I fucked up, okay? I was wrong in every possible way. But I’ve made a complete one-eighty in my thinking. From now on I’m Team Olivia.”
“Great.”
“You’re still mad.” He actually looked surprised.
“Of course I’m still mad! I don’t get over being mad the second you apologize. Apologies aren’t coins you feed into a vending machine in exchange for instant forgiveness.”
“What more do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
He reached for her hand. “Olivia—”
She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Don’t. I need to go. I don’t want to talk about this here anymore.”
“But we can talk about it later?”
“Fine.” She stalked off toward the garage elevators. Thankfully, Adam didn’t follow this time.
“I’ll call you later!” he called out.
She kept walking.
Chapter Twenty-One
Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried over a man. Maybe when Cody Briggs had called her a booger-eater on the playground, come to think of it.
But she was crying when she got home, and what was that even about? Crying over a guy she barely even knew a week ago. She shouldn’t care enough to cry over him yet.
But here she was, nevertheless, blubbering into a pillow that still smelled like him.
She should have done a better job of protecting her heart. She should have fortified the walls she’d built around it, instead of letting Adam dismantle them stone by stone. Now her heart hurt like it had been torn in half, and it was all his fault for making her care about him.
The really annoying thing was that he was right. She’d known he’d disliked her before, so what was the big deal? Why did it hurt so much to be confronted with the evidence of his past antipathy?
She shouldn’t care. But she did. So much it scared her.
Because the thing was, she wasn’t simply attracted to Adam. It wasn’t just his body she craved, or his touch. She wanted to know him. Even more shocking—she wanted him to know her.
That had never happened to her before. Even with Ryan, when she’d convinced herself she’d been in love, she’d still been reluctant to open up. It had been a persistent point of contention between them. He was always accusing her of being too closed off and uncommunicative.
But with Adam, she felt the strangest urge to confess all her hopes and fears and sins—all the secret insecurities she usually worked so hard to cover up.
It was crazy. The exact opposite of sensible. It went against all her instincts for self-preservation.
She’d thrown caution to the wind and let him make a space for himself in her heart, when he was probably the last person on earth she should lower her drawbridge for.
