Page 18 of House of Scarlett
With a quick glance, I skim over some of the comments.
Thank you for keeping it real.
You’re gorgeous even when you feel like crap.
Hope you’re okay!
Get well soon!
I drop the phone on my desk and grind the heels of my palms into my eyes. A person should go blind for how much time I’ve spent staring at my phone like an asshole the last couple of weeks. It seems like every other damn minute, I’m tapping in my password to open that stupid app to see if she’s posted a new picture. Every time she does, I get a ridiculous thrill that I’m too old to admit to. But it happens all the same.
Last week, she posted a photo of her and her friends, and it almost brought me to my knees. They had to have snapped it before they came to the club that last night. Scarlett in her white dress, looking like a frigging angel who stepped out of the heavens for a moment to mingle with the mortals.
Mingle? You mean get manhandled and fucked before you tossed her ass out?
The guilt and shame from that night have been riding me so hard, I can barely get anything done. My brain doesn’t work right anymore. It’s always full of thoughts of her. How she’s doing. Where she’s going. Who she’s with. If she’s safe.
If she could see inside my brain, she’d slap me with a restraining order.
Even knowing that not a single bit of it is my business after I told her to leave, I can’t stop wondering and worrying.
“Hey, boss. You got a minute?”
When Zoe’s voice comes from the doorway, I flip my phone over on my desk like she just caught me watching porn.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
Zoe’s gaze flicks to the phone before landing on my face. “You text her yet? Call her?”
“Who?” It makes me a bigger idiot to even ask the question, but I have an image to uphold.
She walks forward and helps herself to a chair in front of my desk. “How long are you going to torture yourself?”
When I don’t reply, she keeps going.
“Don’t forget, I’ve known you just as long as my brother. Just because I don’t have a dick doesn’t mean I don’t understand what the fuck you’re doing.”
She pauses, as if waiting for me to add something, but I’ve got nothing, so I stay silent.
“I’m willing to put money on the fact that you not only want Scarlett Priest, but you had her, fucked it up, and now you’ve been stomping around ever since like a lion with a thorn in its paw. Anytime someone tries to talk to you, you swipe at them.”
“I’m not that bad.”
Zoe snorts and covers her face with her hand. “Right. Not that bad. Lie to me again, Gabe. I know you. We all know you. You have to do something about this because yourpretend-she-doesn’t-existstrategy isn’t working for you or anyone else.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t know shit, Zoe.”
She lifts her chin and crosses her arms. “I don’t know shit? Yeah, right. Because you’re not moping around like a kid who lost his favorite toy and is taking it out on everyone else.”
“She’s not a fucking toy,” I grit out.
“You’re right. She’s not. She’s a grown-ass woman, and that means she can make her own decisions. If she decided she wanted you and then you pushed her away, whose fault is that?”
My fingers curl into claws around the arms of my chair. “You know what happened to Jorie.”
“She’s dead, Gabe. And you didn’t kill her.”
I bolt upright. “No, but I fucking got her killed. Do you know what it’s like to live with that on your conscience? Knowing that you can’t go after the man who ordered it because you’re still waiting for the right moment? How can I bring Scarlett into my life knowing that as soon as I have enough money and power, I’m going after Moses to kill him the same fucking way his crew took out Jorie? With a bullet between the eyes. How the fuck do I start a relationship with a woman who has lived in such a sanitized world that she’s probably never even touched a gun herself? She doesn’t know violence. Why should I be the one to bring that shit into her life?”
