I shook my head, staring at the ground. I needed a reprieve from the havoc that pleading look on his face was doing to me.
“Please, baby, just five minutes of your time.”
Immediately, I looked up, glaring at him. “Do not call me that.”
He lifted both hands in the air. “I’m sorry, Benny.”
I cringed. He knew what he was doing, the clever bastard, and that wasn’t much better.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Me fucking too. I’m sorry about a lot of things.”
His face looked pained, but he quickly pushed the emotion down, forcing a soft smile onto his handsome lips instead. “Just fifteen minutes and then you’re free to go. I promise.”
“Promise?” I scoffed. “I’ve heard your promises. They’re about as empty as my pathetic heart.”
He couldn’t hide that pain, couldn’t push it down like he had before. His eyes creased at the corners, his lips mashed in a tight line. My chest ached as I watched him inhale a shaky breath.
I knew I wasn’t being nice and I should have stopped, but I couldn’t help myself. Awful words just kept flowing past my lips. Deep down, I wanted to throw knives his way until one of them stuck, cutting him as deep as he cut me.
“I know you’re mad and you have every right to be.” His voice was calm and composed and it only pissed me off more.
“I don’t understand what this is going to help,” I spat. “There is nothing you can show me that will change my mind, that will make me trust you again.”
He ignored the tight lines of my body language—back stiff, fists clenched at my sides—and guided me to a chair. He gripped my shoulders, urging me to sit down. “Just a few more minutes of your time, Georgia. That’s all I’m asking.”
I sat, but I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to be anywhere else but in that room with him. The simple touch of his fingers on my shoulders, his voice, soft and caressing near my ear, and those blue eyes, fucking slaying me with their pleading intensity—it was too much.
My heart was a rubber band and Kline was pulling too hard. Another glance into his saddened gaze, another tug on my emotions, and it would snap. I would end up doing something I regretted. And I’d be left with nothing.
Screw that. I wasn’t going to be convinced. There was no amount of begging and pleading and lines of bullshit that would get me to change my mind. I’d stay strong. I’d watch whatever he wanted me to watch, and then I would leave. We’d both have closure that way.
Once this was over, I was going to be out of that door faster than I’d barged in.
He fiddled with his laptop until the projection screen came to life. I huffed.
Did he really have to make it this dramatic? I could have just watched it, whatever it was, on my laptop—even my phone.
He stood behind me, hands on my shoulders again, and lips near my ear. “I’ve only lied to you twice. The first time was when I didn’t tell you I knew you were Rose.”
My head jerked to look at him in surprise and disbelief, a nasty rebuttal on the tip of my tongue, but on the way around, my eyes caught on the video playing on the screen.
Security footage.
It took a minute to recognize the location, but it was Brooks Media’s Human Resources. Cynthia’s office, to be exact. My brows rose when a crazy person dressed in muddy clothes burst through her doors. He scanned the room until he found what he was searching for. In three quick strides, he was at her filing cabinet, yanking open the drawer and fingers sliding through the files.
The messy hair. The taut, tight muscles of his back, stretching and flexing. And that ass covered in shorts. I knew that body.
My breath caught in my lungs when the camera zoomed in, moving past his face quickly, but not too quick that I didn’t recognize the jawline, especially the way it looked before he shaved, covered deliciously with two days’ worth of growth.
It was Kline.
My mind tripped into realization that he was filthy and sweaty because he had come from rugby practice. Which also explained why no one else was in the office.
But why was he rummaging through Cynthia’s files?
More importantly, why did I need to see this?
I caught sight of the timestamp in the corner. I counted the days in my head. It was a few days after our second date, where he had convinced me to go skinny-dipping at ONE UN. It was nearly eight-thirty in the evening and he was going through one of his employee’s offices like a lunatic.
The camera zoomed closer, showing the file in his hands. I couldn’t read the label on the edge quick enough before Kline was opening it, his finger tracing down the list of employees names.
The camera zoomed in again, blurry for a second before giving me a clear view. I watched his finger pause on one name.