“Get off me,” I demanded. Despite my extreme inebriation and total lack of coordination I successfully pushed her off me. “What the fuck are you doing? You’re about to get married.”
“Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you, Caleb. I have been for years. And Roger asking me to marry him made me realize I needed to either face up to it or move on.” She slid back onto me and wrapped her slender arms around my neck. “But I can’t move on from you, Caleb. Can’t you see that? I’m so in love with you it hurts. But you’ve never paid me any attention. Why do you think I send you all that stuff?”
My head swirled. I was either going to puke or pass out.
Wait. What?
“What stuff?” I asked, confused.
“It’s me,” she breathed against my lips. “I’m your secret admirer.”
I heard her words, but they didn’t make sense. She was my stalker? The owner of the worn panties and Polaroid? She was the psycho who sent a box of decapitated doll heads to my home?
I went to protest but she mashed her red lips to mine and moaned as her tongue swept into my mouth. Shifting on my lap, she started grinding against me again.
“It’s not your baby,” she whispered into my ear. “But I will give you one.”
Even in the murkiness of too much liquor, her words stung. They reminded me of just how fucking pitiful I was because my heart ached like I was in a fucking country music song.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, confused as fuck by everything unfolding.
“I heard you on the phone to her before I left.” She moaned as she rubbed herself harder against my zipper. “She doesn’t want you now that she knows it’s not your baby.”
“We don’t know that—”
“Shhhhhhh,” she breathed against my lips. “Let me take care of you. I promise I will be real good to you. I will give you everything.”
Honey had given me everything.
And then she’d taken it from me.
Now she wanted me to move on.
But I didn’t want that.
“I said get off me,” I said sharply.
But Pandora didn’t listen. It wasn’t until she heard the voice from the doorway that she stopped.
“You heard him,” it said. “He said get the fuck off him.”
We both turned and looked, and there was Honey standing in the doorway.
HONEY
I stood in the darkness of the studio. I’d taken a chance that this was where he’d go after leaving our apartment and I was right. When I walked in, I overheard Pandora confessing her love to him. Heard her admit to being his secret admirer. Heard what she said about me. Heard what she was offering him.
I’d heard about enough.
I made my way to Caleb’s office and pushed open the door.
Seeing Pandora straddling him made me crazy.
When I told her to get the fuck off him, both of them turned to look in my direction. At first, Pandora didn’t move, but then she slowly slid off Caleb’s lap. Standing up straight, she pushed her hem down and adjusted it.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said to Caleb as she walked away from him. When she reached me she paused. “Do him a favor and let him fucking loose. Let him be with someone who actually wants him.”
Anger ripped out of me. “Stay the fuck out of my business.”
She went to move away but stopped. Her eyes flashed across at me. “It’s not even his baby.”
I gritted my teeth. “Get. Out.”
She scoffed at me while I murdered her a thousand times over with my eyes.
With a huff, she left and I went to Caleb and knelt in front of him. He was almost passed out.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting into trouble,” I joked, trying to help him to his feet. But being drunk, he was a dead weight and we fumbled.
“I don’t want her,” he mumbled.
“I know.”
“I want you.”
I ignored his comment. Because I wasn’t here to go over the same argument with him. I was here to bring him his St. Christopher.
Well, that’s what I told myself anyway.
Truth was, it was the self-sabotaging part of me that I wanted to see him. You know, the crazy part that just couldn’t let him go without seeing him one last time because somehow it was going to make things easier than if she didn’t.
She was quite demanding. She also wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid while he was drunk.
Like Tiffani.
She also knew she had no right to be there. But now that she was, she couldn’t leave him like this.
“Come on, you should lie down,” I said, guiding him to his feet and leading him over to the couch in the corner of the room. The plan was to get him into the recovery position so he could sleep off his intoxication safely. But as we neared the couch, Caleb became all feet and we stumbled onto the couch. I landed softly onto the cushions, but he fell hard onto his knees in front of me.