The memory of Holly and what happened in this office last time I was in here haunts me. If I had known it would be the one and only time that I would fuck her, would I have done it any differently? I could pretend that I would woo her and take her back to my place, gently ravishing her on my bed, but it would be a lie. Holly drives me crazy, and our time here in the office was fucking perfect. If she wanted someone to whisper sweet nothings into her ear, then she wouldn’t be attracted to me.
Holly and I have been on one date, and now it’s all over and I feel utterly destroyed. It goes far deeper than just sex, but once we crossed that line, it changed something, and I can’t let it go. Everyone at the club has noticed me pull into myself, keeping quiet and only asking me to step in if the staff really can’t handle something. The club has always been my haven, a safe place. That’s changed. I don’t want to be here anymore, not when myheart is back in Hinton Grove with the girl I can’t keep my mind off.
Come on, Clay, pull yourself together. Steeling myself, I take a deep breath and force myself to step into the office. With slow, purposeful steps, I walk over to the desk. I should sit down, take back some control and get back to managing the club, yet I feel frozen in place. This office has been somewhere I have proudly worked for years, but after one encounter with Holly, that has all been wiped away. Staring down at the chair, all I can think of is how it felt to sit there while Holly sucked me off. I had watched her every movement and realised that I was in love with this girl. Eyes flicking to the desk, I remember the sounds she made when I was fucking her from behind, her pert ass up as she bent forward.
A knock sounds at the door, the memory dissolving before my eyes. Biting back my irritation at being interrupted, I slowly look up and see Bear in the doorway. Although he’s one of the last people I want to see right now, it’s not for the reason most might think. I’m not angry at him, but ashamed. My behaviour isn’t right, especially towards my brother. I know that, yet I can’t seem to curtail it. If I was a good person, I’d let Bear and Holly have a relationship and not get in the way.
I’m not a good person.
Bear watches me closely, not stepping into my space, simply leaning against the doorframe. There’s no anger in his expression, just cautious concern. Taking a deep breath, he clears his throat. “Roxanne called me.”
Roxanne is my assistant manager and the closest thing I have to a best friend beyond Bear and Elliot. Displeasure rumbles deep in my chest and I move away from the desk, turning towards a filing cabinet, yanking open the drawer. I don’t need anything from it; I just can’t look at Bear and his tentative expression any longer. “Roxanne is a nosy gossip monger.”
“She was concerned about you.” His voice gets louder and I know he’s stepped into the office. “We all are.”
Control yourself, Clay. Keep your emotions contained.Gripping onto the drawer so tightly the metal groans under the force, I silently repeat the mantra over and over in my mind.
I’m barely holding myself together. Today is the first time I’ve been able to step into my office for fuck’s sake, unable to think about anything other than myself. Yet Bear is here, checking in on me, the one who caused this situation in the first place. He’s in pain – we can all see it despite how hard he’s trying to hide it. Every day since Holly walked away, he’s been working at the gym, throwing himself into building something great despite the choking cloud of tension that hovers over the three of us. The town square is now tarnished with the memory of what happened, and the only way I’ve been able to step foot into it is when I’m wasted, a state I’ve spent most of this week in.
“How do you do it?”
I don’t even recognise my own voice, the rasp making it sound as though I’ve been screaming into the void. Keeping my back to him, I continue to pretend to move papers around in the cabinet, but really I’m trying to keep my emotions under check. That, and I know that if I were to see Bear’s face right now, it might break me.
“How do I do what?” The hesitation in his question makes me feel like a jerk. He’s expecting me to throw accusations at him, and if he’d have come earlier in the week then I probably would have. However, I’ve had a lot of time to process what happened and actually listen to what my heart wants.
“Carry on as though nothing has changed?” I laugh but there’s no humour there, instead it’s filled with self-degradation. He’s able to carry on, to survive, yet I can’t pull my damn self out of the darkness in my soul to actually do anything about it. Slamming the drawer shut, I turn to face him, hopelessnessdraining all of my anger away. “Every day without her feels like a part of me dies. It’s been a week, but it feels like an eternity has passed.” Leaning against the cabinet, I run a hand through my hair, shaking my head, frustrated at my lack of eloquence. “I can’t explain it to you. When I’m with her, I feel alive, like after holding my breath for so long, my head is finally above the water. Everyone will just write it off as me being a possessive asshole like I was with Emily, but this is different, and right now I feel like I’m drowning.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about my ex in this last week. Not because I miss her, hell no, I’m glad to be out of that toxic relationship. Holly is about as opposite as you can get from the last woman who destroyed my heart. It took me a long time to get over her, because I was in so deeply and the damage done was so severe. Now, I realise that what we had wasn’t really love, it was an infatuation, a fever dream, a delusion that was harming us both. I’ve walled myself off from feeling anything like that again, until I met Holly. After everything, saying that I love her after such a short space of time probably makes me an idiot, but now I’ve felt it what love should feel like and I can’t let it go.
A pregnant pause hangs between us, my statement weighing heavily, but Bear doesn’t jump in, knowing that I have more to say and just need the space to put it into words. I’m grateful for this, and I take a deep breath to try again.
“With Emily, I was obsessed, but it was like a drug I depended on, making me sick at the same time that I was riding the high. The relationship was toxic and we made each other worse. We never should have been together.” This is the most I’ve ever admitted aloud about what happened with my ex. It was always too painful to think about before, but now I can see it for what it truly was.
“What happened with Emily in the end?” Bear asks. His eyes are full of curiosity, but I know he’ll let it drop if I didn’t wantto speak about it. “I know she left, but we never knew why. You were too upset and we didn’t want to make it worse by asking questions.”
Too upset. I want to snort at the understatement; I was a fucking wreck after that break-up. Blowing out a long breath, I wait for the onslaught of emotions that usually comes when thinking of Emily, but I find only a dull echo of pain.
“She had been fucking a friend of hers, but made me believe that it was my fault, and I believed her. I wasn’t paying her enough attention. If I wasn’t such a dick, she wouldn’t need to fuck someone else. So, I tried to change for her, gave her whatever she wanted, went into debt. She manipulated me. In the end, I had enough and told her I wouldn’t allow her to see that friend anymore. It was me, or him.” Smiling sardonically, I shrug my shoulders like none of this means anything to me. “She chose him.”
Bear’s expression is pained and it makes me uncomfortable, so I shrug in an attempt to brush it off. Talking about feelings has never been easy for me. I know now, though, that Emily leaving was the best thing she could have done, otherwise I would still be stuck in that relationship, getting deeper and deeper into debt.
“Clay, why didn’t you say anything?” Bear’s frowning at me, shifting his weight from foot to foot like he’s trying to hold himself back. He’s angry, not necessarily at me for keeping this a secret, but because he wasn’t able to do anything to help. This isn’t just about the debt, which I have since paid off, but about helping me through the emotional fallout. I know myself, though, and I wouldn’t have let that happen. I’m too stubborn for my own good.
“I was just as guilty of destroying that relationship, Bear. You couldn’t have done anything.”
Speaking about the past isn’t going to change anything, only stir up old feelings. I don’t want to think of those times, but a new future. I won’t accept that things with Holly are over before they’ve even properly begun. I need to convince her that we are supposed to be together, even if that means some things will have to change.
“The way I feel about Holly, is different. I’m obsessed, but not addicted like I was with Emily. She’s my oxygen, filling my lungs and giving me life. Without her I feel deflated, breathless, as though my chest is bound and it’s stopping me from breathing deeply.”
I completely lose myself in my emotions, surrounding myself with the memory of what it felt like to spend a moment in her presence. Forgetting that I’m standing in my office with Bear, I imagine her face and how she gets dimples when she smiles. How my heart seems to beat in time with hers and how, when she’s not around, everything is shrouded in darkness. She’s turned me into someone who daydreams, becoming fully absorbed, where I will take even a dream of her to sustain me through the day. Fucking pathetic. Yet at the same time, I cherish those moments as they are all that’s getting me through the day right now.
I become aware of the lack of noise, the silence strangely loud, and I’m pulled from my thoughts. Bear could have been talking, but I didn’t hear a thing. Guilt makes me wince. I’m so self-absorbed in my own pain that it’s stopping me from putting my brother first.
“Should I step back?” he asks, watching me intently, his expression uncharacteristically serious.
Frowning, I cross my arms over my chest to try to shake the uncomfortable feeling that’s settled over me. “What do you mean?”
“If she means that much to you… The right thing for me to do would be to let the two of you get together.” He seems resigned, like the decision has already been made. As the oldest of us, Bear has always carried a heavy sense of responsibility on his shoulders, ever since we were kids. However, just because he would step back for me doesn’t diminish the strength of his feelings. From what I’ve seen in him, I suspect that he feels the same way about Holly that I do.