Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3)(70)

“I’m going to have to call you back,” he said into the phone and hung up. I heard the squeak of his leather chair as he stood up and walked around his desk, and felt his hand on my hair as combed it with his fingers. I moaned a little. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice soft as he crouched down beside me.

“I think I caught whatever you had.” I sniffled and shivered.

His hand stopped moving. I lifted my head up as he stood. “You should have told me. I would have come to you.”

“Maybe if you would have called,” I said. I closed my eyes momentarily, trying to regain composure. What was it about this guy that made me revert to my teenage self? “Just . . . let’s get this over with so that I can go back to bed.”

He sighed and took a seat beside me instead of going back behind his desk. He was quiet for so long, I accidentally dozed off in my chair. When I woke, it was with a start, blinking rapidly.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Please, just . . . do I need to sign something?”

“I should have called. I’m sorry. I just,” he paused to take a long, deep breath, his eyes looking pained, “just this.” He handed over a paper similar to one we’d gone over in the past. I signed and handed it back, when I did he held my gaze. The seriousness in his eyes made my stomach dip. “Nicole, we need to talk.”

An array of possibilities crossed my mind in a split second, and if I wasn’t already on the verge of crying because of how sick I felt, I would have cried over what he was insinuating. I closed my eyes. Those words were never a good sign. Flashbacks of how this had happened the first time assaulted my thoughts. We can’t do this anymore, he’d said then. If he said that now . . . God. If he said that now I wouldn’t know what to do, what to say, how to react.

“About what?” I whispered.

“This. Us,” he said, his voice firm, though his eyes looked anguished, and I knew he wasn’t thrilled about the talk either.

I swallowed, even though it hurt. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was,” he said, letting out a sigh. He reached over his desk and placed some pictures in front of me. I squinted to look at them, and gasped when I saw the one of me on Gabe’s bed. It was from the drunken night when that girl had interrupted us. Bitch.

“Nothing happened,” I said, looking at Victor. They were taken before we got together, so I didn’t have to explain myself to him, but I still felt the urge to. “I mean, we made out, but I swear nothing else happened.”

He closed his eyes momentarily and breathed out. When he opened them back up he looked as torn as he did before he took a break to think.

“It’s . . . it doesn’t matter. It’s not about that.”

He paused, reaching out and flipping to another picture. The picture was one of him and me on my balcony. Before I signed my lease. The day I signed my lease. My eyes snapped up to meet his. This was the reason for the we need to talk speech. The sinking feeling threatened to return. It was his biggest fear come to life. We’d been caught and now anything said about him, about us, about this case, would come back and haunt him when the time came for his promotion. His promotion. Dammit.

“Can we make it go away?” I asked, my voice a croak.

“I’m working on it. Trust me, I’m working on it. These,” he said, pointing at the ones of Gabe and me, “will never see the light of day.” He pointed at the ones of us. “These, unfortunately, are already circulating. My guy couldn’t stop them. I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

My heart squeezed in my chest.

We’d had our fun.

I kept telling myself that to keep the tears at bay, because despite going through this once before, it felt different this time. It felt personal. It felt . . . wrong. I didn’t feel just a little crushed by this. This felt like a boulder was sitting in my throat, making its way to my heart.

“We can’t see each other anymore,” I whispered, meeting his gaze. “I get it. This was just a fire we needed to put out. And we did that.”

I wiped my nose with the tissue in my hand.

But I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it and I felt the intense urge to cry. I was losing him. I was losing him and there wasn’t anything I could do about it because now there were pictures of us together. Proof of what was happening between us. Things that could rip apart his career and mess up my divorce. I expected to feel something when we ended it. Last time, I’d felt hurt. This was worse.

Annihilated.

I never expected to find a man so soon after Gabe. I hadn’t. I’d set my mind to having fun and working on myself, which I did. But I also hadn’t expected for my life to collide with Victor’s again or to feel so connected to him.

“Nicole, please don’t,” he said, his voice quiet, his eyes pleading. “Don’t belittle this.”

I blinked, trying to stop impending tears. Blinked again when I felt one escape through my lashes. I wiped it quickly.

Don’t belittle this.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, standing from my chair. I took one of the pictures with me and shoved it into my purse. “I know how this goes. I hope you know that even with these pictures, I’ll deny it. You don’t have to worry about me. I would never do anything to jeopardize your job.”