Rascal (Rascals Book 1)(53)

Alex hesitated. Just a beat, but it told me everything I needed to know.

“You’re just as bad as the rest of them,” I swore. “You’ll do anything to get ahead, even sell your soul to my father for a shot at that job.”

Tears were running down Alex’s face, but her expression changed.

“Sell myself . . .” she repeated, her voice turning icy. “Are you calling me a whore?”

There was silence. I’d spoken without thinking, in the heat of the moment, but now I knew I had fucked up. I needed to apologize. But before I could say anything, Alex turned and walked away.





22





Alex





I didn’t go home that night. I couldn’t. Instead, I grabbed a cab and called Kelsey. The last thing I wanted right now was to go back to my apartment and have to walk by Rascals. I couldn’t face the bar—or the memory of how unbelievably happy I had been only a few hours before, and how quickly it had all come tumbling down around me.

Kelsey opened her arms and her home to me, letting me stay on her couch while I cried myself to sleep. She even went back to my studio for me and got me clothes for the week so I wouldn’t have to risk seeing Emerson.

He didn’t call. All week, I waited and hoped for some sort of apology from him, some sort of acknowledgement that things had gone off the rails. For some hope that they could be fixed. But by Friday morning, I had come to accept that it was over.

I had taken a risk and gotten my heart broken in the process.

I had breakfast with Kelsey, and she dropped another bit of tough love on me.

“You can’t stay here much longer,” she told me, looking around her apartment, which was almost as small as mine. “I love you, but it’s way too crowded for the two of us. And you do have your own spot.”

“I know.” Tears welled up in my eyes again. It felt as if I had spent the past week crying nonstop. It was exhausting and embarrassing. I quickly swiped them away. “You’ve been very generous to let me stay this long.”

My best friend gave me a sympathetic look.

“You’ll get through this,” she promised.

I desperately wished that I could believe her.

“Maybe you should talk to him,” she suggested. It wasn’t the first time she had done so.

I shook my head. “He needs to apologize. You didn’t hear what he said.”

“You know how guys are. They say dumb stuff all the time.” Kelsey tried to make excuses, but I wasn’t interested in them.

“I told him that I loved him, and he pretty much called me a whore,” I reminded her. “That’s not just dumb stuff that guys say. That’s what you say to someone you don’t care about.”

The venom in his voice had surprised me just as much as what he had said. And the truth was that if Emerson had called, if he had apologized, I would have forgiven him. Because I still loved him. I hated that I did, but that was the truth.

But he hadn’t called. So it was time to start getting over him.



“This is the perfect thing for you right now,” Jenna told me as we headed to yoga.

I had moved back to my apartment, now taking a longer route around the opposite end of the block just to avoid going past Rascals, though I had a harder time ignoring the noise and laughter that floated up to my room every night. I was driving myself crazy, imagining that every masculine voice was Emerson’s and every feminine one was one of the many girls he was now sleeping with.

I wanted to spend the weekend holed up in my studio, in my pajamas, watching the scariest horror films I could find—anything to get my mind off of Emerson—but Jenna had insisted that I join her for a very special yoga class.

“I don’t know if I’m up for it,” I argued, but she had been unwilling to take no for an answer.

Which is why I was at something called “restorative yoga” at six p.m. on a Sunday night. I could see exactly why Jenna thought it would help. And maybe if I wasn’t such a fucking mess, it would have, but at the moment, all I could do was lie on my mat, the instructor’s voice droning on and on, while I thought about Emerson and what he was doing.

Were the guys doing another one of their poker nights tonight? Was he telling them what a terrible person I was? How I had sold him out to his father? I kept bouncing between feelings of utter heartbreak and feelings of betrayal.

Did Emerson really think so little of me that he believed I would side with his father over him? I just wished he had confided in me about his family history sooner. If he had been upfront with me about his father, then I would never have given Henry the benefit of the doubt. Maybe none of this would have happened. I would have known to be more cautious around the Hayeses, would have known not to trust the seemingly innocent offer of help.

But a little voice reminded me Emerson had warned me that his father didn’t do things without expecting something in return. I just didn’t take it seriously.

But it didn’t matter anymore. Emerson and I were over. I would just have to find a way to get over it. And I was pretty sure that restorative yoga wasn’t going to be the thing that did it.



My one saving grace was work. As always, when my personal life was a mess, I had been able to throw myself into my work, and that’s what I did now. It was the only thing that was keeping me sane, and luckily the firm had more than enough for me to do. I was working longer hours—spending as much time as I could at the office and avoiding my own apartment. There were too many sad memories there. If I could have slept at my desk, I would have.