Final Call (The Call #2)

FINAL CALL

Book Two of the Call series

Copyright 2014 Emma Hart

Editing:

Mickey Reed

www.mickeyreedediting.com

Photography Copyright:

Conrado

www.shutterstock.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of
the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for
review purposes only.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition

FINAL CALL, book two of the Call series.

Sometimes you will
never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

Dr. Seuss

Chapter
One

You know life has taken
a shit turn when your underwear doesn’t match.

And the quality of that
underwear is a guide to measure the shitness on.

Me? I’m pretty sure I
have a hole on the waistband of these boy shorts, so, yeah. My life
is at Epically Fucked with a heavy dose of Heartbreak Hell on the
life quality guide.

But what can you
do?

Tuck your change from
the cashier into the pocket of your sweatpants and grab your ice
cream—that’s what.

I get into my car, my
ice cream snug on the passenger’s seat, and pull away from the
store. Tonight is my final night of the allotted seven-day mourning
period after the breakdown of a relationship, so basically, it’s my
last chance to be a miserable bitch in public. Okay, so I added a
couple of days onto the mourning period, but whatever. I plan to
milk it for everything it’s worth—ice cream, wine, and my best
friend.

It doesn’t matter that
I never wanted the relationship in the first place. It doesn’t
matter that it was only a handful of days that the relationship had
felt truly real to me—like it was something I could hold on to and
something I could really change my life for. What matters is that
it
was
real and it happened.

It doesn’t matter that
a small part of me wishes it hadn’t. That I was stronger.

I press the button on
the keys to open the garage and drive in. The door shuts behind me
with a whir, and I rest my head on the steering wheel. I wish I
didn’t still feel it—that keen sting of betrayal reminding me of
what he kept from me.

Since I stepped foot on
the plane—
his
plane—I’ve wondered if I have been
overreacting. More so since I touched back down in Seattle. Should
I have stayed the night? Talked to him? Listened to the full story?
The same one he couldn’t get out because of my angry hysteria?

The part that loves him
says yes. It says that he deserved that—to tell me what happened.
To tell me why he didn’t say anything.

The part that is still
ruled by common sense says that I was absolutely right to walk away
from the secretive bastard.

I dump the ice cream in
the freezer, barely glancing at my aunt’s state-of-the-art kitchen,
and find her in the front room.

“More ice cream?” She
looks at me over the top of her book. I peer at the title. It’s a
romance.
Figures.

“Yep. I’ll just kill
myself in the gym tomorrow to make up for a few days of bumming
around.”

She shakes her head,
her dark hair swishing over her shoulders. “Honestly, Dayton. I
don’t understand all this nonsense. You knew the risks when you
took the job.”

“When I was forced to
take the job.”

“Oh, come on, honey.
You know as well as I do that Mon can push and push, but she won’t
make you take a job you’re truly not comfortable with. You knew
exactly what you were getting into.”

I raise an eyebrow at
her placid expression. “So it’s my fault he hid his wife from
me?”

Aunt Leigh opens her
mouth, pauses, then closes it with another shake of her head.

“Exactly. Did I know I
could fall in love again? Yes. I knew that. Did I think he would
hurt me this way? Keep something so important from me? No. Never in
a million years did I think the man I knew would keep secrets like
that.”

Her dark eyes regard
me, never changing, and she rests the book in her lap. “Well, maybe
the man you knew isn’t the man he is today.”

I swallow and look out
the window. Isn’t she right? Every day I was finding a little
something about Aaron that had changed despite all the things that
were so familiar to me. Every day I realized that he was different
from the person I fell in love with the first time around.

“Yeah.” My gaze finds
my aunt’s again. “I think that was the problem. Maybe I was in love
with a memory.”

***

“I can’t believe he’s
married.”

“Mm.”

“I mean, he has a
wife.
”

“Yep.”

“Married. A fucking
wife.” Liv shakes her head.

I slam my spoon on the
coffee table. “Say it again. Go on. I don’t think it quite cut deep
enough the first ten times.”

Her eyes soften when
they find mine, and I jab my spoon into the ice cream tub.

“I’m sorry, babe. I
just can’t believe it.”

“Yeah, well, take a
number and join the line.” I look flatly at the laden spoon and
drop it into the tub. Nothing like the reminder of your broken
heart to sour the taste of your comfort food.

“I can’t believe
Monique didn’t tell you.” Liv runs her thumb over her lips. “You’d
think she would because of your past.”

“Monique has her own
reasons for doing things,” Aunt Leigh butts in, entering the room.
“And my niece is the only person to ever question them.”

I fix my aunt with a
hard stare. She’s definitely not one for comfort. Nope. I told her
what happened, and she asked me when I was going back to work.

Welcome to the
glamorous world of an escort.

“That’s because her
reasons are bullshit. Client confidentiality?” I laugh bitterly.
“She can shove that.”

“Dayton.”

“No. I have every
right—
every…fucking…right
—to be pissed off with her, Aunt
Leigh. She deliberately withheld an important bit of information
from me. For what? Money? That money means shit when it’s at the
expense of me.”

She sighs and picks up
her book, tucking it under her arm. “Why don’t you try talking to
her instead of ignoring her?”

“How do you know I’m
ignoring her?”

“She called me an hour
ago. Despite your current emotional upheaval, she’s still your
agent and you still have a job to do.”

See? Apparently balding
men’s need for sex is more vital than me soothing my broken heart.
Oh, sorry.
Emotional upheaval.
Like my fucking cat just died
or something.

I stare after my aunt
with the expression equivalent of a ‘fuck you’ and jam the spoon in
my mouth. What do you know? I got my appetite back.

Liv pours two glasses
of wine and hands me one when my aunt has left the room again. “So
what are you going to do?”

“I’m going home
tomorrow. Then I’m going to have a hot bath and call Monique, I
guess.”

“Really?”

“No. I’ll probably have
a hot bath and curl up in front of some trashy TV show. There’s
plenty of them to choose from.” I lick the spoon clean. “Then I’m
going to call Monique and go back to work.”

My best friend raises
her eyebrows with a shake of her head.

“What?”

“How can you do that?
Leave the guy you’re in love with and think about sleeping with
other guys?”

“I’m kidding myself
that maybe there’ll be a hot hunk of a guy waiting for me this
weekend and he’ll fuck all the heartbreak out of me.”

Liv stares at me
blankly.

“Kidding. I’m kidding.
Geez.”

“I wondered there for a
minute.” She taps a long fingernail against her mouth. “Do you have
to go back to work? You have savings, right?”

“I’m not retiring at
twenty-four because of a fucking guy, Liv. I’m going to have one
hell of a good cry tonight, let it all out. Then, tomorrow, I’ll
get my shit together. If I sit at home every day, I’ll spend my
life wondering if I made the right decision or not.”

“You did. Make the
right decision.”

“Thank you. So I have
to get on with it. I can’t spend forever on the past.”

“You’re missing one
huge point though.”

“How am I? It’s over.
He’ll go back to New York and his cushy little rich-guy life,
finalize his divorce, take over the company, and find a second wife
that isn’t me.”

I think it before she
says it.

“No. No, Liv. Don’t
even.”

“Or he’ll come looking
for you. He knows where you live, remember?”

Fuck. Fuck.
Fuuuuuuuck.
“He won’t,” I say through shaking hands. “I told
him never to contact me again. He wouldn’t.”

Her lips twitch. “He
paid three times your rate just to keep you in his life. You think
he’s gonna let you walk away now?”

“Shut up.”

“Get back to it, Day.
You can try and live your life like you never happened, but you’re
gonna be fighting him the whole way for it.”

“You’re a really shitty
best friend, you know that, right?”

“Just keeping it real.”
She grins and grabs her jacket. “Besides, you’d kick my ass if he
does exactly that and I
didn’t
warn you.”

True that. Oh, how well
she knows me.

I hug her before she
goes. “Thanks for coming over tonight.”

“It’s my job. By the
way, you need that bath.”

“Bitch.” I shut the
door behind her. She isn’t exactly wrong.

Heartbreak does funky
things to you.

Her words in mind, I
jump under the shower before climbing into bed and snuggling under
the covers. I cocoon myself between the thick sheets, my legs still
wet from my lazy towel drying, and my mind runs rampant.

It’s the same thing
it’s done every night since I left. This time though, it’s not
going over every word of our conversation. It replays the final
night in Paris like I’m watching it in HD and slow motion, but
there are no words. No sounds. Only feelings and emotions and the
truth of them.

Without reminding
myself of the words that shattered the possibility of a future we’d
never set in stone, I see more. Everything. I see the raw pain in
his eyes when he realizes I’m going. I see the shake of his hands
that lingers all night and only intensifies when he finds me
packing my suitcase. I see the brutal agony and guilt swamping him,
and I see the defeat that beats against his usually determined and
assured stance.

And I hear through the
silence. I hear the begging through the desperate way his mouth
forms his words. I hear the anguish every time his lips say my
name. I hear his realization that his secret did the very thing he
was trying to avoid—that it was all for nothing.

But mostly, I feel. I
feel the shattering pain all over again, this time combined with
his. I feel his desperation to keep me there and my need to go. I
feel him reach for me at the same time I step away, and I feel the
heaviness that settles when I walk through the door. Away from him.
Again.

I feel the crushing of
my hopes, the helplessness of my heart, the rapidly increasing flow
of my tears. And I realize that I’m not remembering anymore. The
tears cascading down my cheeks are real, so very real, and so is
the hollow ache in my chest. The twisting of my stomach with
bitterness is the same as it was then, and the hopeless feeling
penetrating my bones hasn’t eased a bit.

I miss him. Despite the
pain, I miss him as much as I hate him, and I hate him as much as I
love him. I miss his body next to mine at night. His breath on my
neck. His arms around me. His legs and feet tangled in mine. I miss
the gentle way he’d whisper my name to wake me up and the look he
had reserved just for me and the notes I never knew he was leaving.
Everything. Every. Fucking. Thing.

I shouldn’t. I
shouldn’t miss him at all. But I do.

I miss him the way I
love him.

Entirely.

Chapter
Two

Home smells like home.
That scent that always lingers no matter what, the same one that
comforts you.

I leave my suitcases
strewn in the hallway and collapse onto my bed upstairs. It’s soft
and familiar. More comforting than the warm, fruity smell of home.
I reach into the drawer of the nightstand and pull out some
matches. Lighting one, I lower the flame to the wick of my bright
pink Yankee candle, letting the strong Dragon Fruit scent assault
my senses almost immediately.

Goddamn, I love these
candles.

I close my eyes for a
long moment. Now I need to get changed. As much as I don’t want to,
these sweatpants aren’t going to cut it much longer. They’re two
days old, after all.