Heartless: Episode #3 (5 page)

“I appreciate the apology. Thank you.” I smiled, and for the first time when it came to Ben, it felt genuine.

9.

ELIZABETH

Barbara met me in the hallway, and I glanced down at my still silenced phone. Another text message from Daniel had appeared during lunch with Ben, but I hadn’t read it until now.

You’re not ignoring me again, are you? You know how well that worked the first time. Call me when you get a chance. I’m not desperate, I swear. Okay, maybe i’m a little desperate.

Knowing that Daniel tended to do rash things, like show up at my office unannounced, I decided it would be in my best interest to send him a quick text message, so he wouldn’t do something crazy, like come down here. The last thing I needed today was for Daniel to be here once this screwed up workday ended. I mentally noted how differently I had felt about him mere hours ago.

I’m slammed with meetings all day. Won’t be out of here before seven. Call you then.

As I turned off my screen, Barbara whispered, “Kate called again. She says it’s important that she speak with you sometime today. To be honest, she sounds fucking nuts.”

I sucked in a breath as we entered my office. “What the hell? If she calls again, just tell her I’m in a meeting until six, and I’ll call her after.”

She nodded. “I will. How was lunch with Ben?”

“Idiotic and overdramatic.” I gave her a quick glance before grabbing a folder from my desk.

“Bob wants to take the Vancouver call in his office,” she directed.

I nodded. “Sounds good. See you in about an hour.”

****

The call with Vancouver had gone well, and I’d forced myself to remain focused by taking notes I didn’t need. I’d had all the location scouting and stage information already, but I’d needed to concentrate to ensure that my mind wouldn’t drift away to thoughts of Daniel. What had happened this morning could never happen again—ever.

After sending Barbara home for the night, I closed my office door and stared at Kate’s number. I guessed the only way to figure out just what she wanted was to call her and ask, just like I’d done with her brother earlier.

The phone rang three times before Kate answered. “Hello?” She sounded out of breath and barely audible.

“Hey, Kate, it’s Elizabeth.” My tone reeked of confusion and unknowing.

She started crying at the sound of my voice. “Hi, Elizabeth.” Her voice shook. “It’s been a long time.” She sniffed and sucked in a few shaky breaths.

Good Lord, what have I gotten myself into?

“What’s going on, Kate? Are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all.”

I threw my head back and pinched the bridge of my nose. I did not have time for whatever theatrics were about to occur. Bracing myself, I asked the million-dollar question, “Kate, are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do I have to guess?”

“It’s Daniel.” She sobbed into the receiver.

“What about him?”

“You can’t have him, Elizabeth. I love him. I’ve been in love with him for years. Then, he meets you, and he just up and dumps me.” Her voice rattled as her excitement grew. “No warning, no nothing. I hadn’t seen it coming at all. One day, we were together, and the next, he never wanted to see me again.”

Holding my breath, I waited for her thoughts to finish. When I was fairly certain she was done, I almost didn’t know how to respond. On one hand, I felt awful that Kate was hurting, but on the other, I didn’t owe her a damn thing.

“Are you there, Elizabeth? Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. I just don’t know what you expect me to say,” I replied honestly.

She sniffed again. “I don’t know either. I guess I just assumed since we used to be friends that you would care more about my feelings, but that was probably stupid and naive of me.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” I breathed out, not necessarily believing my choice of words.

We had barely been friends. She was the little sister of my then boyfriend, and since we’d lived on campus at our college, it wasn’t like I’d spent that much time with her or even seen her that often. Then again, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t considered her a friend at the time.

“Then, you’ll do it?” she asked, her tone sounding more upbeat than it had just two seconds prior.

“Do what exactly?” I had zero clue as to what she was referring to.

“Stop seeing Daniel. You’ll break up with him?”

“Uh…” I paused, unsure of how to respond.

“You won’t. You don’t care about how I feel. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I haven’t been able to function since he left me,” she wailed.

I squeezed my eyes closed with the sheer force of the drama, wishing this were all a bad dream. I reopened my eyes and blinked, but I wasn’t in my comfortable bed at home. Cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder with Kate’s crying echoing into it, I realized this was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

“Kate, look, I’m really sorry that you’re hurting, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with me.”

“You’re joking, right? This has everything to do with you! Everything!” she screamed.

I wondered how the fuck Daniel had ever put up with this crap—let alone, how I’d gotten somehow involved in it.

“This is something you should be talking to Daniel about, not me.”

“He won’t take my calls. He refuses to speak to me!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Get him to talk to me! Please? Tell him to hear me out. He owes me at least that much. I wasted two years of my life, for Christ’s sake!”

“I’m really not comfortable with that. Like I said, I’m sorry you’re hurting, but this isn’t my problem.” My head started to ache.

“Don’t you have a heart? I know you do. I realize that it’s been a long time, but I know what kind of person you once were. You used to care about other people, Elizabeth and I’m sure you still do. The old you wouldn’t want to see me hurting like this. You’d want to fix it. I refuse to believe that you’ve changed that drastically,” she stopped speaking and I stayed silent, listening to the sound of her breathing before she started up again. “I know my brother hurt you. You didn’t deserve it, but neither do I. I know you can relate to how betrayed I’m feeling.”

The idea of her comparing whatever she’d had with Daniel to my relationship with her brother caused me to bristle in my chair. “You’re right about a lot of things, but I don’t think that your situation with Daniel was anything like my situation with Ben.”

“Maybe not exactly, but I was still invested in what we had, and I love him. I love him, Elizabeth. Can you say the same? Do you love him?”

I shrank back in response to her question, not that she could see it.
Did I love Daniel? No, not yet, but I knew the potential was there.

“Do you love him like I love him?” she asked again.

“That’s not really your business,” I said with little conviction.

“If you don’t love him, if you really don’t love him the way I love him, then please let him go. Please send him back to me. I’m begging you, Elizabeth. I just need to talk to him, so he can see…”

She started sobbing again into the phone, and my heart softened as I heard her genuine pain and longing for a man who would never love her back. Her pain started to weigh heavily on me, and I had to break our connection before I caved.

“I wish you the best, Kate. I truly do. But please don’t call my place of employment for things like this in the future. It isn’t appropriate. You need to take this whole affair up with Daniel and leave me out of it. I do not want to be involved. Good night, and good luck.” I ended the call without giving her a chance to say another word. My head was spinning, my resolve was breaking, and my heart was aching for the girl I used to know.

10.

DANIEL

“Daniel, Elizabeth Lyons is on line one for you.” Serena’s voice came through the speaker on my phone.

“Thank you. I’ll take it. And, Serena? Go home,” I responded before pressing down the button for line one.

“Babe!” My voice came out overly excited and I wanted to smack myself.
This woman turned me into a child.

“I wasn’t sure you’d still be at the office.” She sounded off, and my stomach fell to the floor with the innate knowledge.

“You okay? What’s the matter?”

I waited as she inhaled a single breath. My knees started to bounce under my desk as I feared what was about to spill from her lips—the lips that I had kissed, tasted, and loved just this morning.

“I’ve just had a really long and weird day.” Her tone was riddled with avoidance and distance—two things I wanted least of all from her.

“What else? Something’s on your mind. I can sense it.”

“I just needed to tell you that I have a production deadline, and I’m not going to be available for the next few weeks.”

“What does that mean? I can’t see you for a few weeks? That’s okay, babe. We’ll have lots of phone sex,” I said with a laugh, hoping to lighten the mood.

She didn’t laugh back.

“I just can’t have you coming down here unannounced and stuff while I have this big project on the line, okay? Promise me that you won’t show up here without my permission.” Her voice pleaded and she sounded desperate and nervous.

“Elizabeth,” I all but begged, “what’s really going on?”

I almost booked the plane in those moments where she remained silent. I hated the fact that I couldn’t see her face, or look into her eyes, when I knew something wasn’t right.

“I had a shitty day, okay? I got in trouble during my first meeting. Ben came to see me for lunch, and then Kate wouldn’t stop calling my office.”

“Wait. Slow down.” I almost coughed on my words. “You got in trouble? What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. Tell me about Ben then.” I tried to pull any information from her that she would give me.

“He tried to tell me that he needed closure between us. It was stupid, time-consuming, and ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure he’s over it. I think he just needed to get some stuff off his chest after running into me the other night. It’s no big deal.”

I started fuming at the idea of Ben being able to see her when I wasn’t around. I hated that he could be there when I couldn’t be. It burned me to no end. “He came to the studio?”

“For lunch. It was fine. Thirty minutes was all the time I gave him,” she announced sternly.

I huffed out an irritated breath. “Fine. What’s this shit about Kate? Why was she calling you?”

“Exactly, Daniel.”

“Exactly what?” I asked, slightly confused.

“Why the fuck is your ex-girlfriend, or whatever the hell she is, calling me at my office over and over again?” Her voice was laced with venom, and I couldn’t stand knowing that it was directed at me.

“I have no idea. What did she say?”

A disgusted laugh filtered through the phone line. “She actually asked me to stop seeing you. Said she couldn’t handle you breaking up with her. You won’t talk to her, and she’s desperate to talk to you. I don’t know, Daniel. She was hysterically crying during the whole phone call, talking about how she is so in love with you.”

I pulled at my hair as anger ripped through me. Kate had always been the mellow and laid-back type until I’d told her that it was over. She’d flipped her fucking lid that night, and she hadn’t been the same since. I’d blocked her number from my cell and instructed Serena not to put any calls from her through at the office.

“I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. I had no idea that she would behave like that. What do you want me to do?”

“What do I want you to do? What I want you to do is not have girls who are in love with you call me at my fucking job, Daniel! I don’t need this.”

“I’ll put an end to it.”

“It’s too late. It already happened. I didn’t have to deal with any of this crap until you came along. I can’t have this kind of stuff around me. I can’t. I won’t.” Her voice was firm, and I could sense her mind solidifying its stance.

I’d known I might have to deal with this from her, but I hadn’t thought it would be so soon. A woman like Elizabeth needed baby steps when it came to relationships. Even though we’d talked about it, things between us had been rushed. It was hard to stop something that felt this right.

“Don’t do this, Elizabeth. I know what you’re about to do. Don’t do it.”

“I need you to stay away from me, please. I need you to just leave me alone because I don’t know how to balance whatever this is and my job right now. I’m absolutely overwhelmed with everything I feel for you. I can’t lose focus, and you make me lose focus.”

I could hear it in her voice that it was too late. She’d already decided.

“Please don’t do this. I’m begging you not to do this.”

“It’s done.”

She breathed out a breath as I lost mine.

“We’ll work through finding the balance together. You think all these feelings aren’t new to me? I’ve never felt this way about anyone. You’re all I fucking think about all day long. That’s normal, Elizabeth!” I desperately tried to convince her. “It’s natural to feel like this when you’re crazy about someone.”

“Well, it’s not natural for me. I don’t like it. I feel out of control. I can’t be out of control when it comes to this.”

“Elizabeth,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Just let me go, Daniel. Pretend I never entered your life.”

“I could never do that.” I refused to lie to her. “Could you?”

She sniffed, and I half-wondered if she was crying. It would tear me apart if she was.

“I don’t know, but I have to try.”

“I don’t want this. I want to be perfectly fucking clear that this is not what I want. But if it’s what you need, then I’ll do it. I can’t make you want to be with me.” I admitted defeat, knowing that trying to change a strong woman’s mind was like trying to reason with a drunk person. There would be no reasoning tonight.

“Wanting to be with you isn’t the problem.”

“Then, what is?”

“It’s everything else that comes with it. It’s too much for me. I’m not equipped to deal with all the extra crap. I want you—minus the crap.”

I believed her because I knew, in this moment, that she believed the words herself.

“I wish you felt differently.”
God, how I wished that more than anything else in the world right now.

“I’m sorry. I don’t. I just don’t know how to do this.”

“Good-bye, Elizabeth.” I ended the call, knowing that if I heard her tell me good-bye, I’d fucking lose it. It was one thing for me to say it because I knew I didn’t mean it. But hearing it from her lips, I knew she would have meant it, and that would have absolutely broken me the fuck apart.