Push Me (To The Edge series, #1) (6 page)

I softly walked across the hardwood floors back to the bedroom, got into bed, and waited.
And waited. And waited. The last time I looked at the clock, it was just after 1 a.m. I’m not sure what time I fell asleep.

When I woke up in the morning,
Ian wasn’t in our bed. He was still in his office, in the same position, but sleeping. Having had my own troubled sleep, I figured Ian had had an even later night, and certainly more stressful from what I’d heard, so I didn’t wake him.

I went through my morning r
outine, getting ready for work. I rushed through my shower, dried my hair, put on my make-up, and dressed in the clothes I’d picked out the night before.

Before I left, I looked in the office and he
was still in the same position—sitting in the chair, slumped over, head resting on his arms on the desk.

Fear struck me. Had something terrible happened? So awful that he would commit suicide?

As quietly as I could, I crept into the office, got about five feet away from him, and finally saw him breathing. He stirred, repositioned his head on his folded arms, and resumed shallow breaths.

I
decided not to wake him, and left.

Chapter Six

Benson dropped me off at the office shortly before eight. He didn’t say anything about Ian not being up yet, and I didn’t raise the topic either.

I was almost in my office when Corrine stopped me.

“Dawn,” she said, coming out of her office. “How’d it go in Atlanta?”

I told her about the store, how great it was looking, and then she told me about her trip to Houston.

Corrine and I had the same job title, but I had been at it a year longer than she had. In fact, when she first started with the company, I trained her, taking her on a few trips. We were friendly at work and sometimes grabbed lunch together, but that was about it as far as social interaction between us.

We didn’t know
many personal details about each other—and she certainly knew nothing of my private romantic life—so most of our discussions revolved around office gossip, which is why she stopped me in the hall that morning.

“Did you hear?” she said in a conspiratorial tone.

“About what?”

“They’re opening up a new Creative Director position.”

My eyes opened wider, but I caught myself before letting my mouth do the same. “Really,” was all I managed to mutter. Thoughts of a major career advancement swirled through my mind.

“
Yeah,” she said. “Stein’s starting the interviews soon. Do you think I’ll get one?”

Frankly,
I didn’t care if she got one. I wanted one. But I tried to be diplomatic about it. “Oh, definitely.”

“God.” A huge smile took over her face. “I’d be perfect for it, don’t you think?”

I nodded, and managed the same false sincerity from a few seconds ago. “Absolutely.”

The rest of my day consisted almost entirely of going over early versions of some graphic requests
that Beth—the Creative Director I worked for—had put in a couple of weeks ago. My job was to weed out the ones I knew she would reject, so that only the possibles and sure things got through for consideration.

A little after three in the afternoon, I was getting nervous that the second batch of proofs I was expecting
wasn’t going to make it. I sent a quick email to the graphic design department, and they got back to me by phone, telling me there would be at least a one-day delay.

Beth was easy to work for if you were competent. But when something went wrong, she could be
, well, let’s just say…quite assertive about it. The graphics people knew this from experience, which is why they preferred to call me.

Beth had risen to her position for a reason, and if I had any hope at all of attaining that level in the company, I’d have to be more like
her. I’d known this for a long time, but now that I was up for a possible promotion, there was no better time to model myself after my mentor.

“We’re pressed for time,” I told the guy from graphics. “This can’t wait. What’s the holdup?”

“We’re short two people today.”

“Look, let’s do this. You get me the final proofs tomorrow, but I need the initial composites today. By five.”

The guy sighed, but said, “I can do that.”

I hung up the
phone, pleased with how I had taken control of a situation I might have let go just last week.

.  .  .  .  .

“I’ve made up my mind. I’m definitely going to tell him tonight.”

Rachel
looked at me, put her fork down, finished chewing her mouthful of salad, put one hand in the air and said, “Hallelujah.”

Her reaction made me laugh, and I was grateful for it. If there was one person in this world who could
always cheer me up, it was Rachel. That’s why, when I got off work, I called her and asked her to meet me for dinner.

“What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is this going to happen? At home, or out somewhere?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to bring it up
out of the blue, or wait until a certain time?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at me for a few seconds, picked up her drink, and deadpanned, “Well, at least you have it all planned out.” She raised her glass. I picked mine up and we toasted to my completely confident resolve and my thorough lack of planning.

We ate in silence for a few moments, then I threw down my napkin, and the words poured out, surprising even me. “You know what would be nice? To find a man who is funny, self-deprecating, easy-going, and dresses like an everyday guy
, not in a five thousand dollar suit every day. Where are the men who think talking is part of romance, and that it’s not all about smoldering whispers and intense glaring and customized airplanes and penthouses with gold-plated doors? Okay, there are plenty of guys without those last couple of things. And what about guys who don’t need to know where you are every moment of the day? You know what I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want to know what it’s like to be around a man who…” My voice lowered and the unfinished thought hung there between us.

“Who what?” she prodded.

I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it was the truth, and if I could speak the truth to anyone, it was Rachel.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and just said it. “A man who isn’t
Ian.”

.  .  .  .  .

There was simply no way I could wait any longer. I was going to do this when he got home. I wasn’t going to talk to him about my concerns, thoughts, feelings, or anything like that. I just needed to end it.

While waiting for
Ian to get home, I ran through it over and over in my mind as I packed the things I would need to bring to Rachel’s. She had offered to let me stay there as long as I needed.

I planned on starting by asking him to hear me out and please let me finish
, something he rarely did. I would tell him everything that bothered me—the emotional distance, mainly the lack of sharing intimate details of his life before we met; the secretive lifestyle; the lack of a social life, all of that.

I fretted over how to approach the issue of our sex life. I no longer needed an explanation of why it was such a struggle for him to allow me to express my own sexual desires. I would simply tell him that
this relationship was something I could no longer be a part of.

The sexual aspect of our relationship was important, but it was nowhere near as critical as the emotional component.

Or maybe I didn’t need to tell him any of those things. No, I had to give him the courtesy of an explanation. He hadn’t shared a thing with me, and I was determined not to be the same way with him.

All the planning changed
, though, when I went into his office. I rarely ventured in there, and there was an unspoken rule that it was his private place. Not anymore.

I don’t know what I was looking for. Nothing in particular, I guess. Maybe some hint at what was troubling him so much that he slept in there, sitting in the chair with his head on the desk. The silly
, curious side of me looked for a drool mark. Nothing.

I sat in his chair, running my hands over
the cool, smooth, expensive glass surface of the desk that probably cost more than a lot of people make in six months.

Without thinking, I reached for the large drawer on the right side of the desk. It was locked, which only made me more curious about what he was keeping in there.

I looked around for a key, knowing all too well that Ian wouldn’t just leave one lying around. But I was wrong. Sort of. It wasn’t exactly lying around, but it wasn’t very hard to find, either. He kept it under a small bust of Winston Churchill on a bookshelf.

I opened the drawer, expecting to find money, or maybe personal or business papers of some kind.

What I found was books. Six of them. Novels. The same ones I had been reading over the last couple of years—all popular erotic romances.

The fact that
Ian had these books wasn’t the shocker, though. What stunned me was the reason he had them locked away. They were heavily bookmarked with Post-it notes, all of them containing keywords. Ian had indexed the novels.

What the fuck?

I opened the first book to one of the marked pages and found that he had highlighted a passage where the alpha male character was talking to the female protagonist during foreplay. I recognized the dialogue. Ian had spoken almost those exact words to me one night just a couple of weeks ago. I had read the book, but hadn’t made the connection when Ian mimicked the dialogue, but now it all came together.

My heart beat faster.

I picked up another novel, flipped to one of the marked pages, and saw another highlighted passage. This one detailed how the female character was put in restraints, something Ian had done many times, and now I knew where he had studied the procedure.

I must have sat there for thirty minutes, going through all the books, randomly selecting the
flagged sections and inevitably matching them up to some part of our relationship.

Ian
was a charade all along. Even the few private details I thought I knew about him weren’t authentic. Who was this guy?

I felt sorry for him. Aside from the
intensely secretive aspects of his personality that bothered me to no end, there was this additional secret—he was imitating the men in those books because he had no true sense of self.

The more I sat there, the more my feelings changed from sympathy for
Ian to anger and disgust.

.  .  .  .  .

I was packing in the bedroom when I heard the front door open. I stepped out into the den. Ian walked toward me wordlessly and didn’t stop until he was standing maybe a foot away, looking down at me as I peered up at him.

I
stood there frozen, not scared and not feeling like I needed to get away from him, just totally perplexed. Who was I really looking at? Who was this man I’d been living with for months?

He looked toward the office. The door was always closed, but I’d left it open.

We stood there for what seemed like many long minutes, but was probably only thirty seconds. It was strange. I could feel my body slightly trembling out of anger, and I knew he could see it, but Ian didn’t bother to ask me what was wrong.

He just said, “You know you aren’t supposed to be in there.”

I was about to tell him it was too late, but he spoke before I could open my mouth.

“
Dawn,” he said, and then paused for a few seconds. “You need to leave. It’s for your own good.”

I let out a disgusted, sarcastic cough of a laugh. “For my own good? Since when does that matter to you?”

“I’
m trying to protect you—”

My full-throated laugh interrupted him. “Please stop with that bullshit. And, by the way, you don’t have to tell me to leave. I’ve already packed some bags.”

He didn’t look surprised. “Benson will take you wherever you want to go.”

I wondered if there had been others. The way
Ian was doing this so calmly, so businesslike, I couldn’t escape the thought that he’d done this before. Maybe with just one other woman. Maybe with many. Who really knew?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “Here’s ten-thousand—”

I cut him off. “I don’t want your money. I don’t
need
your money, Ian. If it’s even yours.”

He sighed
and looked down. It was the first time I had seen him display even the most remote sense of shame.

“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?”
I pressed.

He didn’t say anything. He look
ed me dead in the eyes with a blank, emotionless gaze. For the first time, I was creeped out by him. I needed to get out of there, but I couldn’t resist pushing him to say something. “You don’t know what to do next?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you need to go consult one of your books to tell you how to be an alpha male?”

His jaw clenched. I’d seen that happen before, but never in anger. It was always in the throes of lust.
He moved toward his office door.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “they’re all locked up again.”

He stopped, didn’t turn his body, only his head, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, then looked away.

“Say something,” I said.

“Not now, Dawn.”

“No. You don’t get to do that anymore. For the entire time we’ve been together you’ve been a closed boo
k. Pun intended. You’ve never opened up to me. I guess now I know why.” I crossed my arms across my chest, a defiant, determined pose.

He just looked at me.

“Who are you?” I asked him. “Do you even know? What would you be like if it weren’t for those books?”

He glared at me for a moment, then said, “
Dawn. Leave. You have no idea what’s going on—”