Chapter 101: Extra Two
It was Monday, the day that Emily, not the real one. But the imaginary one that he had created, who had not quit, but was on time off, was supposed to be coming back.
And that was the problem with Derek’s whole plan. It had hinged around Emily coming back and the two of them pretending like she had never meant to leave for good in the first place. But the plan had failed...dismally.
The last time that Derek had heard from her, it had been when she had been telling him that there was absolutely no way in hell that she would be coming back to Haven Group. Since then, he had been too ashamed, and too scared of her, to reach out and beg her to come back.
Derek Haven was not a man who bowed to anyone, but for her, he would have crawled on all fours if he had to. If that was what she would have demanded in order to come back, then he would have done it...gladly.
But Emily had already told him, out of her own mouth that she was not coming back. And she was a stubborn one. It was a trait that Derek liked about her, especially when she was acting as a shield between him and the outside world. Giving him a bit of time to gather himself, and refusing to step aside even when people who were her seniors ordered her to.
But now that stubbornness was being used against him and he felt like screaming. He had not had her well brewed tea in weeks. After a hard night of not sleeping, there was no one to cheer him up by buying him blueberry muffins. Emily just knowing that he needed cheering up even when she did not know why he needed it.
There was no one to share the latest gossip in the office with him like she did sometimes. And when his head was killing him( something very common with insomnia) there was no one to turn off the bright lights in his office to give his aching eyes a bit of a rest.
The last one Derek could have done for himself, as he often did whenever Emily was busy. But now that she would no longer be doing it at all, he did not want to do it either. An aching head, and painful eyes were nothing that he could not withstand. But all of the hours that he spent awake had a new torture to them now.
In the past, his silver lining used to be that come morning, he would get to go to work and pretend as though everything was normal, that he had slept as other people had. But now he was realizing that it was not just the work that he had been looking forward to. Seeing Emily had been something that had helped him get through the day. And now he did not have that anymore, and pretty soon, the whole of Haven Group would know that Emily was not going to come back.