Chapter 134: Why?
After the slap, Derek had made it home on autopilot. Barely remembering last minute that he had snuck out, and sneaked back in, making sure that his mother did not know that he had ever gone out at all.
But now he had just seen her off, and all that he had been repressing in an effort to make sure that she did not realize that something was wrong, had come back to the surface.
Pacing around in his living room, Derek tried to process, a hand over his cheek where Emily’s palm had been a few hours prior. She had slapped him. Emily Molson had slapped him. Now, Derek was no stranger to sudden violent outbursts. He had grown up around entitled rich people, who seemed to think that it was their right to be violent. Vases flying, slaps, kicks, screams, spoiled brats who did anything and everything when they were throwing tantrums. But having grown up around that, he had never in his life thought that somebody like Emily, who was normally so calm, would slap him.
And even worse, he had no idea why she had done it.
He had apologized, and he had even asked her to come back. None of those things translated to needing a slap across the face. He had even gone as far as to ask her to sleep with him because he needed the rest.
Which part of that had set her off? Derek went over the events in his head, trying to find where things had gone off the rails, but try as he might, he could not see it. Was she angry at his apology? Was she mad because he had offered her, her old job back? Was it the thought of sleeping with him that— Oh.
Derek’s mind finally caught up with the last part, and he looked at it from her point of view instead of from his. If somebody had just come up to him and asked him to sleep with them, Derek would have been offended too, especially without context. Emily was probably out there thinking he was some sort of creep.
The realization had Derek no longer pacing, but throwing himself onto the nearest couch, and going boneless. Oh, that was where things had gone wrong. He had gone over the possibility of asking Emily to share a bed with him so many times, that when he had said it out loud, he had simply just said, ’sleep with me,’ not really thinking of how it must have sounded to her. She probably thought that he was a pervert.
Looking at it like that, her reaction made a lot of sense. In fact, Derek was beginning to realize that he had gotten off lightly. Any other woman would have brained him with a skillet and then dragged him outside, and proceeded to double down on the beating.