Chapter 272: Hopeful
Derek had just spent hours walking around the front of his building like a ghost. Haunting the area with the hope that maybe Emily would show up. It had been a slim possibility from the time that he had left the confines of the penthouse.
And as the hours had passed by, the chances for her to show up had grown slimmer and slimmer. But still, Derek had not given up. A grown man out and about in the middle of the night, circling a building in just his pajamas. Were he anyone else or been anywhere else, somebody would have called the police. Or he would have ended up in the hospital under psychiatric evaluation.
But as things stood, he had simply just been an eccentric rich guy doing what rich people did, when they were bored. Everybody minding their business and leaving him alone.
With the guards making sure that nobody bothered him. Derek would not lie. He had never hated the protection that his name, and status brought him more than he had in that moment.
Anybody else would have been asked questions. People not only curious to know what was going on, but actually having the balls to ask. But though he had seen quite a few people staring as he had wandered past, no one had said anything. No one had dared to question him.
"What are you doing, Mr Haven?"
Had just one person asked, Derek was certain that he would have spilled his heart right there on the street. Giving his fear and frustration a voice. Letting whoever had the balls to ask, know that Emily had not come that night, that her absence was worrying him and he had no idea what to do with it. But nobody had asked and so Derek had walked around, the rest of the night. His worry and his fear endured on his own.
It had been horrible, but he had been unable to stop. Stopping would have meant going up to the penthouse. An empty penthouse with no Emily, where the walls would echo his thoughts back at him.
Where the scattered rose petals, and candles in his bedroom would remind him what the night could have been had things gone according to plan.