Then, just as I’m losing all hope, Garrett calls. As if reading my mind, he tells me to come in because he has a friend who would like to hire me. He says he would be willing to introduce me.
I’m in no position to turn him down. Even as I weakly resist the offer, he says he had decided to help me get a new job because it was the least he could do. I mean, truly, how can I argue with that?
Then, he says, “I wish we could be together. I miss you so much, Carolina. I wish it was meant to be. But I know it’s impossible. Still…”
I cry silently, just like I did on his chest in his office, but this time I don’t let on.
He’s right. We just aren’t meant to be. It’s time to move on with my life.
Chapter 24 – Garrett
It’s been agonizing, not having Carolina around. I miss her scent, the sound of her voice, her laughter. I honestly miss her help. A floater has been filling in for me, but it’s not the same.
One by one the partners come to my office— except for Cameron, who is out on paternity leave. Ruby just had a baby and he’s at home taking care of both of them.
I can’t help but wonder what that would be like. I came so close to accidentally getting Carolina pregnant. In hindsight, it was such a stupid thing to have happened. I know to keep a condom on me at all times. Even though I hadn’t been playing the field since I met her, it hadn’t been that long that I’d been out of the game.
Perhaps, I wonder, the way that all happened was my way to try to keep her forever, as mine. It makes no sense, but a baby ties two people together for all eternity. I’ve never been much for words, but maybe the universe was trying to put into motion that which I wasn’t strong enough to fucking do on my own.
“It’s good that Carolina left without making a fuss,” says Asher, as he comes to my office. “It would have been a lot for the firm to deal with.”
I feel defiant, obstinate— even more so than usual.
“You said in your text that you knew Madilyn was the one,” I tell him. “And she was your subordinate. Why couldn’t Carolina have been the one for me?”
“Oh Garrett, don’t talk like that,” he says, rolling his eyes and insulting me even more. “It was different for Madilyn and me.”
“How so?” I demand.
“Well, Madilyn and I are still together, for one thing,” he shoots back at me, and he does have a point. “If you and Carolina were meant to be, wouldn’t she still be here?”
I shrug, and I don’t think of the perfect comeback until Ron is on the phone.
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know I feel you on what you’re going through with Carolina,” he says, a baby wailing in the background. “Even if I can’t be there to support you, I’m thinking of you from home.”
“No sweat,” I tell him, and then I realize that what Asher says doesn’t always apply. “But Ruby left when you two were dating, right?”
“Sure,” Cameron sighs, and I know he’s going to tell me the same thing that Asher had just told me. It’s different for them. It’s always different for everyone else.
“How did you know to go after her?” I ask him. “How did you know she was the one?”
“When you know, you just know,” he says, and then he seems to catch himself. “I sure never would have let her quit without going after her.”
His unspoken accusation hangs in the air.
…Like you did with Carolina.
So because she didn’t stay, and because I didn’t go after her right away, I guess they’re saying we weren’t meant to be. But I feel that they’d throw up some obstacle or excuse or roadblock, no matter what. They just want to make sure I’m done with her and the firm is safe.
Even my dad stops by my office. His senility has advanced to the point where I’m surprised he even knows where it is.
“Good job, Son,” he says, patting me on the back. “I knew you wouldn’t let some broad come in between you and this amazing career opportunity.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, and he smiles, not paying any attention to my sarcasm.
That’s when I decide to hook Carolina up with another job. If I can’t have her, it’s not fair to make her suffer. I have the power to give her a smooth career transition and that’s the least I can do, since she moved out here to work for me and I’ve gone and fucked that up.
My dad’s right. I can’t jeopardize my career, especially not when I’m unsure how Carolina feels about me. If she was as into me as I am her, she never would have quit.
So I call up my friend and get her another job. It’s time to move on and stop moping. This is not the Garrett Mack everyone knows and loves. I’ve got to get him back, even if that means forgetting about Carolina Abbott. If such a thing is even possible.
Chapter 25 – Carolina
The following Monday, I go to Garrett’s office dressed in my best suit. The new job is going to be mine if I have to steal it. Garrett looks amazing. I hadn’t expected to be so affected by seeing him, but my reaction is instantaneous and visceral, and I have to fight back tears.
I remain stoic as he introduces me to the female lawyer who is hiring an assistant at her small firm. Honestly, I hear nothing but “You can start next Monday,” and I shake her hand and exhale.
Garrett looks relieved.
“Listen, I am happy for you,” he says, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “Karen is a top-notch attorney. You’ll enjoy working for her, and she’s lucky to have you as part of her team.”
But he looks sad, and it does feel like the end of a chapter, if not an entire book.
“And hey, it’s close to dinner. Can I buy you buy some grub? No funny business— just friends. Let me take you for some quick nosh. Come on, you need to celebrate.”
I’m so relieved, so I say, “Okay, why not?”
And honestly, it isn’t like it mattered any more. But just as we sit down at Casa Rosarita, I feel the spark. It had not gone anywhere. In fact, it had grown more intense. I could deny it all I wanted, but I still feel something for him, and now I feel like a fool.
He grabs my hand across the table. It’s light. We’re joking. By the end of the dinner, he’s more fearless now, kissing my neck.
Suddenly, he says, “Look, we may as well go for it. This is probably the last time we’ll see each other. And it’s not like anyone can say I’m screwing my employee any more.”
I laugh, but when I don’t say yes or no, he tries another angle.
“Every couple needs to have farewell sex, right?”
I laugh again.
The next thing I know, we’re at Hotel Albuquerque and he’s tearing my clothes off. He lays me down on the bed and his tongue makes circles around my nipple. Then he moves to the other nipple.
He heads down to where my legs part anxiously for him, while his fingers still play with my nipples, stroking and rubbing them. I lift my hips up and allow him to devour my pussy, his tongue darting in and out of my hole and then all around my clit as he fingers me.
“Oh, my God, that feels so good,” I tell him, so glad to be reliving what we did on our very first sexual encounter. “I’m coming. Garrett, I’m coming.”
He picks me up and carries me out onto the balcony. He sets me on the railing while my legs stay wrapped close around him. The sensation of feeling as if I could fall, combined with wondering if anyone can see us, is arousing. I realize it’s the first time we’ve ever had sex somewhere besides his office.
He grabs ahold of my ass and pushes his cock into me. Neither of us even mentions a condom this time. I guess our relationship has progressed passed that point: we’ve been there, done that, and still feel the embarrassment to prove it.
He stretches me out over the night sky, pulling my hair back so that I’m looking up at the stars as his cock juts in and out of me. I hold on tight to his legs with mine, as his free hand grabs my ass.
Then he pulls me back up and plays with my clit again, making me come all over his hand and his cock. He grunts, say
ing, “Carolina, I love… the way you make me come,” as he shoots his cum into my pussy.
I hold tight onto his neck as he carries me back into the bed. Time had frozen for a second, as I truly believed he was going to say he loved me.
But it doesn’t matter, it’s still a lovely time we’re having together. The night turns into morning and we spent it having sex numerous times, drifting off to sleep off and on. He doesn’t come close to saying he loves me again, and I being to wonder if it was all in my imagination. If this was our last time together— make that multiple times together— I guess we insisted on making it memorable.
The next day we go our separate ways, and I know we both feel satisfied about the encounter. We’re ending on a much higher note than we had before.
I have no regrets, but there are things I wish I had said to him that I can’t. Such as the fact that I think both of us are being stupid for not just saying what’s on our mind. The whole thing never had to end this way. But if he feels the same, he doesn’t dare bring it up, and neither do I.
The score is even now, and we’re both losing. But we’re losing a little less than the last time we parted.
Chapter 26 – Garrett
I can’t get enough of Carolina. I can’t let this be the end. I have to take her one more time. Or two or three.
I follow her and she pulls over once she notices me signaling wildly to her.
“What?” she says, rolling down her window on the side of I-25 and laughing.
“I need to see you again,” I tell her, shouting out to her in her car.
“When?” she asks.
“Right now! We still have the room until check out at noon. Let’s make good use of our goodbye time.”
It’s a chickenshit way to say it. Really I don’t want to say goodbye to her at all. But I’m just trying to get her to say yes to being with me a little longer.
“That’s what all your crazy waving at me was about?” she asks. “Why didn’t you just call or text me?”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I am so out of sorts when I’m around her.
“I thought it would be funnier this way,” I tell her, because I don’t want to admit the truth.
She laughs and says, “Okay, let’s go back, then.”
Yes. We head back to the hotel room, her car following mine, and I want to do a victory dance, but I refrain.
I know I looked pathetic chasing her down like that, but I can’t help it. She makes me do crazy, senseless, out of my normal mind type of things. And I don’t even care because I love the way she makes me feel.
I’m so glad to be back with Carolina again, free of workplace expectations or office policies. I no longer care about anything except having her in my arms.
Being around her intoxicates me, enthralls me, turns me on in a way I'd never known before. Now that we’re in the hotel room, I can’t wait to do everything and anything I want with her, including making passionate love to her. I just want to ravish her to my heart's— and my cock's— content.
After we’ve had sex several times, I wait until I’m ready to go again. Then I pick her up and carry her to the bed, but instead of laying her down on it, I turn her around and place her on her hands and knees, her beautiful ass in the air.
I remove her clothes until she is only wearing her heels and her panties. This is exactly how I always imagine and remember her in my fantasies, how I used to wish she always could have been at the office.
I squeeze her ass and admire its perfectly round curves. Then, I look down at my cock, which is standing at attention for her.
I pull her panties to the side and shoved my fingers deep into her pussy.
“I can see that you’re still dripping wet for me,” I tell her.
“You make me come so much,” she says, turning around to look at me.
I get on my knees behind her on the bed, and then I grab her hair and turn her head forward. I want to be inside her, but I know that if I have to see her face when she comes, I’m never going to want to leave her.
“I'm going to fuck you again now,” I tell her.
“Good.”
With one hand holding her hair and the other holding her voluptuous hips, I shove my cock deep inside her. She gasps as I plunge myself in and out of her.
“Oh, my God, Garrett,” she says, leaning back onto my chest.
My hand moves up to her nipple, and I begin playing with it as I fuck her. With my other hand, I begin massaging her clit, driving her over the edge.
“Oh, yes. Oh, Garrett,” she says, moaning and gasping, becoming like putty in my hands. “I'm going to come.”
“Come in my hand,” I coax, and she does.
Her pussy contracts around my cock, and I give another deep thrust, filling her completely as the orgasm ripples through her entire body.
Once she is satisfied, I think about how much she pleases me. How I would do anything for her. I know deep inside that I am going to break all my rules for her. I know she is nothing like my own mother and never could be.
She is Carolina Abbott—my sweet, beautiful, innocent yet dirty little lover. It’s time to give up my fears and give into my certainties. As long as she’s willing to be with me, too.
I’m also certain I want to do something else with her that I’ve done before.
“I want to take you in your ass again,” I tell her, as I put my hand on her head and turn it back around. “Will you let me?”
"Yes, Garrett."
I love how adventurous and willing she is when she’s with me.
My cock is still soaking wet from being inside her pussy, and I slide it slowly into her ass and bite her gently on the neck.
“Woah,” she whimpers and takes a deep breath, but it’s more like a love bite I'd just given her.
I push my cock in a little further, little by little, inch by inch, as she grips the sheets and lets me take her sweet little asshole again.
Soon, she’s leaning back a bit and enjoying the way I’m fucking her ass, just like she did when I fucked her pussy.
“Do you like when my cock is inside you?" I ask her, as I ram my shaft into her asshole.
“I do,” she says. “I'm so glad you showed me how amazing this can be.”
I hold her hands back and pull her into me as I push my cock further into her. It feels so good that I allow myself to give into the overwhelming need for release, even though I wish I could fuck her again and again and again.
“I'm about to come,” I tell her, feeling my cock clench inside her.
“Do what you want with me,” she says, so I take my cock out of her ass and let my cum shoot all over her ass and back.
I rub it over her ass, using my cock as a wand to rub it in more for good measure.
“There,” I tell her. “Now you're marked. Claimed as mine.”
“Just for today, right?” she says, as I sit down on the bed and pull her into my arms. She sounds sad.
“Of course,” I reply.
Well, there goes my plan to confess my love for her. Fucking coward.
But was I really going to? I probably would have chickened out anyway. I can't ever seem to get past the fear— the fear that we’ll end up just the same as my mother and father.
It's best to keep this to what it is, an office dalliance. A farewell fuck.
It's best to bid adieu to whatever fantasies I have of Carolina, and forget that I ever thought it could be something more.
Chapter 27 – Carolina
1 Week Later
The next week is a blur. I start my new job, which Garrett helped me find. It’s fine, uneventful, which I guess is perfect but hardly the dream job I had left my little town to take.
It’s a slow Monday, though, and I can’t seem to get Garrett off my mind. It seems like the entire universe is here just to test me. Jake is now calling me, saying he had made a mistake.
“I was so crushed by the news that we probably couldn’t get pregnant, I reacted badly,” he'd sai
d. “Let's get together again. I just need to feel your body next to mine to know if our relationship can work despite the reality that there's no way we can have kids.”
That’s the gist of his sorry-not-sorry call, anyway. Clearly, he only wants sex from me. The old me might have been down, but now I wouldn’t stoop to being my ex husband’s booty call.
If Garrett had taught me anything, if the last few months had revealed anything, it was that I was better than that. I blocked Jake on my phone, and the funny thing is, I thought I would feel something. But I don’t. It’s finally time to leave the small town girl behind and move on. I’m a different, better person now, and Jake no longer seems enough.
Meanwhile, I had kept the lines of communication open with Erin, who was getting all the dirt. She and I had practically become the best of friends. She said she treated Garrett to lunch one day and he spilled his guts to her. He said he had no desire to date anyone else but me.
On the phone now, she says, “Cari—is it okay if I call you that?”
She had heard me talking to Martha on the phone one day in the office, and has asked me what it was she kept calling me. She’d like the pet nickname, I guess, and I’m flattered that she remembers.
“Sure,” I say. If there’s anyone else I would let call me that, it’s her.
“Cari, you are not going to believe the irony. I don’t know how some people do it. Garrett said he thinks of how ironic it is that he finally met a girl he’d like to settle down with, and he can’t or else it would lead to a mess with the partners.”
“Settle down?”
“Yes. I reminded him, ‘Garrett, you are independently wealthy, hon. You really could leave.’ But he said this is his life. And, you know, you really can’t fault the guy for that. He’s right. It’s his life.”
“Woah, back up. Settle down?”
My ears— and my heart— perked up at these two words. Leave it to Erin to skip over the most important part of the story. I couldn’t believe she had become Garrett’s confidant— except, I guess maybe I could, since he was probably awfully lonely in my absence— but I definitely can’t believe he told her that.
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