Sleeping With The CEO-Chapter 288: Still Care

When Derek had rushed out of the restaurant, there had been a thrum of excitement in his veins. I am going to see Emily again, he’d thought, and that had given his steps an extra boost. As luck would have it, he had made it to Haven Group headquarters just as Emily had been about to leave.

But much to Derek’s great disappointment, the person whom he had seen at Haven Group had not been Emily Molson...his Emily. They’d had the same face, same eyes, same hair, same build, same everything.

But when Derek had looked into those eyes.

All that he had seen was a stranger. None of the warmth that he associated with Emily had been there. The woman’s smile had been cold and harsh, lacking the softness that was always there at the corner of Emily’s lips whenever she smiled. Even her walk had been wrong. It had still held a hint of Emily’s confident steps. But there had been a predatory quality to it, like a snake about to strike.

She’d worn heels for crying out loud. Heels! Emily’s least favorite type of shoe. Derek had wanted to stop her right then and there.

To question her about the sudden change in not only her fashion sense but also in her demeanor as well. What had happened? Why was she suddenly behaving so different? Why did her eyes look as though she wanted to laser him in half? If anyone should have been upset, it should have been him. He’d had many more questions that he had wanted to ask her. But Emily had not given him the time of day. Instead, she had addressed him as though the two of them had only just met, in those brief few seconds and would never see each other again.

He had never seen her look so dismissive before. And that had been enough to stun Derek into freezing instead of talking to her. Only coming back to himself once it was too late to go after her. "Shall we head upstairs, Mr Haven?" Madeline’s soft voice had come from his right.

Rather than going out into the street, and looking around like a madman. Derek had instead walked to the elevator and gotten in, Madeline by his side.

Now Derek was sitting in his office staring at the wall, not really seeing it. When Emily had left him without a word, Derek had held on to a bit of hope. A belief that if he could just see her one more time. If the two of them could meet in person.

That they would be able to look each other in the eyes. Realize that they’d made a mistake, and get back together once again. That had been Derek’s hope.

It had kept him functional during his time without Emily. But now that Derek had gotten the opportunity to see her again. He wished that he had not. If Derek had not gotten the chance to see Emily again. Then in his memories, he would have been able to keep her, exactly the way she was the last time that she had been in his presence.

Warm... smiling...full of life. The very air around her seeming to sparkle with joy. Her warm aura just making Derek feel safe, and calm.

She had been his island in the middle of a stormy ocean.

The one place that he, a Haven, saw as the haven in the complicated world that they lived in.

But thanks to their encounter, that memory was now destroyed. Just a few seconds of seeing her, and it had been torn down.

Burned to ashes, and scattered in the wind. Never to be recovered again. In its place there now stood a memory that Derek would rather not have.

He no longer had his last memories of Emily, being those of her being warm and smiling. Instead, he had memories of a person so vastly different from that. That he was struggling to accept the fact that that had also been Emily.

As cold, distant, and unfeeling as she had been. Those were the words that popped into mind when Derek remembered the woman who had walked by him like they had never been anything to each other.

Warm smile turned arctic, her once gentle eyes now hard. Even the soft curves of her that Derek had taken his time memorizing, what now felt like a lifetime ago, had seemed sharp and forbidding.

That was what a woman who no longer cared about you looked like, Derek realized. And that hurt.

What Emily felt for him now, was what she felt for a regular Joe on the street. And that was little to nothing. Derek had really thought that they had something. That the two of them were going somewhere together. What had changed? Or perhaps nothing had changed.

Maybe Emily had always felt that way about him. Now for whatever reason, she was done pretending and had decided to just show him her true self. And he was the one who was struggling to accept it. Closing his eyes, Derek leaned back in his seat. He tried to imagine the two Emilys that he had seen standing side by side.

They were night and day. That really bothered him. No one could change that much out of the blue. Something had to have happened. But what?

Try as he may, Derek could not find a single thing. But did it really matter anymore? He wondered as he reopened his eyes. Staring at the door, imagining what it would have been like if arctic Emily had been on the other side. Still being as his PA, he shuddered at the thought. The Emily that he knew might have been gone.But he was glad that he did not have that cold replacement in her place.

Derek was not at ease. He had wanted to see Emily one more time. To reassure himself that she was doing fine. For all intents and purposes, the Emily downstairs had looked like a well-put-together woman going about her life.

But she had been so chilly.

So unresponsive to anything, that Derek was still worrying about her even if she did not seem to care for him.Was she alright? He really hoped that the answer was yes.

Follow current novels on freewe(b)novel.c(o)m