Mitigation Read Online Free PDF Page A

want
you,” I admit. “I want you a lot. But I want more than
just sex. I need more than just sex.”
    He stares at me,
confusion written all over his beautiful face. His words are slow and
cautious when he asks, “What more do you need?”
    “I want a
relationship. Dating, conversation, shared secrets. I want it all,
Matt. I deserve it all.”
    He soaks in what I’m
saying, but then his shoulders sag slightly. “I don’t
have that to give.”
    “Yeah, you
do,” I tell him. “You showed me you do in Nashville. You
have a lot to give.”
    I reach my hand out,
intending to take his in mine. To give him soft and reassuring
contact, so my skittish beast of a man doesn’t flee.
    Too late. He steps
back out of my reach and his face hardens. “Are you seeing
someone?” he asks with suspicion. Then it’s like a look
of horror that crosses his face. “Fuck… please don’t
tell me you’re dating Cal.”
    “No, I’m
not dating Cal. We’re just friends.”
    Mocking
condescension. Yup… that’s all over Matt’s face
right now. “Please… that man just wants in your pants,
and he’ll get there, too.”
    “He doesn’t
want in my pants,” I snap. “You’re just going to
have to trust me on that.”
    One side of Matt’s
upper lip curls skyward, and he practically snarls at me. “See,
that’s just it. I don’t trust you.”
    That feels like an
arrow shooting straight through my heart. I try to remember what Matt
has been through, and I try to reason to myself that he’s this
way because of past betrayal. But damn… it still hurts.
    “I’ll
ask one more time… Let me come home with you tonight. I won’t
ask again, McKayla.” His voice is soft… with an almost
underlying hint of pleading in it. I want to give in. I want to take
him home and show him how good I can be to him… for him. But
I’m deluding myself that it would ever lead to something that
is good for me.
    Shaking my head
sadly, I say, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
    Matt doesn’t
like that. Doesn’t like it at all. His eyes go frigid, and his
chin comes up. He’s mad, but he’s also being rejected,
and I know that hurts. I hope to God it is just anger speaking when
he says, “No skin off my back. You’re not the only game
in town.”
    He turns away before
I can even respond and saunters out of my office.

I’m struggling
when I get off the elevator, trying to hold my coffee, hitching up my
briefcase over my shoulder, and tottering in four-inch heels and a
skirt that doesn’t do more than let me shimmy around. Add on to
that the fact I haven’t gotten any sleep this week, and I’m
in a poor to piss-poor mood.
    If you’re
counting, that means I haven’t had a good night’s sleep
in exactly six days. Not since I told Matt that this was over, and he
implied that he was heading back to One Night Only .
    Bea watches me walk
in, her face grim and full of doom. My stomach drops. “What is
he?”
    “I’d say
about a fifteen?”
    “A fifteen?”
I ask in shock.
    “Yup. It’s
bad.”
    Turning to look back
longingly at the elevator, I briefly consider just heading home and
having a sick day. I can’t take another day like this. I wonder
if Matt’s bad mood is because he’s not getting his
regular sex fix from me, but then I shake that thought away. He’s
getting it… just not from me, so that can’t be the
reason.
    You see, each day
Bea and I have taken to a ranking system to judge Matt’s mood.
It’s becoming increasingly fouler every day. It’s a
simple one-to-ten scale, and he had topped out at a ten yesterday
when he yelled at a secretary, causing her to run from the office in
tears with Miss Anders hot on her heels, trying to comfort her.
    But today…
Bea says he’s a fifteen, and that is probably bordering on a
nuclear explosion.
    My plan? Keep my
head down and stay buried in my office, only surfacing to make a mad
dash to the bathroom to pee. But if I don’t drink any coffee or
water, I can probably go all day