Sketch Read Online Free PDF Page A

was.
    “Fucking spit it out.” I’m sick of waiting.
    “Are we going to be serious here?” she asks, her dark eyes almost glowing as she looks at me. “We’re not going to sugarcoat this?”
    I stand up and walk over to the office door. I turn the lock and go back and sit behind my desk again. “That door is locked. We aren’t leaving until we have this out. If you go up to that door and unlock it, I’ll sign the papers. If I go to the door and unlock it, I’ll sign the papers.”
    “I thought you didn’t have the papers.” She glares.
    “I might know where they are.”
    “Fuck you, Sketch.” I can see her teeth grinding together.
    “If you really think that, sweetheart, go unlock that door and walk out. We’ll be done.”
    My heart is pounding as I watch her breathing heavily. I can see her going over things in her head. I can see her trying to make a decision.
    “I was ready to do that,” she says softly. “But that woman was coming onto you out there, and I didn’t like it.”
    “You’re jealous? Are you fucking kidding me? What she did was tame compared to how some other women have thrown themselves at me,” I admit.
    “But you’ve never taken them up on the offer.”
    I shake my head. “No, I haven’t. I’ve always had more than what I wanted or needed at home. That’s all you needed? To see a woman come onto me? Now that I’m something other people might want, you’re all in again?”
    “I’m not going to lie, seeing her with you, it flipped a switch. Jealously may not be clean, and it might be messy later on, but fuck, Sketch, you’ve always been mine.”
    I’m quiet as I wait for her to continue. I see a tear streak down her cheek at my words. When she opens her mouth and speaks, her voice sounds like it’s ripped from her chest.
    “You were never there, Devin. Never.”
    I want so badly to refute that, to argue with her, but it’s the same argument we’ve been having. If one of us doesn’t put a stop to it, we’ll continue to go round and round and nothing will ever be solved. I keep my mouth shut and let her speak.
    “Do you know how shitty I feel, knowing you’d rather be here than with me? You can never get away from the shop, especially after that article. You’re so talented at what you do.” She runs a finger under her nose and takes a rough breath. “People love you, and I love you more than all of them, but I have to fight for your attention, and then even when I fight and I’m a bitch, sometimes I still don’t get it. All I get is your anger.”
    I take a deep breath when she puts her arms around her stomach and gets up to walk around the office. “This is your home, this is where you belong, but where do I belong?”
    “Right fucking next to me,” I answer, slamming my hand down on the desk. “I’ve always wanted you here, but you never acted like you wanted to be here. Finally, I stopped asking.”
    “I liked when you asked,” she grins, sniffling. “You’d annoy the fuck out of me, we’d end up in bed, and then I’d fall asleep before you even left.”
    I bite my lip. “At some point we stopped doing that. At some point, no became no, and then it became a ‘fuck no’.” I run my hand over my face. “I borrowed money from your dad to get this place off the ground, and he told me I better give his little girl everything in the world she deserved,” I started. I’ve never told her about that conversation. “He told me that when the place failed you’d come crawling back home, and then he’d collect the amount due out of my ass.”
    She closes her eyes. “You know my dad’s an asshole.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong, Nina. He’s a smart businessman who knew this place never should have made it. I got fucking lucky. That meant long nights; it meant being the only one here half the damn time until I could afford to hire others. It meant doing my own bookkeeping. Fuck, I cleaned the shop most of the time myself, in the