Sleeping With The CEO
Chapter 139: It Had To Be You

Chapter 139: It Had To Be You

When Emily had accepted Derek’s call and had agreed to let him come into the diner, not that she had any choice, she had thought that it was a way of alleviating her stress of ending things once and for all.

But now, it turned out to be quite the opposite.

As the hours passed with no sign of Derek Haven whatsoever, Emily’s stress levels went higher and higher. Why would he call and not show up? Was he playing some sort of sick game with her?

One of those messed up ones that narcissists often played just to leave whoever it was that they were preying on at the moment, spinning, unable to form coherent thoughts because they were too busy trying to figure out what was going on. If so, then Emily wanted no part of it.

Derek could go jump off a cliff for all she cared.

Or maybe he was not playing games. What if some work thing had come up to stop him from showing up?

Or maybe while on the way there something had happened. What if he had gotten into an accident, and she was there calling him every name under the sun, in her mind, while he was somewhere fighting for his life. Shaking her head to clear the depressive thought, Emily tried to think of something more reasonable.

Yeah, the chances of him being in an accident were low. Especially when considering that the chances of him doing something more sinister to get back at her were higher. Most likely when Derek had called her earlier to say that he would be coming, it had been a way to disarm her, to fool her so that she thought that he was the only one who would be showing up.

With her luck, the next time she saw him, it would be in a courtroom, and in the diner while she was waiting for him, the person who would come would not be him, but it would be one of his legal representatives. Back at Haven, she had stood in the side-lines and watched his uncle do something similar. There had been a girl.

One of the janitors, and Sebastian Haven had taken a liking to her. And the girl had not liked him back. When he had tried to force a kiss. The girl had fought back, succeeding in clawing at his face, for that tiny scratch across his eyelid, Sebastian Haven had ruined that poor girl.

He had dragged her through so many legal proceedings that she had ended up homeless. A state that she would most likely have stayed in had Derek not intervened after things had calmed down. He had made Emily track her down and then he had set up a meeting. At the end of it, the girl had been taking what little belongings she had and been moving out of the city. It was an exile, to be honest, but she had been so glad to at least be able to have somewhere where she would land on her feet that she had gone willingly.

Emily had taken that little bit of kindness shown to a stranger as a measure of the type of man that Derek was, someone willing to help a person who was down and out even if they did not know them and it did not benefit them in any way. But it seemed that for once her instincts, which were normally never wrong about people, had been wrong. The apple did not fall too far from the tree.

Did that still count? Seeing as Sebastian Haven was Derek’s uncle and not his father, Emily had no idea, but it seemed as though it fit the situation. After all, the Derek Haven that she had thought she knew would never have made such a request of her, asking her to sleep with him, yet he had not even bet an eyelid when he had asked her to do that. So it was possible that she had been wrong in the assessment of him, but still a small part of her held out hope.

She hoped that she had been wrong during the encounter that had led to her slapping him. She hoped that when he came, if he came in, whatever it is that he had to say would clear it all away, make it all some big misunderstanding that maybe in the future if they were still talking, they would both laugh about when they remembered it. But that was all it was.

Hope would do nothing to change reality if he decided to come at her with the full might of the Haven power. There would be nothing she could do.

And just the ways in which he could ruin her with the snap of her finger were terrifying. If she had thought that the little game he’d played, where he had been able to cut her off from getting any other jobs was hard, then Emily knew she would not be able to withstand it when he finally came at her with intent to destroy.

Just thinking about it had her feeling a bit dizzy.

Swaying slightly, Emily leaned against the counter where she was currently standing. Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths. The world around her suddenly seemed way too loud and too silent at the same time. She was struggling to breathe. Her stomach churning so hard it felt as though she was about to throw up. Oh, an anxiety attack. She vaguely registered, but knowing what it was, did nothing to alleviate the symptoms and all that she could do was stand there and take it.

It got so bad that at some point, she found herself crouched down on the floor, her head between her knees as she tried to get her breathing under control.

It was slow going, but she finally managed it.

Her breathing evening out and her heartbeat no longer feeling as though it was about to crack her ribs with its intensity. At most, the anxiety attack could not have been longer than two minutes, but it felt as though she had spent hours crouched down on the floor. Thank goodness there were no customers.

And just as she thought that, the doorbell jingled, and Emily took one more deep breath before forcing herself to get up. If they asked, she would say that she had been clearing up something from the floor.

A fake smile pasted on her face. She wiped her hand over her brow real quick and stood.

Of course, of course, of all the people for it to be after the attack that she’d just had, it just had to be Derek Haven. Hours and hours of waiting and when he finally showed up, it was just after Emily had fallen apart and had barely managed to piece herself together.