Sleeping With The CEO
Chapter 279: Played

Chapter 279: Played

If you walk into a room full of people and you have no idea who among them is being played. Then more than likely the person being played is you. Emily knew the saying. She’d heard it plenty of times before.

Emily had come to associate it with people getting hustled in bars. Those who were part of fake friend groups, and employees about to be sacrificed by their fellow co-workers. Never in a million years had she thought to apply the saying to her relationship with Derek.

She had taken everything between them to be genuine. Believing that it was all coming from a good place. How could it not when the two of them were bound together, by the miracle of sleep? Her and Derek only being able to enjoy a good night’s rest when they were in each other’s arms.

But Derek had proven her wrong. Showing her that every time that she had been in a room with him, she had been the one who was being played. Slowly developing feelings for him, while Derek himself had remained unaffected. She had to hand it to him. The man had really had her fooled.

To the point that shortly before the secret of his engagement had come out. Emily had actually believed that she could see some of the love that she felt for him, reflected back at her whenever she looked into his eyes. But clearly that had been a figment of her imagination.

He had just been playing a sick, and twisted game with her for his own amusement.

Why do that and jeopardize their sleeping arrangement? Emily had yet to find an answer to that one and she was not really looking too hard.

Derek had decided that sleep was a minor need for him.

A fact that he had proven by having the gall to go, and get engaged while at the same time he had just asked her to be his girlfriend. Emily believing that the two of them were at one of the happiest times in their lives. But clearly it had been just her. Maybe he got what he used to get from her, from Penelope now. Maybe while Emily was wide awake, nightmares nipping at her heels. Derek was fast asleep in Penelope’s arms. That had to be it.

Emily was not special, she was not unique. Whatever it was in her that had made Derek be able to fall asleep in her presence, Penelope had it too.

It hurt to think about.

The realization that while to her Derek was everything, to him she was just an option, burned. He had someone else that he could go to and he had chosen that someone else over her. But even with that thought in mind, Emily’s traitorous heart refused to just accept facts and move on, which was why she was currently on her phone going through newspapers and magazines alike, hoping that Derek’s mother had not been telling the truth. That the woman had just had a copy of a newspaper that had an article with her son getting engaged, made, on a whim.

That the whole thing was just a twisted lie. Something untruthful that had been used as a way of trying to get Emily away from her son. But the little bit of hope that had been trying to bloom in Emily’s chest. Died a horrible death when she found the article that she had been looking for, Haven Heir Engaged. The words jumped out at her, and Emily had to bite her bottom lip to stop herself from making a pained sound.

Tears blurred her vision and she hastily wiped them away. She wanted nothing more than to just close the tab, and keep moving on with her life. But she had to know, and all of the facts were in her hands. She just had to face them.

So Emily read, and as she read, it felt as though each word was a stake being driven right through her heart.

According to the article, Derek and Penelope had been together for close to a year.

How had Emily not noticed? Sure, the two of them were not together 24/7.But she should have seen something, or at least sensed a shift in his mood. Showing that there was somebody that he went home to on the nights that they were not together.

But then again, maybe he had been planning to string her along from the very beginning. Why else would he ensure that she did not know about his girlfriend?

A year.

They had been together, a year. Which was longer than Derek and Emily had been an official couple. So that meant that Derek had made Emily into his mistress.

It was such a cold, and selfish thing to do that Emily struggled to reconcile it with the Derek that she’d thought she knew. Was it her fault? Had she really been that awful? Was she so bad that he thought nothing of hurting her in such a cold blooded way.

Or maybe it was the fact that she was just plain Emily. Not really wearing makeup most days. Keeping her hair in simple braids and ponytails. Her fashion sense nothing to write home about. Or maybe it had to do with her plain looks when compared to everybody else that Derek interacted with on a regular basis?

Was it because she lacked family connections? That unlike him, she did not come from generational wealth? That her only experience with high society was as a stranger looking in? A visitor into his world, who only ever got a glimpse of it, thanks to her job.

Emily had never thought of herself like that before, as someone inadequate. But once she began, she could not stop. It felt like poking at a wound that had been on the cusp of healing. Scratching away at it bit by bit until it was a bleeding, oozing mess. But she could not help it.

She kept unearthing all the little ways that she could have been wrong for Derek. Things that would have made him feel that he was right in treating her the way that he had.

And Emily let all of those painful realizations wash over her.

At some point in the future, she would push all of that aside and focus on the positives. The reasons why she was too good for Derek Haven. But in that moment, she was hurt and she was scared. So she was just going to allow herself to just feel the pain.