Un-Hate Me (Enemies to Lovers Romance) (DOM for Hire Book 3), Hazel Parker [ebook smartphone .TXT] 📗

And I, somewhat, had made mine, although mine was “made” by my actions, not by a literal decision to stop seeing someone.

I got to the hotel bar and found a spot at the end of the bar. I ordered myself a dry martini and slowly sipped, letting the minutes go by. I didn’t really think or do anything. I just…was.

I guess you could say that moment with Emily had made me numb. The mother of my kids, and she didn’t want anything to do with me. At all. Not even with everything at risk.

I suppose I could slightly celebrate the fact that she’d let me have time with the kids—kids, not kid, I still couldn’t fucking believe that—but even that would only lead to more pain, a wonder of “what could have been” had I not acted like an enormous dick to her.

As the hours passed, as late morning turned into early afternoon turned into happy hour, more and more people streamed in, almost all of them with coworkers or significant others. I was the lone weirdo sitting by myself, keeping to myself, not even talking with the bartender. She knew well enough to only check in when I needed drinks.

Supposedly, this was my strength. My ability to be by myself, to not depend upon others, to have almost complete independence was seeing as what got me through each and every day. It was the reason I was as strong as I was.

That was the idea, at least. Now I was questioning it.

Fuck me if I wasn’t questioning everything right now.

About half an hour before sunset, I closed out my tab, leaving a generous tip. Hey, someone needed to have a good day here. I pushed my seat back, brushing past all the people with full social lives, and began a steady walk to the beach, fortunately just two streets down from me.

Here, it didn’t feel as weird to be alone. Maybe I was just finishing a job, maybe I was just catching some sunlight, or maybe I was doing anything I could think of that wasn’t the truth so I wouldn’t have to face my ugly self.

I looked out on the ocean. I knew I couldn’t literally see out to previous missions; for one, the geography wouldn’t allow it since I’d have to look southwest to the Cayman Islands. But as I stared out on the seemingly endless horizon, I found myself thinking about my past, my present, and my future.

My past was filled with nothing but isolation and grief. From the time I’d been a little guy, I had never fit in. The scrawny kid in elementary school had become the scrappy fighter in middle school, who then became the big, bad beast in high school. Obviously, I never attended college, but the theme, whether I was the one being picked on, the one winning fights, or the one no one wanted to fight, was the same—a lone wolf.

Even when I was old enough not to act like a shithead around women, I never allowed myself to be anything more than a curiosity from afar. The closest I’d ever come before Emily was going on a few dates with someone over the span of about three months, but I never committed myself. And even then, after the three months, I cut it off precisely for that reason, because it was lasting much too long.

Was it any wonder that I didn’t know how to handle myself when Emily pushed back a bit? It was hard to know how to act when you’d never had any frame of reference before.

My present, obviously, was painful. I didn’t need to be walking the fucking beach on my own to have that knowledge.

And as for my future…

Well, right now, the odds were not very much in favor of it. It seemed painfully clear-cut that if things didn’t change with Emily, I was likely to just continue down this path of being a stoic dom. Maybe the violence would lessen if we finally killed Snake, but that only meant the downside and the danger would end, not that the upside would magically feel much better.

If I could not get Emily at least consider give us a shot, I couldn’t sit around acting like a pussy-ass bitch. I had to set my future for myself. I had to get the fuck out of Miami.

But in the short term, I could not do that. Not with Snake still rolling around. Not with the prospect of him coming for me, and possibly Emily, still very real, if not very likely.

I decided that I’d stick around another week and protect Emily from afar. If Snake appeared then, I would kill him and move on. If he did not, then it could be reasonably assumed—given Snake’s impatience in many spots—that he did not know about me and Emily. I would only ask to see my kids twice a year, and otherwise, I’d step back.

I wouldn’t end DOM. I would just become DOM. And whatever romance came my way would have to be short-lived unless lightning struck twice.

“So be it,” I said to myself as I looked out on the setting sun.

I walked back to my hotel room in silence. I never bothered to check on Emily again. I’d make one more run this evening to her place before I went back to my room to sleep, but I did not intend to speak to her again. She had made her position abundantly clear to me.

I made it back to my hotel room when I received a phone call. I looked down to see Scott calling.

“Scott.”

“Burke, where’s Emily?”

That was a hell of a way to start a phone call, and not in the good sense of the word. My stomach dropped. Had they gotten intel on Snake? Had they learned something I’d somehow