I'm Meant To Hate You

12

The following morning I was in my office earlier than usual. My efforts to sleep last night were not as successful as the insomnia in me, so I lay awake far too long. And yet I decided to come into work earlier than my scheduled start.

"Why are you here so early Kiana? Is everything okay?" Richard said, leaning against my doorframe. I didn't have the effort to contain my disdain any longer. My self control had retreated, leaving only the worst version of myself. No filter, no boundaries, no nothing.

"Why didn't you tell me that Emily was a former client of yours?" I asked, clearly catching him off guard as he came in and shut the door behind him.

"It wasn't relevant." He said, making his way to stand in front of the window as the sun was starting to rise. His face was scrunched up, clearly uncomfortable about the line of questioning, but he had no right to omit such details. He had no reason to.

"You know, I would have taken that answer if Emily hadn't set the exact same thing. Something you rehearsed, was it?" I sneered, shaking my head at him in disgust.

"Kiana, please. Emily and her family are more than just clients. You know that just as much as I do. I ruined it, and when I saw the same fire in you that I had, I couldn't help but take you up on it. It was wrong. But I needed it to work out with them. For them." He said, frustration seeping into his voice. In all the time that I had known him, I have never seen him get so defensive. He was usually open and honest. The fact that he had kept anything from me, let alone this, ruined the trusting relationship that I once had with him.

"For you. I would have jumped at the opportunity if you had told me the real reason. It's the fact that I was left out of it. You used me to fix something you broke, to benefit yourself. You're selfish Richard, and I never thought I'd be saying that to you." I said, standing from my desk.

"I know. But my business was on the line. I couldn't afford to lose it." His hands rubbed his face, trying to diminish the stress physically taking over him.

"My whole career is on the line trying to fix this for you. Can you go? I'm sorry, but I'm not really in the mood for this." I asked him, massaging my scalp as a headache was threatening my sanity. And then he left. No apology. All I had wanted was an apology, for him to acknowledge what he had done wrong. He did to an extent. But there was no apology. Maybe he was embarrassed. I could give him that excuse. Because he has every right to be embarrassed with the way he has treated me with this.

Before I met him, my idea of a father was thrown away before I even knew what it meant. To have a dad. Someone who loved and cherished you. Someone who taught you the harsh reality of the world as you got older. Someone to protect you when you needed it. All I wanted was what everyone around me had described. A dad. Richard brought that dream to life for me. He made me feel accepted, loved and most of all...protected. So in some light, maybe he kept it from me to protect me. But it was wrong. And I wasn't sure at this moment where or not I would be able to forgive him for it. The dream that he brought to life, was now just that again. A dream.

I then dropped back in my desk chair, checking my phone for a text from Melanie. Nothing. I decided to send her one and then await an answer, seeing as she might need the reminder that she needs to contact me at some point so I know she's alive. The most likely outcome of last night is that she went back to a woman's house, seeing as though there was no sight of her last night.

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"I can get you fired in an instance Kiana, don't fuck me around." Emily said, taking a dangerous path as she entered my office, allowing the door to bounce off the wall behind it before ricocheting and closing itself shut at the sheer force she used, blocking her bodyguards out in an instant.

"I'm sorry?" I said, standing from my desk and moving around to check on the door before moving back towards my desk. I remained standing in front of it, a little closer to Emily to try and subconsciously convince her to lower her voice.

"Yesterday you put me in a fucking bad situation, do you know how much shit you've caused me with my parents?" She blew up in front of me, taking her jacket off and placing her bag over a chair in front of her before walking towards the windows and looking out. The windows were a hotspot when stress was involved.

"It was not my intention to do such a thing. I was trying to keep you safe, god knows why that's so hard for you to see. I'm not trying to ruin your life or mess up your future, if you can't fucking see that I am doing everything I can to prevent harm coming your way then I don't know what to fucking tell you-" My rant was cut off as she crept towards me, but that wasn't why I was silenced.

Her hands reached around my back and her head rested against my chest, urging me to draw mine to a close around her. That action alone, how enticing it was to bring her closer and secure her position against me, is what silenced me. It was like I wanted to hide her from everything, protect her from the world, from what she was deprived of understanding. I wanted to keep her safe, to preserve her how she is now, like a snow flake. How can something so cold make us want to keep it the way it is? Something so dainty that the slightest touch of warmth will ruin its existence. So why did she want the warmth now? How can we go from what we used to be, to this?

"I'm sorry." She whispered, clinging onto the shirt on my back. Maybe she didn't understand whatever this is either, but the sorrow in her voice was sincere.

"For what?" I asked gently, restraining my hands from running through her hair.

"What I used to be. What I am, what I might become. I don't know-just everything." She mumbled.

"I can't accept that. At no point back then was it ever one sided. And who you were is very different to who you are. Now, you're different, you've changed. In a way that I could never have imagined. We will argue, it's in our nature to. So don't apologise for something that was both of us. And who you might become, might just surprise you more than it did me. Sometimes you have to do things you don't like to get to places you do, in your case, the thing you don't like is me." I said, my voice quieter at the end.

"But I haven't done you." She mumbled, a hint of a smirk in her voice. It almost made me chuckle, because this was a side of her that I had never seen before. Her flirty side. Especially not when it was directed at me.

"Well... anyway. I think you had better go. You're a busy woman, I don't want to keep you." I said, gently grasping onto her arms and pulling them away from my body, squeezing them before dropping my hands to my side. Her head slightly tilted as she watched me talk, her eyes darting around my face before she slowly began nodding her head, ringing her hands together.

"Y-yeah. Good idea." She spoke slowly, turning on her heels and grabbing her bag and jacket, then heading towards the door. She glanced back once before hardly giving me a moment to think before she was gone, the door shutting behind her.