Page 44 of Fighting the Pull

But there was more.

It was about having a partner in life. It was about having someone who would go out and get you chicken soup and Nyquil when you were sick. Someone you could complain about a shitty day to. Someone who counted on you to be there to listen when they had one. Someone who was always there so you could both go out and take in a movie, then dissect it over some Thai or Chinese or a slice before you went home and made love.

It was also about creating something that was of the both of you, loving them and doing the best you could by them before you turned them loose on the world.

And I didn’t fool myself.

It was about the need to find a guy like my dad. A man who deserved love, even adoration, and giving that to him his whole life in a way he’d never doubt it, not from the minute I gave him that gift, all the way to the moment he died.

I did want all of that, even though, still not fooling myself, I knew finding the right man would be difficult because I would expect him to make the same number of sacrifices I’d make to build our life and our family.

It wasn’t going to be a given I’d drop everything and rush to school if one of our kids got sick. It wasn’t going to be expected that I’d make sure the fridge was full and food was on the table, or the clothes were clean and put away.

Still, to this day, these things were so embedded in our society, women unwittingly fell into patterns I had no interest in and had no intention of following.

So, yes. I was aware my search would be long and arduous and might come to nothing in the end.

But still, I wanted someone to share my life with.

It was just that now wasn’t the time to start that search.

Sure, if he crossed my path, I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity.

But Hale was not that man. Not only because he clearly played games, but because I was sitting across from him on the couch when he said he didn’t want the same thing.

He’d be a fantastic diversion in the meantime, for certain.

But I wasn’t going to be jerked around just because he could, all his attention devoted to me, a kiss that was a flagrant promise, and then nothing but necessary communication for days after.

Fuck that noise.

On that thought, I threw the covers aside, and the blast of cold that hit me was a better wakeup call than the alarm.

I made some coffee, hit the bathroom, did my getting-ready thing and headed out.

Zoey was already in her office when I arrived. Something else I liked about her. She was all over it all the time.

I called out a greeting and she was in the doorway to my office before I had my coat off.

“Need your approval to launch the Hale Wheeler blast,” she said, setting her laptop on my desk and turning it to face me. “Has he signed off?”

“Yep,” I confirmed as I sat and pulled her laptop close to me, seeing the preview of my homepage was up, as well as the tab for the Meta Business Suite.

“Geraldine sent in some pictures she took last night of Jamie Oakley and Nora Ellington. She’s offering us an exclusive. I recommend we buy them. They look gorgeous and there’s a lot of scuttlebutt around them. They’ve been seen together so much, it has to be getting serious.”

I noted Zoey had some pictures minimized just as she went on talking.

“And it fits, because Hale was with them last night.”

That felt like a punch landing, but I hid it as I casually asked, “What were they doing?”

I wanted it to be some kind of event, one where it wasn’t appropriate for us to be seen together since we’d had one date (and it was a date, even if it started out fake, it didn’t end that way). Obviously, we were nowhere near making it official by appearing together at an event.

“Out to dinner,” Zoey answered.

Just out to dinner with some friends, when he could have been out to dinner on his last night in the city with me.

Mm-hmm.