Page 22 of The October Arrangement

“Fuck.”

I walked down the hallway and stopped outside her bedroom door, staring at it for a moment. This was ridiculous. I negotiated multi-million-dollar contracts without even breaking a sweat. I’d walk into boardrooms full of people who wanted to tear apart my numbers and convince them to hand me hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet, I was standing outside Bella’s door in my own home, rehearsing sentences in my head.

I lightly knocked. No answer.

“Bella?”

Still no answer. I knocked again. This time a little harder.

“Go away, Simon!” she shouted.

I slowly opened the door. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed with her laptop in front of her.

“Did I say you could come in?” Her eyes met mine.

“No.”

“Then why are you in here?”

“Honestly, because you told me to go away.”

“And you naturally interpreted that as come into my bedroom? Where did you go to school?” Her eyes narrowed.

“I’m not particularly good at taking orders,” I said.

“Shocking!” she said.

I turned and shut the door. Why? I had no idea.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Apologizing.” I tucked my hands into my pants pockets.

She closed her laptop. “You’re what?”

“You heard me. I was an asshole.”

“Wow. Maybe I should record this,” she said.

“Don’t make me regret coming in here.”

“Oh, I’m definitely going to make you regret it.”

I had to fight back the smile that was starting to form on my lips.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was angry.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” she said. “And what the hell were you angry about? We were having a normal conversation.”

“I had no right to judge what you did when you were twenty. And I definitely had no right to imply that you losing your job had anything to do with the choices you made back then. I also shouldn’t have said you were imposing on people.”

“No. You shouldn’t have.” Her face was stone cold. “Anything else?” Her brow raised.

Jesus Christ, this was killing me.

“You were right,” I said. Her eyes widened, and I immediately regretted saying it.

“Could you repeat that?” she asked.