Page 3 of How To Resist Mr. Wrong (Mr. Wrong Chronicles #1)

Present

After a month of working in the office next to Sebastian, Emily was weirdly okay. She was very surprised by this turn of events because being around Sebastian here had never been easy for her, including when they were just fresh-faced interns.

Other than one “You made them delete the group chat, didn't you?” she was able to avoid any conversation with him. They kept it strictly professional. It helped that Sebastian was still finishing his mandatory training. He hadn't started working yet, which Emily knew was about to change very soon.

She was glad he had stopped sharing their past excursions with the team, though. Small wins! She would know if he was because Marissa wasn’t just good at her work, she had superhearing and an oversharing problem, too. She was the perfect assistant.

Emily looked at the time again and sighed. Maybe Sebastian stepping up wouldn’t be the worst thing. All the late nights were making her cranky.

Or ‘more cranky,’ as Marissa had corrected her.

Emily’s phone buzzed suddenly with a FaceTime call, a name on the screen she unfortunately couldn't ignore.

“Emily Ruth Bailey, don’t tell me you’re still at the office! It’s after 11 pm, babe!” her best friend’s concerned face said on her phone screen.

“Yeah, yeah. Why are you up at 11 pm, though? I thought you were trying out the adult people schedule?” Emily deflected. It had become disappointingly easy to distract Ray lately.

“Your goddaughter is refusing to let me sleep,” Ray complained, countering it by looking down adoringly at her belly. “I have to use the bathroom five times a night, so I thought I would try this new routine where you go to bed when you’re so tired your brain just gives up on waking you,” Ray said.

“Well, that sounds like a good plan,” Emily sympathized. “How is Jess taking the new routine?”

“Oh, she decided it was a better idea to adapt after suggesting once that I should reconsider,” Ray said, looking behind the camera with a smirk. Did her eyes glow for a millisecond?

Emily felt her goosebumps rising. “What did you do to poor Jess?” she asked. She completely believed that if something could make the unflappable Ray snap, it was pregnancy. She needed to know if she had ‘body hiding’ in her future.

Ray laughed. That didn’t ease Emily’s worries. “Nothing!” Ray said. “The first step of conflict resolution is conversation, remember?” she assured her.

“What’s the next step?” Emily asked hesitantly. Might as well be prepared for the future.

“Oh, you’ll know,” Ray said ominously.

So, Emily shut her laptop, giving up on getting any work done tonight, and gave her full attention to Ray’s switching from complaining how every minute was so annoying to stressing how she was literally performing a miracle right now.

But she regretted her decision when Ray changed the topic.

“How’s my lovely ex treating you?” she asked.

She didn’t even try to be subtle about her curiosity.

Emily wouldn’t be surprised if this was the entire reason behind this late-night call.

Sleep tended to lower inhibitions, and Ray was just evil enough to use that against her.

But who was she kidding? She needed to talk about Sebastian with someone, and Ray was the best person for the job. So, she decided to be honest after all. “Almost alright. But it kinda feels like the calm before a storm, you know?”

“I don’t know why you’re so worried, especially for someone who can’t stop declaring she doesn’t care about him anymore,” Ray commented.

Urgh, how did Emily forget Ray was pro-Seb? “Of course, I don’t care about him! But I also don’t trust him, so it’s not the best to have him working here,” Emily countered.

“What do you think he’ll do, Em?” Ray asked patiently, making Emily feel like a child complaining about minor inconveniences. “He’s good at his job. That’s why your father let him come back,” she hammered in. “Besides, he’d never do anything to hurt you.”

That made Emily scoff. “Are you sure?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. “I don’t know why you keep taking his side after everything,” she said, feeling abandoned. “I know you guys were closer than us, but he left you, too!”

“First, you know that’s not true, Em. You’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember. It was just one thing I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. It had nothing to do with my relationship with Seb,” Ray said, repeating the same reassurance she’d given Emily for years.

And Emily did what she always did after she brought up their past. She apologized. “You know what, you’re right. Sorry for bringing that up. It was so long ago, it doesn’t matter.”

As always, Ray let it go, even though Emily was sure she wasn’t convinced.

Emily hated that she still felt residual hurt every time this conversation came up, but it wasn’t Ray’s fault.

It was Sebastian’s! Emily wasn’t sure how, but she had decided it was.

“Why do you still trust him?” Emily asked, genuinely curious.

“I just do,” Ray said, looking sure.

“You’ve been talking to him, haven’t you?” Emily asked, trying to hide how much Ray’s answer was going to hurt her.

“He reached out after we came back from Mexico, and we might have met a few times since,” Ray said, too focused on fixing her blanket over her to look at the screen.

Well, that was wise because Emily was furious now. “So over a year? You didn’t tell me you’ve been talking to him for more than a year?” Emily asked.

“It started slow,” Ray confessed. At least she had the courtesy to look guilty. “He said he tried talking to you, too, but you won’t text him back or pick up his calls.”

“You talked to him about me ?” Emily asked. Somehow, that seemed worse than her best friend choosing Seb over her. Again.

“I mean, you’ve been a part of most of our conversations since school, Em. You know that. I don’t know what you want me to say. He’s trying, you know?” Ray, the betrayer, said.

“Wow! Have we suddenly gone back to being eighteen? Now I’m worried if that is even my godchild in your belly!” Emily accused.

“Of course it’s yours!” Ray said, offended. “The next one, however…” she said, smiling now.

“I hate you so much right now! I don’t know how this guy is always steamrolling my life,” Emily complained.

“C’mon, you don’t really feel that, babe. Talk to him!” Ray said, a little sternly.

“And why would I do that? If I craved conversations with selfish bastards, I'd just download Tinder!” Emily narrowed her eyes.

“Maybe because you haven’t been on a single date in the last four years?” Ray countered.

“That’s because I’ve been working on myself. It has nothing to do with that useless liar!”

“For someone who had not been single for more than a few months since middle school, that’s a drastic U-turn. Forgive me for worrying!” Ray argued.

“You know what? You’re being annoying. Go sleep,” Emily said. Ray’s pregnancy brain was obviously making her too trusting of even the worst betrayers, so Emily decided she shouldn't be too angry. At least until the baby was out of her.

Besides, Emily accepted years ago that she’ll have to share Ray with Sebastian, however unfortunate and frustrating it was right now. He was there for her when no one else was, and Ray would never forget that.

“I really should,” she admitted. “Hey Em, I know he hurt you, and I’m not trying to minimize that, but I think you should hear him out,” she said, looking resigned to her request being ignored.

“I don’t think I can. But I’m okay with you being his friend again,” Emily offered.

“Thanks for your blessing,” Ray said, rolling her eyes. “Now go home. Love you!”

“Love you,” Emily said and disconnected the call.

Emily hated that she didn’t see this coming. This man was on a quest to destroy all the parts of her life. But Emily wouldn’t let him. Not this time!

***

The time Emily dreaded but knew was unavoidable came a week later. Sebastian finally took up his responsibilities, and the first day went as well as Emily had imagined.

Emily burst into Sebastian’s office for what felt like the twentieth time that day.

“Why did you change the estimate for the entire project?” They had already discussed this, and she was sure they agreed on the numbers.

But apparently, Sebastian had decided to completely ignore the contents of the entire two-hour meeting.

“Hey Emily, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you can no longer survive without seeing my face every five minutes,” Sebastian greeted her with a huge grin on his face.

Emily rolled her eyes. “Why the new changes, Sebastian?”

A knock on the door interrupted Emily’s interrogation. “Come in,” she said.

Marissa came in breathing heavily. “Oh, thank god, Seb is still alive,” Marissa said, literally sighing with relief.

Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes again, she realized she’d been doing it too much lately.

Maybe that was the reason behind her recent, almost constant headaches?

Or it was the person in front of her fighting a smile.

“Barely,” he said, making his eyes bigger. Were his lips quivering? Why were these people working in a marketing agency? They clearly belonged in a theatre.

Marissa turned to her and said, “It’s not Seb’s fault, Em. I just saw that some of the miscellaneous costs were calculated twice, so I removed them before forwarding the final budget to you.”

Emily slumped on one of the chairs, confused. “How could this have happened, though? We discussed everything on the call last week,” she contemplated out loud.

“It’s okay. I can sit back and go through everything again just to be sure,” Marissa offered. “Although…” she took out her phone and looked at something. “Actually, it’s okay, I can just not go,” she said and kept the phone back.

“No, you don’t have to miss your niece’s birthday party. I’ll check it, don’t worry,” Sebastian offered.

“But you would need to read through all the old files to cross-check things,” Marissa said and looked hopefully at Emily.