“I forgot, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Go ahead and put another nail in my coffin. I’m a piece of shit, I get it, but I would like the chance to explain.”

The doubt was plain on my face. There really wasn’t an explanation that could make up for his behavior of late.

“I was dating someone, seriously, and ready to settle down less than a year ago,” he admitted. Color me intrigued, I moved to go sit on the sofa and listen to his story until I remembered that someone’s naked ass had just been parked there and there was evidence that it wasn’t the only thing that had happened on that couch considering a condom wrapper crunched under foot.

I glanced around for a safer place to sit, and upon seeing no good options, I moved over to the window instead and glanced down at the city around us. “Come on, we can go to my office. I keep it locked so nothing ever happens in there.” I almost laughed because he knew exactly what my dilemma was. I wondered why he had bothered to bring me back to his apartment to convince me of whatever he was trying to. He had to know, even if he forgot that he left a whole woman here, there was still the mess.

“Okay, I’m in your office, now what?” I asked after he unlocked the door and opened it for me to go in first.

“Have a seat, and I’ll explain everything. Maybe it will make sense to you, maybe you’ll still think I’m an asshole, who knows? I am an asshole; I’ll admit to that. Didn’t used to be this bad though.”

“So, what happened to you wanting to settle down?”

“I bought a ring to propose to my girlfriend.” He didn’t say anything else, just that, as he stared off into space for a moment. His amber eyes were almost hypnotizing as I stared at them while looking for answers to questions that up until that point, I hadn’t thought to ask. Those eyes that started out as a darker, almost brown ring and became more golden the closer they got to his pupils, held me captivated, but they gave no answers. Instead, I waited for him to offer up exactly what happened to turn him into the asshole playboy he had been portraying to the rest of the world.

After staring at the wall in front of him for a few moments, Samuel turned his gaze back on me. “The day I planned to propose, I found her fucking my father in the boardroom at one of our satellite offices where I’d been working the previous year. Venla had been trying to get me to bring her on as my personal assistant, and when I said no, because I wanted business and home life to have some separation, she appealed to my father behind my back. He hired her while he was there, and well, they started having an affair. Neither of them would admit to how long it had been going on, but she had apparently been employed there for six weeks before I found out.”