23. Genevieve
Chapter twenty-three
Genevieve
Ididn’t remember the drive home. One minute I was watching Eugene swing between us, his small hand gripping mine, the other wrapped around Reid’s like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The next, I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, still dressed, shoes kicked somewhere near the door, mascara smudged at the corners of my eyes from the tears that slipped despite everything in me trying not to let them.
My brain refused to quiet.
Every time I blinked, something new surfaced. Reid’s hands on me against the balcony rail. His voice against my throat, broken and angry. His question:
Why didn’t you tell me when you were pregnant with him?
It kept echoing in the depths of my skull.
But just as unbearable was the memory of him at the soccer field, his calm nods, his small smile at Eugene’s growl, his hand catching his shoulder like it was instinct. Like he’d done it a thousand times.
He shouldn’t be that good with him. He shouldn’t care that much or fit so seamlessly into that moment that it felt like the life we should’ve had.
My chest tightened and I turned onto my side, drawing a shaky breath.
Because I ruined that… I ruined everything.
And now it was all coming back in way I couldn’t deal with fast enough.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, willing myself to stop replaying it. The way he touched me before he walked away, his shoulders tightening as though leaving me cost him something he didn’t want to admit.
I knew the way he loved and broke apart.
I’d seen it in his eyes on that balcony… and again when he looked at Eugene.
Another tear slipped down my temple. Every inhale brought something else I didn’t want to feel: guilt, longing… regret. The terrifying sense that I was slipping back toward him faster than I could stop myself.
And worse—
The thought I’d avoided for years, the one that had clawed its way back these past few nights:
I never stopped loving him.
Even when I tried to build a life without him. I convinced myself I chose safety, tried to convince myself he didn’t want me anymore—
God… what am I doing?
I exhaled shakily, pressing both palms over my face. Tomorrow I’d have to see him, pretend I was fine, that I wasn’t losing myself all over again.
Despite my pleas, desperate for him to not destroy everything I’d built… I wasn’t afraid of Reid destroying my life. I was afraid of how easily… how willingly… I’d let him.
Last night I’d barely slept. My head spun, thinking of everything under the sun.
Gregory didn’t come home either. He didn’t even check on the son that knew not to wait up for him. But I was too tired to fight for him to notice his son. Those battles I could never win.
Stepping out of my office, I walked toward the conference room, notes in hand; however, my steps faltered as the elevator chimed.
It was Cheryl.
Her blouse was perfectly tucked, hair loose around her shoulders, not a single sign of fatigue on her face. She looked absolutely radiant.
For the amount of times she’d shown unprompted, you would have thought I was actively searching for her… but that wasn’t the reason I was still fixated on her.
It was what she was holding.
A baby… balanced easily on her hip, rocking gently as she walked down the hall like she belonged here. She was effortless even with a child in her arms.
My steps slowed.
Gregory stepped out of his office in a hurry, nearly colliding with her. Whatever tension he had in his shoulders suddenly intensified. He said something I couldn’t hear, but Cheryl smiled soft and harmless as she bounced the little girl slightly higher.
The baby reached for him. And everything inside me stilled.
Gregory froze, distress flickering across his face, eyes sweeping the hallway in a frantic check of who might be watching. His gaze skimmed over me once, barely a second, before relief softened his shoulders.
He thought no one saw.
Then he took the baby’s tiny hands in his own and… he pressed a gentle kiss to them as she babbled at him.
My breath caught as he smiled at her.
It was a real smile. Not the forced, distracted one I’d learned to live with, or the fractured one he summoned for Eugene when guilt finally pulled him home. This one was warm and natural.
Before I could process the sting of that, Gregory placed a hand on Cheryl’s lower back, his touch intimate and far too familiar as he ushered her into his office before he shut the door behind them.
Then he ran a stressed hand through his hair, pacing once before abruptly turning and heading in the opposite direction.
His face seemed riddled with guilt. Or at least that’s what I thought. Was that guilt I’d seen? I wasn’t sure.
My brain didn’t even try to put meaning to it. It just replayed the image over and over: his panic when he saw them, the relief when he thought no one noticed. The ease with her child… his willingness to be present… just not for his own son.
I don’t think it was jealousy that crawled up my spine. No… it was anger. Tired, soul-crushing anger wrapped in confusion.
How could he be all of that… tender, attentive, present, for someone else’s child… but couldn’t bother to be half of it for Eugene?
“Genevieve.” A voice cut clean through my thoughts.
I turned quickly. Alexander stood a few feet away, a folder tucked under his arm, his brows drawn in mild concern. He always looked that way when something wasn’t going according to schedule.
Which, apparently, included me.
“You’re needed in the conference room,” he said. “The investor prep meeting is starting. They’re waiting on your notes for the PR portion.”
Right. The meeting. The board. The press strategy. The world I was supposed to be functioning in instead of replaying things I had no right to feel.
I nodded and followed him, my feet somehow moving while my brain stayed rooted in the last two minutes in that hallway.
By the time we reached the conference room, half the board was already seated. Papers shuffled. Men murmured. Graphs displayed with projected numbers that meant everything for the company.
Alexander set a packet in front of me.
“Focus on the messaging strategy,” he murmured. “Mr. Kaufman wants clean, confident talking points for investor reassurance.”
My mind could barely string thoughts together, but I nodded anyway.
The door opened again and the air shifted as Reid walked in, dark expression carved from stone, suit tailored to perfection, his presence commanding enough to straighten the room without him needing to ask.
He took his seat at the head of the table, conveniently beside me, before flipping open a file with controlled precision.
He hadn’t looked at me yet.
“Let’s begin,” he said, cutting through the silence.
The meeting moved around me. Numbers, projections, investor phrases I’d memorized a decade ago—but none of it landed. My mind kept drifting, kept wandering, a mix of emotions swelling inside of me. Anger, frustration, guilt, none of them backing down.
And of course Reid noticed, his eyes flickering to my fumbling hands every so often.
When the discussion shifted to PR, my section, Alexander subtly nudged my packet toward me as a reminder. I blinked down at the page. Words swam in my vision as the letters rearranged themselves. I heard Reid inhale, slow, before he spoke.
“Genevieve,” he said, in that low, tempting voice… It was the voice that kept me up at night. “You’re up.”
I swallowed. My mouth refused to speak. “…Right… where do I begin.”
I flipped through to the first page, ready to speak when I felt it—the slightest brush of a shoe against my ankle.
Then I felt his hand sliding over my knee. I paused.
He finally looked at me. His eyes filled with false intrigue, completely unbothered, composed… while his fingers slipped higher beneath the hem of my skirt like he was simply adjusting his cufflink.
This was another one of his humiliation rituals he had in store for me. It had to be. However, it was less of a PR stunt showing up with your brother’s fiancée and more of an HR violation, touching an employee under the table in a meeting.
My pulse pounded painfully in my ears, and he gave my thigh the faintest squeeze. It said what he didn’t say aloud.
Focus.
It felt like a command. Heat flooded my cheeks, my lungs tightening as I forced myself to speak, to string together coherent statements while his hand remained on my leg.
“Our projected stabilization timeline… indicates a promising early shift in investor confidence.” My voice steadied by the second sentence, which seemed to have pleased him.
His thumb stroked once along the inside of my thigh. Approval.
I nearly lost it.
But somehow… somehow I kept talking. Kept reading the notes Alexander had given me in the pitch perfect way that sold confidence. But these estimations, these numbers, these statements to give to the press… they were too favorable, too fast and unbelievable.
Because that’s exactly what they were. It seemed the more I talked, the more the table seemed on board. Clearly, I was the only one smart enough to see this plan was too perfect for the chaos that happened behind those entrance doors for the last few years.
Not one person questioned the numbers.
Nor did anyone notice the way my breath trembled or wonder why Reid Kaufman, king of calculated indifference, was glancing at me now with the smallest, most infuriating flicker of smugness and desire.
His hand slid higher, his gaze turning back to the clueless businessmen.
“If all goes according to plan,” Reid began, “stabilization by the end of the quarter is feasible, enough to keep investor withdrawals at bay. This company looks stable because we’re making it stable.
Once the new investments begin to progress, profits should be well within projected range. ”
His hand inched higher and heat flooded through me so fast it made my spine straighten without meaning to. I attempted to cross my leg, shifting it away from him. That was a mistake.
His hand tightened on my leg, possessive and claiming as he pulled me back. I cleared my throat, attempting to hide the gasp that had escaped me.
Alexander glanced at me for half a second, unaware. Or pretending to be.
And when Reid’s fingers slipped beneath my panties, my entire body jolted—but he didn’t react. His index finger stroked once directly between my folds. I kept my head lowered, my thighs tightening instinctively, desperate to shut him out and keep myself from coming apart like this.
Another mistake.
He twisted his wrist gently, prying my legs open under the table with ease. A single finger pushed inside, unhurried, forcing sound back into my throat that I barely swallowed.
“Anything to add, Genevieve?” he asked, voice calm, eyes never leaving the file in his hand.
He curled his finger inside me, deep. My back arched a fraction before I forced it still. I managed a tiny shake of my head, nails digging crescent moons into my palm. His second finger slid in just as easily, stretching and filling me up.
Reid didn’t even blink. “Then let’s discuss the asset reallocation framework and—”
I swallowed hard, my thighs spreading wider under the table as my mind tuned out the sound of the room. My eyes stayed glued to the report in front of me, the numbers swimming, useless, meaningless under the vibration of his palm against me.
All I could feel was the wet glide of his fingers. I could hear my breath catching, my pulse racing in my ears.
His fingers pumped deeper, slow at first, then deliberately firmer, coaxing every muscle in my body into silent, shaking obedience and utter shame. I tried to keep my composure, biting down on my lip as my stomach flipped.
I was right at the edge… fucking hanging over it at this point. His thumb found my clit, the pad of it toying with my center. My hips bucked involuntarily, searching for his hand, for more.
God, I’m going to lose it.
I’m going to cum in a room full of executives and investors.
I couldn’t stop it. I—
Nothing. In a split second, there was absolutely nothing. Reid pulled his hand out of my aching core, my entire body throbbing around nothing, clenching in desperate, humiliating pulses that had nothing to take. I was so close it hurt.
My mouth fell open in shock before I picked my jaw up off the floor before anyone noticed. The emptiness hit me harder than the pleasure had. And the idiot had the nerve to still look smug about it, his fake all-business persona up as he deliberately ignored my searing gaze.
He was perfectly fine. Meanwhile, I was a mess beside him. A wet, trembling, pathetic mess.
He wiped his hand casually against his thigh under the table.
The same hand that had been inside me seconds ago.
I sat, jaw clenched for the rest of the meeting, my thoughts unable to form coherent sentences, the denied pleasure and anger fighting in the depths of my mind…
and unfortunately, I spent the rest of the day in dire need of a cold shower.