Chapter 4
Avery
By noon, I had already lived six separate lives and all of them needed a drink.
Technically, I had a job. Technically, I should have gone home after leaving Rowe Tower, opened my laptop, read over whatever onboarding packet Benjamin Mercer had probably designed with the emotional warmth of a hostage manual, and prepared myself to become the kind of woman who arrived at corporate buildings before the coffee had fully hit.
Instead, I walked three blocks in the wrong direction, bought an iced latte I could not afford, and stood under the green awning of a bakery staring into traffic while my body slowly realized it had survived the morning.
That was the thing about fear. It did not leave when the threat left.
It lingered in the bloodstream like a bad guest, touching all the furniture and reminding you it had been there long after they left.
Jules found me twenty minutes later at a tiny café that was mostly marble, plants, and women in boots discussing Pilates with the seriousness of foreign policy.
I had chosen a corner table because it had a view of the door and a wall at my back, as though Benjamin might rappel from the ceiling and accuse me of mishandling a napkin.
I had my new job offer, my visitor badge still tucked in my purse, Ben’s heavy business card sitting on the table between my coffee and a croissant I had bought out of optimism and then forgotten to eat.
Jules walked in wearing sunglasses despite the gray day, a long black coat, and the expression of a woman arriving for either brunch or an exorcism. She took one look at me and stopped.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “You look employed.”
“I feel haunted.”
“By opportunity?”
“By a tyrannical little man named Benjamin.”
She slid into the chair across from me, dropped her bag beside her, and picked up the business card without asking. “Benjamin Mercer,” she read. “Executive Assistant to Callum Rowe. Oh, this card has weight. This card has enemies. This card has a safe word.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m fragile.”
“You’re not fragile. You’re newly hired. It’s similar, but with taxes.” She turned the card over, inspected the back, then laid it down with reverence. “Did he emboss this with the bones of weaker assistants?”
“Probably interns.”
“Efficient.”
I put my face in my hands. “I start tomorrow.”
“I know. You told me. I screamed, remember?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“No one does.”
“I had lint on my jacket this morning. Ben noticed.”
“Of course he did.” She leaned forward. “Tell me everything. And do not skip the hot parts out of shame. Shame is for people with boring not-hot godfathers.”
I groaned so deeply the woman at the next table glanced over. “Please don’t call him that in public.”
“What should I call him? Your father’s best friend? Your morally complicated benefactor? Mr. Structural Integrity?”
“Jules.”
“Fine. Callum.” She said his name like she was testing it for mouthfeel. “There. Very normal. Very adult. Very man-who-can-probably-lift-you-up-off-the-floor-with-one-hand.”
“You are sick.”
“Alive. We covered this.”
I tried to take a sip of my coffee and nearly missed the straw. My hands were still not entirely steady. Jules noticed, but instead of softening immediately, she reached across the table and stole the top corner of my croissant.
“Start with the office,” she ordered. “Was it luxurious?”
“It was restrained luxury.”
“Oh, the worst kind.”
“Glass walls. Black desk. City view. Architectural models. Everything expensive enough to look simple. His pen was aligned with the edge of a legal pad.”
“Terrifying.”
“Extremely.”
“And him?”
I looked at my coffee. The straw had a lipstick mark on it already.
“He was kind,” I tried to say the words without a sigh.
Jules was quiet for a second, which was how I knew she had heard the part I did not say.
Then she said, “Kind how?”
“Not let-me-save-the-poor-little-orphan-out-of-pity kind. Just…” I searched for the right word and hated every option because none of them did the thing justice.
“But nice. He asked real questions. He didn’t let me make everything into a joke, but he didn’t punish me for joking either.
He made me talk about what I did wrong, which was awful and rude and probably healthy. ”
“Men should not be allowed to be hot and emotionally literate.”
“He is not—”
“Avery.”
I stopped and Jules raised one perfect eyebrow.
“He’s attractive,” I said carefully.
“A generous understatement. The man looks like he was carved out of granite storm clouds and unresolved issues.”
“That’s oddly accurate.”
“I have a gift.” She took another piece of croissant. “Was he wearing a suit?”
“Yes.”
“Tie?”
“No.”
“Oh, illegal.”
“White shirt. Open at the throat. Charcoal suit.”
“Prison.”
“Jules.”
“Immediate prison. No trial. The open throat alone is evidence.”
I laughed, and it came out easier than before, some of the morning tension draining from my chest. This was why I had reached out to her instead of going home.
Alone, I would have turned every moment into a legal proceeding and prosecuted myself until dinner.
With Jules, at least the prosecution came with a tasty pastry.
She leaned back, eyes narrowed with wicked attention. “Did he hug you?”
I stared at her.
She gasped. “He did.”
“He asked first.”
“Oh, that’s worse.”
“It was not worse. It was respectful.”
“Respectful is worse when you’re attracted to someone. Disrespect gives you something to be mad at. Respect makes you imagine being very respectfully ruined.”
I choked on absolutely nothing. “I hate you.”
“You keep saying that, and yet you keep coming back to me.” She pointed a croissant flake at me. “How long was the hug?”
“Normal.”
“Normal for a godfather or normal for a man who smells expensive?”
“It was brief.”
“Did he smell expensive?”
I covered my face again.
“Avery.”
“Yes.”
Jules slapped the table softly. “I knew it.”
“It was soap and coffee and a hint of something cedar-ish. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means he was designed in a lab to destroy you.”
“He was not.”
“Did you feel safe?”
The question, dropped suddenly into the banter, caught me by surprise, and I looked up. Jules’s face was still amused, but somehow gentler beneath it. She knew how to do that, how to turn a corner inside a conversation without making a production of it.
“Yes,” I replied after a second. “I did.”
“And nervous?”
“Terribly.”
“And horny?”
“Jules.”
“I am asking as your friend and legal counsel.”
“You are not my legal counsel.”
“I passed a quiz once about tenant rights.”
“That does not qualify you.”
“It qualifies me emotionally.” She folded her arms. “Answer the question.”
I looked away toward the window, where the city moved through a thin wet shine, taxis sliding past, pedestrians dodging puddles with that little urban hop everyone pretended wasn’t ridiculous.
A man outside shook rain from his umbrella.
I watched him too intently, as if the answer might be written in the drops he left on the sidewalk.
“Yes,” I said finally.
Jules did not make a sound. That was how I knew she understood that this mattered a great deal.
I swallowed. “There were moments, but not like the whole time. It wasn’t like I walked into his office and immediately lost my mind.”
“No, you saved that for after the hugging and professional evaluation.”
“Exactly.” I picked at the croissant because right now, my humiliation required carbs. “He was so serious. So firm. And not mean. That’s the thing. He wasn’t mean. He was just… clear. He told me it was a real job. He said I needed to understand that. He made me say more than just yes.”
Jules’s mouth slowly opened.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was only going to say that ‘say more than yes’ is a sentence that should be regulated by the FDA.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?”
I thought about Callum leaning forward, his gaze steady on mine as he spoke. I thought about the awful, immediate heat that had moved through me, and how my body had reacted before the professional part of my brain could slam both hands over the alarm bells.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” I think I might have whispered.
“Ah.” Jules nodded solemnly. “The official motto of every inevitable disaster.”
“I almost felt like…” I stopped and squeezed my eyes shut. “No. I am not saying this.”
“You must. I have already paid for parking.”
“You walked here.”
“Emotionally, I have paid.”
I lowered my voice. “I felt like I wanted to be good. For him.”
Jules’s face went incandescent.
“Do not.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I am being so calm.” She pressed both hands flat on the table. “Avery Hale, did your godfather accidentally activate your praise kink during a job interview?”
“I don’t have a praise kink.”
“You were unemployed yesterday and in denial today. Busy week.”
“I am a serious employee.”
“You start tomorrow.”
“I am a serious future employee.”
“You are a serious future employee who wanted to be a very good girl for your new boss.”
“Stop saying words.”
“I will not. Words are my medium.”
I was laughing now, but the laughter had heat, embarrassment, and relief all tangled together.
It felt obscene to say any of this out loud in a café where two women beside us were comparing oat milk brands.
It also felt necessary. The secret had been swelling all morning in me, pressing against my ribs.
Speaking it out loud to Jules did not make it safe, exactly, but it made it less monstrous.
Desire hated daylight. Jules dragged everything into daylight, then offered it some delicious baked goods.
She sat back and watched me over the rim of her coffee. “Was he?”
“Was he what?”
“Don’t play delicate with me. Was he affected?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“I suspect.”
“Suspect based on vibes or evidence?”
“Jules.”
“I’m asking in the interest of science.”
I stared into my coffee again. “There was a moment when he looked down at my resume for too long.”
“That is not evidence. Men love paper when frightened.”