Chapter 16
Avery
By late afternoon on Sunday, I had spent approximately forty-six hours pretending I was a reasonable woman with a reasonable life, and I was exhausted from the effort.
Callum had been gone all weekend, off fighting whatever public-relations monster Hartwell had become.
I had done what any mature adult woman would do when the billionaire CEO who was also her godfather and her boss sent her home after making her feel like the center of his universe and a very good/naughty girl, then left town.
I cleaned my apartment because I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
I answered Jules’s texts inconsistently.
I ordered groceries I did not need because I mistook the ability to select Greek yogurt on an app as evidence that I had control over my life.
When I hadn’t answered her quickly enough for the fifth time, Jules had declared my solitude ‘psychologically unsound’ and arrived with soup, wine, and a tote bag full of nail polish, cozy sweatshirts, and face masks.
“You look like a ghost,” she observed helpfully when I opened the door.
“I missed you too.”
“No, you didn’t. You miss your man.”
“He’s not my man.”
Jules walked in, kicked the door shut behind her, and gave me a look so flat it could have supported municipal infrastructure. “Avery.”
“He’s not,” I insisted, following her into the kitchen. “I don’t know what he is.”
“That is both more honest and more disappointing.”
I leaned back against the counter while she unpacked containers of soup with the confidence of a woman staging an intervention all by herself.
“I go back tomorrow,” I said softly.
“I assumed.”
“I don’t know how to act.”
“You walk in. You do your job. You do not mount him in a glass conference room.”
“Thank you for that practical framework.”
“I am but a humble servant.” She pulled two bowls from my cabinet. “What exactly is the question?”
The problem was that there were too many questions, and they kept multiplying by the second.
Was I his girlfriend? Was that ridiculous?
Was I a secret? Obviously, yes, but was I a shameful secret or a necessary secret?
Was he going to call me into his office Monday morning and kiss me until I forgot my own name, or sit behind his desk and treat me like Miss Hale with all the warmth of a tax auditor?
Was I supposed to wait for him to decide?
Was that hot? It was, unfortunately. Was it also horrifying?
Yes. My brain was turning into a hostile work environment.
I took the bowl Jules handed me and did not eat from it.
“I don’t want to be his…” I stopped, because even saying it felt ugly.
Jules’s face softened in that quick, insightful way of hers. “His what?”
I stared down at the soup. It was tomato basil. She had brought the good kind from the deli around the corner, which cost too much and tasted like absolute heaven.
“His toy,” I admitted finally. “His midlife crisis. His secret little office thing. I mean, obviously, the sex part is…” I looked up at the ceiling as if the word I needed might be hiding behind the light fixture. “It is what it is.”
“What it is,” Jules repeated.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not. I’m simply admiring restraint from a woman who called me Friday night and said, and I quote, ‘I have discovered why men own desks.’”
My face went hot. “I was vulnerable.”
“You were graphic.”
“I was processing.”
“You were composing Yelp reviews for furniture.”
“Jules.”
She laughed, but only for a second. Then she set her bowl down and came to lean beside me against the counter, shoulder brushing mine. “You’re allowed to want the sex and also want the meaning.”
I closed my eyes.
That was the thing she did. She let me dress my fears in ten layers of jokes and then reached calmly through all of them and touched the bruise.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to want anything,” I confessed.
“You are twenty-five, not a child bride in a melodrama.”
“He’s my boss.”
“Yes.”
“He was my father’s best friend.”
“Yes.”
“He is forty-something and terrifyingly rich and has an assistant who probably knows seven ways to make a body disappear through calendar blocking.”
“Also yes.”
“He gave me a job.”
“And you are doing that job.” Jules turned her head toward me. “Avery, I’m not saying this isn’t complicated. I’m saying you are not a napkin being blown around by a billionaire breeze. You have agency. Weird, horny, anxiety-riddled agency, but agency.”
I laughed despite myself. “Beautifully put.”
“I should embroider it.”
I looked toward the window. Across the street, a man in a baseball cap stood near a parked car, looking down at his phone.
Nothing about him should have mattered. People stood near cars and looked at phones all the time.
The city was basically built on people standing in inconvenient places while looking at phones.
Still, a faint unease moved across my shoulders, the same little cold thread I had felt outside Rowe Tower.
“What?” Jules asked.
“Nothing.”
She followed my gaze to the window. The man turned and walked away before either of us could decide if he was worth concern.
“You still feeling watched?” she asked.
I stared at her. “How did you know?”
“You told me about the guy outside the tower.”
“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”
“Probably,” she agreed, which was not the same thing as definitely. “Did you tell Callum?”
“No.”
“Avery.”
“He’s away dealing with the Hartwell thing. I didn’t want to add my paranoia to his weekend.”
“You mean you didn’t want him to worry.”
“Maybe.”
“Or you didn’t want him to buy your entire block and send a private security team.”
I looked at her.
She nodded. “Which is fair. I would also fear that.”
We ate on the couch with our legs tucked under us and the television volume low, some old movie neither of us watched.
Jules painted my nails a color called Wine Crime, which felt too on the nose, and I talked through every possible Monday scenario until she finally put the polish brush down and held up one finger.
“Tomorrow, you do not try to solve the relationship in the elevator.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You absolutely were. I could hear you pre-writing a speech.”
“I had maybe a few bullet points at best.”
“Avery.”
“I don’t want to walk in there and not know what I am to him.”
Her expression gentled. “Then ask.”
“Just ask?”
“Yes. Radical, I know.”
“What if he says something awful?”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough. That man gave you exits before he kissed you and severance before he touched you. He may be morally complicated, but he is not careless with you.”
I swallowed.
That was true. It was also what made the whole thing harder. Callum, unfortunately, kept giving me choices and then making the dangerous one feel like mine.
My phone buzzed shortly after nine.
Callum Rowe: I’m back. Meeting ran long. Are you home?
My heart, traitorous thing, lifted so hard it almost hurt.
Jules leaned over my shoulder. “He says ‘are you home’ like an overbearing husband and a security consultant had a baby.”
“Stop reading.”
“You held the phone at a readable angle.”
I typed back.
Me: Home. Jules is here. We ate soup and discussed my moral decline.
His reply came after a pause.
Callum Rowe: I assume Jules had notes.
Me: Footnotes. Appendices. A proposed documentary. Maybe we should introduce her to Benjamin.
Callum Rowe: Terrifying idea. Sleep tonight.
I looked at the message for too long.
Then another came through.
Callum Rowe: Tomorrow will be work first.
My stomach tightened.
Before I could decide whether that hurt, his next message appeared.
Callum Rowe: It will also be us. We’ll discuss it properly.
I exhaled.
Jules watched my face and smiled softly. “There. See?”
“He said work first.”
“Good.”
“And us.”
“Also good.”
“And discuss it properly.”
“That’s deeply arousing in a man with a legal department.”
I laughed and tossed a pillow at her.
But after she left and I locked the door and stood alone in my quiet apartment, the nerves came back.
Somehow, knowing that work would be work tomorrow and also about us was more frightening than if he had simply sent something crude.
Crude I could handle. Crude did not ask me to be an adult about it.
I slept badly that night.
By Monday morning, I had changed twice, packed my tote three times, and applied lipstick with an unsteady hand.
I wore a charcoal dress with long sleeves and a narrow belt, professional enough for Dana and fitted enough that Jules, if present, would have said the neckline had ‘plausible deniability and a pension plan.’ I wore underwear because I had not been instructed otherwise and because part of me needed to prove I could make at least one independent decision before breakfast.
Benjamin was waiting for me once I reached the forty-seventh floor. He looked me over once I stepped out of the elevator.
“Ms. Hale,” he greeted. “You appear rested enough to be legally employable.”
“Good morning, Ben.”
“Debatable.”
“Is he in?”
“He is.” Benjamin’s eyes flicked toward Callum’s closed doors. “He asked to see you when you arrived.”
My stomach dropped and sparked at the same time. “Now?”
“That is the usual meaning of when you arrived, yes.”
“Is this a work thing?”
Benjamin looked at me for one long second. Then he said, “I find that question adorable.”
“Ben.”
His face softened just a touch. “He had a difficult weekend.”
“I know.”
“No,” he said. “You know he was busy. That is not the same thing.”
A cold thread moved through me. “Is Hartwell worse?”
“Hartwell is Hartwell. Lang remains allergic to dignity.” He paused. “There are also peripheral complications.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you should ask Mr. Rowe.”
That frightened me more than anything else he could have said. He then knocked once on Callum’s door, opened it, and announced me with none of his usual theater.
“Ms. Hale.”