16. Harrison
HARRISON
She’s quieter than usual.
Not in the “focused on work” way either. I know that version of Parker. She hunches a little when she’s deep in a spreadsheet, furrows her brow when she’s double-checking something. But this? This is different.
She’s stiff. Eyes a little too blank when she looks up from her desk.
I stand in my doorway with a coffee in one hand and no real plan. I’ve been in meetings all morning, and all I wanted after was caffeine and ten minutes of quiet. But then I passed her desk, and now quiet feels wrong.
I take one more sip, then walk over. She doesn’t see me until I’m close. “Hey.”
She blinks, then gives me a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Morning.”
“You’ve said fifteen words today. Want to make it twenty?”
That gets me a flicker of something—amusement, maybe—but it fades too fast. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just catching up.”
“That’s bullshit, and we both know it. Office,” I say, tilting my head.
She hesitates. “Harrison, really, I?—”
“Parker.”
She exhales and stands, grabbing her tablet like she needs it for protection. I open the door for her, let her step inside, then close it behind us. She sits. Doesn’t fidget. That’s how I know she’s really upset—she’s too still.
I drop into the chair across from her and wait a beat before speaking. “What happened?”
She lifts one shoulder. “It’s been a week.”
“Heather’s gone.”
“I know.”
I smile. “Conduct review’s erased.”
“I know that too.”
“You’re still carrying it.”
She looks down at her hands. Her nails are painted a muted lilac. They’re perfect. She’s always polished, even when she feels like shit. “It shouldn’t have been erased.”
My brow furrows. “What?”
“I wasn’t exactly…professional.”
I stare at her. “You’ve done more for this company in six weeks than most VPs do in six months.”
She smiles, tired. “That’s not what I meant.”
I know what she meant. I just don’t want to hear her say it.
She continues anyway. “I got involved with all three of you. You gave me your time, your trust, and your…everything. I crossed a line.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “That line was bullshit.”
She looks up, startled.
“The line that says you can’t be competent and wanted at the same time,” I clarify. “That says if you get close to someone, you must be corrupt. That’s not professionalism. That’s just fear.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak.
I keep going. “You did your job. You kept us sane. You kept the gala from falling apart. You never once used any of this to your advantage. When it got hard, you took the hits.”
She swallows hard.
“And for the record?” I say. “None of us regret a second of it.”
Her eyes shimmer. Just slightly. Then she laughs, bitter. “I should be focused on the event, on work, on…anything but this. And instead I’m stuck on something completely shallow.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I don’t have a dress.”
I blink. “A dress.”
“For the gala. I don’t have anything formal. I’ve been saving every spare dollar for the kids’ summer tuition. I thought maybe I could rent something last-minute, but even the decent places need time and deposits and?—”
“That’s it,” I say, standing. “We’re going shopping.”
She blinks up at me. “What?”
“You need a dress. We’re getting you a dress.”
“I can’t—Harrison, I can’t afford?—”
“I didn’t ask if you could. I said we’re getting one. It’s a work expense.”
“That is not how work expenses?—”
“I’m the CFO. Deciding on work expenses is literally part of my job. And I decided we’re getting you a dress.”
She starts to protest again, but I shoot her a look and she sighs, defeated. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
She laughs under her breath. “You’re impossible.”
“Maybe. But you’ll have a dress by the end of today.”
And for the first time all morning, she actually smiles.
The second we step outside, something shifts. She exhales like she’s been holding her breath for hours, maybe days. Her shoulders loosen. Her jaw unclenches. The tight professionalism that clings to her like static finally starts to lift in the warm sun.
I open the car door for her, and she gives me a look like she’s debating whether this is still real. By the time we hit West Hollywood, she’s started giving me opinions on music. I play something low and instrumental to keep the vibe chill, and she makes a noise like she’s personally offended.
“This is what you listen to in the car?” she says, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t need lyrics yelling at me when I’m already stressed.”
She scrolls through my playlist. “This is all moody guy music.”
“It’s called focus.”
“It’s called sulking in a luxury vehicle.”
“You’re in that luxury vehicle.”
“Yeah, and I feel like I should be solving murders while whispering about betrayal and shadows.”
I glance over. She’s grinning. Real. Relaxed. God, I missed that smile.
We pull into a boutique in Beverly Hills that specializes in formal wear for the rich, the famous, and the dangerously overdressed. I know the owner. Not well, but enough that I won’t get dirty looks for showing up without an appointment.
Parker steps out of the car and looks up at the storefront like she’s about to be eaten alive. “This place is too nice.”
“That’s the point.”
“I can’t afford anything in there.”
I hold the door open for her. “Let me be clear. You’re not paying. You’re modeling. We’re investing in the company’s best-kept secret weapon.”
“I’m not a weapon.”
“You are when you walk into a room like you own it.”
She blinks at that. Then follows me inside.
The boutique smells like expensive perfume and well-aged champagne, even though I don’t see either in the room. The walls are white. The lighting is soft. Every dress on display is behind glass like it’s a piece of art instead of something to sweat in.
A woman approaches us, perfectly styled, polite but sharp-eyed. I introduce Parker. I don’t say who she is to me—just that she’s VT’s gala lead and needs a dress worthy of the role.
Within minutes, we’re surrounded by color and fabric and options with price tags that could pay off a student loan. I offer to wait, but Parker insists I come with her to help narrow down styles. “You’re the one making me do this,” she says. “You get to suffer through chiffon.”
So I do. And it’s not suffering. Not even close.
She tries on navy first, simple and clean.
It fits her like a second skin, and I have to look away when she steps out because I already know I’m in trouble.
Then there’s a red one—low cut, slit up the thigh.
She spins once in front of the mirror, looking over her shoulder at the way the back dips almost to her waist.
I can’t stop staring.
“You hate it,” she says.
“I don’t hate it,” I say, voice tight.
She smirks. “You look like you’re about to break something.”
“Trying not to.”
Her next dress is black and dramatic and practically made of shadows. She doesn’t like it, but I do. She looks like something you dream about and then wake up sweating. In a good way.
She settles, finally, on a dark green satin that hugs her in all the right places and leaves just enough to the imagination. When she steps out in it, I forget how to breathe for a second. Her expression shifts when she sees mine. “You like this one.”
“Yeah,” I say. “A lot.”
She bites her lip. “It’s too much.”
“Not even close.”
She looks down at herself in the mirror. Then she smiles. “Okay,” she says. “This one.”
We walk out with the dress boxed and bagged, the boutique staff smiling like they know a secret.
We grab a late lunch nearby. Just a little Italian place with a shaded patio and good wine I don’t drink because I’m driving.
Parker picks at her salad while I inhale pasta like I haven’t eaten in three days.
The sun is warm. Her hair is catching the light. And for the first time in what feels like a month, things don’t feel like they’re falling apart.
She looks up halfway through the meal and says, “You know this doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
“I’m still your assistant.”
“I’m still your CFO.”
She tilts her head. “You think we can keep pretending?”
“No.”
She sighs, like she knew I’d say that. Then she says, “Sometimes I think professionalism is a scam.”
I glance up. “Picked that up too?”
She stirs her lemonade with her straw. “I mean, what does it even mean? Never cry at work? Never need anything? Never fuck up?”
“Never want anything,” I say.
She lifts her eyes.
I lean forward, resting my arms on the table. “You want my definition?”
“Hit me.”
“Professionalism is the ability to pretend you’re not a human being. To look someone in the eye and pretend their judgment doesn’t hurt. To want something and swallow it anyway. To sit in a room where you’re not welcome and act like you earned your seat.”
She’s quiet. Then she smiles. “That’s bleak.”
“It’s honest.”
“You sound like someone who’s had a lot of practice.”
“I sound like someone who never had a safety net.”
She nods. And for once, she doesn’t try to make it lighter. She just holds the moment with me.
And that’s better than any fix.
The drive back is quieter.
She dozes off twenty minutes in, her head turned toward the window, one hand resting gently on the dress box in her lap like she’s guarding something precious.
I don’t turn on the radio. I just let the road hum beneath us, the traffic easing into background noise as we head toward her neighborhood.
My hands stay on the wheel, but my mind is still at that table—still replaying the way she looked at me when I talked about professionalism like it was a punishment we all agreed to call a virtue.
She listened. Not like she was humoring me, not like she was waiting to correct me. She listened like someone who’s been living it too.
When we hit a red light, I glance over at her again.
She’s still out. Relaxed. Peaceful in a way I don’t see from her often. Her job has forced her into a thousand roles—executive, fixer, emotional shock absorber. But like this, in the fading afternoon light, she’s just Parker.