Chapter Seventeen
Erica
The office is thinning out around me, the way it always does at the end of a Friday. Chairs rolling back. Voices fading down the hall. The soft click of keyboards shutting down and drawers being closed. Someone laughs near the elevator, and the sound makes my teeth ache.
I stay put in my cubicle later than usual.
Because next week I won’t be.
I’m doing last-minute things that may come up when I’m not here.
Flagging vendor emails. Organizing Nico’s calendar.
Printing the weekly rollups and stapling them.
Sending a reminder to a club manager about the POS terminal install.
Double-checking that the staff schedules for two locations don’t overlap with the same bartender.
Little fires that haven’t grown into big fires yet.
Everything is normal on paper.
My hands move on autopilot, but my stomach stays tight. It’s been tight all week. Every time I glance at the dark wood door to Nico’s office, my body reacts like it’s trying to remember something my mind keeps insisting it should forget.
I hate that.
I hate that it’s not happening to him.
He’s been… fine. Controlled. Professional. Smooth. Like Friday night didn’t happen. Like he didn’t see me at my worst and then touch me like he’d been waiting for it. Like he didn’t look at me afterward and speak to me like I was something he could manage, like a crisis to contain.
Monday morning, he asked about my dad’s procedure. Then he went back into his office, shut the door, and the day kept moving.
And I sat at my desk and pretended I wasn’t vibrating under my own skin.
Every day this week has been like that. I show up early.
I act like I’m fine. I do my job. I smile at people who come through asking for him.
I answer phones. I schedule. I print. I file.
And then I look up, and there he is—walking past my cubicle like he owns the air I breathe, like he owns the building, like he owns the whole world.
And I can’t stop thinking about his hands.
I can’t stop thinking about that hotel suite.
I can’t stop thinking about the way my own body betrayed me.
The worst part is the bitterness that keeps bubbling up under everything else. It doesn’t even make sense, and it still shows up anyway. Because why should I be the one unraveling? Why should I be the one swallowing panic and shame while he’s sitting behind that door, doing just damn fine?
It makes me angry at him.
Then it makes me angry at myself.
The humiliation creeps in right after—quiet, hot, relentless. The way he handled the whole thing like it was nothing. The way he spoke to me like he knew exactly what to do, exactly how far to go, exactly when to stop. The way I didn’t. The way I couldn’t. The way my voice shook.
Inexperience. Embarrassment.
And then the embarrassment curdles into shame so fast I can barely track it. Shame at what I did with him, shame at what I let him do to me.
Shame at what I want him to do again.
That shame that grows all week, one day stacked on another, every polite “Good morning, Mr. Conti” another brick.
Every time his gaze flicks over me in that assessing way, like he’s checking if I’m functional, another brick.
Every time I catch myself waiting for him to look at me the way he did in that room, another brick.
By Thursday, I’m snapping at emails that don’t deserve it.
By Friday, I feel hollow and sharp at the same time.
I keep working anyway. I keep doing the tasks. I keep making lists because lists are safe. Lists don’t have feelings. Lists don’t wake up at 3:00 in the morning with heat crawling under their skin and a need so strong it hurts.
I drag Nico’s folder out and slide the documents into the correct tabs for next week. I leave a note on top with the contact info for the vendor dispute in neat handwriting.
My dad’s surgery is Monday.
That should be the only thing in my head.
But it’s not.
It’s Nico’s voice when he wants something.
It’s his calm when I’m not calm.
It’s the fact that he’s been fine, and I’ve been getting worse.
I keep telling myself a full week away from the office will help. A break from seeing him. A break from the door handle turning and that immediate, stupid jolt in my body. A break from the way shame follows me like a shadow.
But even the thought of being off doesn’t lift anything.
Because I’m not going off to relax.
I’m going to spend Monday in a hospital, trying not to fall apart while my dad’s on a table.
And I don’t know how to carry that fear on top of everything else I’ve been carrying.
So I sit at my desk at the end of the work day, doing “last-minute stuff,” and my stomach stays twisted, and the shame stays heavy, and the worry sits in my throat like a bad taste.
The click of my stapler sounds too loud in the quiet.
I set it down, align the edges of the packet again, even though they’re already aligned, and slide the stack into Nico’s folder like precision can fix the fact that my insides feel raw.
I’m reaching for my notepad to write some instructions when his door handle turns.
It’s a small sound.
It still makes my pulse jump.
The door opens, and Nico steps out, jacket on, tie loosened slightly. He closes the door behind him, and his gaze lands on me immediately, like he knew I’d still be here.
He doesn’t look surprised.
He just looks… aware.
“Still here,” he says, voice normal.
“Still working,” I say, and it comes out sharper than I intend.
His eyes narrow a fraction, not in anger. In focus. He comes closer, stopping at the edge of my cubicle, and I wish he would just go the fuck away.
“How’s your father?” he asks.
The question is simple. Reasonable. The kind of thing a boss asks an employee whose father is having major surgery and will be gone for a week.
My stomach twists anyway.
“Fine,” I say too fast. “He’s— It’s scheduled. Monday.”
Nico’s gaze shifts over my face like he’s reading something I didn’t mean to show. Then his voice lowers, just a notch. Not secretive. Private.
“You’re upset.”
I let out a short breath that’s almost a laugh. Bitter. “No, I’m tired.”
“Erica.”
Hearing my name from him like that hits something in me that has nothing to do with work and everything to do with a hotel suite and the way he said it then.
I hate that it does.
I lift my chin. “Is there anything else you need for next week before I go?” I ask, too crisp, too professional, like I can steer us back onto safe ground by force.
He holds my gaze for a beat, then glances at the folder on my desk, the note on top, the neat tabs. “No,” he says. “You’re covered.”
“Great.” My hands move again immediately, shutting down my computer, stacking the few loose papers, sliding my notebook into my bag. Fast. Too fast. Like if I keep moving, he can’t pin me to anything.
“Erica.” He says it again, and this time he reaches down and takes my hand.
The contact stops me mid-motion.
My fingers go still in his.
My breath catches.
His grip isn’t hard. It’s just a quiet interruption. Like he’s stopping me from unraveling in front of him.
“Look at me,” he says softly.
I jerk my hand once, not enough to get free, but enough to make the point.
My eyes snap up anyway, hot and bright.
“What?” I hiss, keeping my voice low even though the office is empty. Somehow that makes it worse, not better. “You want to hold hands now? You didn’t pay for it this time.”
The words land between us like a slap.
Nico doesn’t flinch. His expression doesn’t change in any big way.
But his hand loosens immediately, like he’s respecting the line I just drew.
He lets go.
His palm falls back to his side. “Erica,” he says, calmly, “remember what I said. When you need to come to me—"
“I don’t need you,” I snap, shoving my laptop fully into my bag.
I swallow hard, furious that my throat does that stupid tightening thing.
His gaze holds mine. It’s steady. It’s unreadable. And it makes me want to throw my coffee mug at a wall.
“Fine,” he says simply. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”
I grab my bag strap and stand so fast my chair bumps the partition.
I don’t look at him again.
I don’t give myself the chance.
I walk away, heels clicking too loud on the polished floor, and I don’t let myself breathe until the elevator doors are closing behind me.
The waiting room smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee.
The chairs are vinyl and too close together, and the TV on the wall is on a daytime channel no one is watching. A scrolling ticker runs along the bottom with news I can’t absorb. A woman across from me flips through a magazine, page after page, the sound sharp in the quiet.
My dad was taken back hours ago.
Hours.
I keep looking at the clock and then looking away, as if I stare at it too long, it’ll stop out of spite. My leg bounces. I force it still. Two minutes later, it’s bouncing again.
I’m alone.
Maddy is back in Montana—back to wide-open skies and family dinners and people who can show up when something goes wrong. I don’t resent her. Not really. She stayed as long as she could. She sat with me in that café and looked at me like she didn’t recognize me anymore, and still didn’t walk away.
But she’s gone, and now it’s just me and this waiting room and the fact that my father is somewhere behind those doors on a table. I can’t picture it without feeling like I’m going to black out.
I press my palm flat to my thigh. Ground. Okay. Ground.
Every time someone in scrubs walks past the entrance, my stomach twists.
I keep thinking I’m going to throw up.
I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I tried this morning.
Half a piece of toast that turned to paste in my mouth.
Coffee that made my hands shake worse. I’m dehydrated and over-caffeinated and running on pure adrenaline, and every so often my body remembers that I’m a person and not a machine, and it waves a big red flag that says: Stop.
I can’t.