Chapter 13 #2
"I packed two suitcases," I said. "Drove out of Charlotte in the middle of the night because staying meant being erased completely, and I still had just enough of myself left to know that I deserved to exist somewhere."
Miley pulled me into a hug so tight I couldn't breathe. I didn't care. I needed someone to hold me together, and she'd been doing that since the day I showed up at her door with those two suitcases and no explanation she ever demanded.
"I’m going to break his legs," she said into my hair. "I mean it. I’m going to find Tobias Hart and I’m going to break his legs with my bare hands."
"Miley."
"I’m serious. I’ll go to prison. I don’t care. They have libraries in prison. I’ll read."
I laughed, wet and broken. "This is why I can’t feel anything for Jace. The last powerful man I trusted destroyed me. I can’t do it again. I can’t survive it again."
Miley held me tighter. I pulled away after a while, wiped my face, and told her I was going to bed. Then I remembered.
"Hey." I turned back. "Could you please grab my purse from the hallway. I almost forgot. I got you a present tonight."
Miley wiped her own eyes, confused, and went to get the clutch. She brought it back and I unzipped it and pulled out the cocktail napkin. Held it up.
To Miley. Your friend has excellent taste. And a small star next to it. Signed, by the superstar actor, Christopher Vale.
The sound that came out of Miley’s body was not human.
It exited through her mouth at a frequency that made the neighbor’s dog start barking through the wall.
She grabbed the napkin with both hands and stared at it like it was a holy relic.
Her eyes were streaming and five seconds ago she’d been crying about my trauma and now she was crying about a cocktail napkin signed by a movie star.
"I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, ANNA!"
So much for the woman who was going to break someone's legs for me. Christopher Vale’s autograph and she forgot all about my pain. I loved her for it. The normalcy of it. The silliness. The way life can be horrible and wonderful in the same breath if you let it.
Monday morning. I arrived at the office before seven. The floor was empty, or I thought it was. I needed a file from Jace’s office, something the legal team had requested Friday and I’d forgotten to pull before the weekend. His door was unlocked. I slipped in.
His laptop was open on the desk with the screen glowing.
I shouldn’t look. I knew I shouldn’t look. Looking at your boss’s open laptop was a violation of about twelve professional boundaries and probably several actual laws.
I looked.
A message thread with Miles that read:
Jace
Seems like my assistant is becoming my next little obsession.
I read it again. My eyes kept going back to the message. Or rather messages. There was one from just this morning, judging from the time stamp. It had been less than five minutes.
Jace
I don’t know how to do this, I mean we kissed, and then she pulled back.
Jace
Do you think she feels the same way?
There was no way he was talking about me. I was a temp who could barely pay rent. I was nobody.
The door clicked behind me.
I looked up.
Jace stepped into the doorway, filling it. His eyes went from my face to the laptop screen. He could see what I was looking at. I could see that he could see. And the silence between us was the loudest thing in the building.
"I don’t recall giving you permission to be in here," he said.
"What do these messages mean?" I asked and held my breath.
He walked toward the desk. Toward me. I stepped back and my hip caught the edge of his chair. He didn’t stop. He kept coming and I pressed against the chair because there was nowhere else to go and then he was right there.
Too close.
I could smell the mint and coffee on his breath mixed with the cold morning air still clinging to his collar.
"What would you do," he said, his eyes dropping to mine, "if it is about you?"
My mouth went dry. I gripped the arm of the chair behind me because my hands needed something solid.
"What would you do if I told you that you’re in my head every hour of every day and it has started to feel like a curse I can’t break?" He wasn’t blinking. His gray eyes were locked on mine, darker than I’d ever seen them, and his voice was doing things to my heart that made it hard to stay steady.
"What would you say if I told you I can still feel your lips on mine? That I crave it every single moment and I don’t know how to make it stop?"
He leaned in. Another inch. His breath was on my mouth now.
"Would you run?" His voice was barely there. "Would you be afraid of me?"
My pulse was in my throat. In my wrists. In the backs of my knees. Every part of me was responding to how close he was and the way he was looking at me. Like I was something he wanted to consume and worship in the same breath.
My body leaned toward him. A fraction. My weight shifted forward without permission, closing the distance he was too controlled to close himself.
I caught myself. Pulled back. Gripped the chair harder.
"You’re my boss," I said. "Nothing more."
My voice held. I don’t know how because nothing else inside me was holding.
His eyes stayed on mine for a second. Then two.
Three seconds where I could see everything—the desire and the hurt, the question and the answer he didn’t want to hear—all of it right there on his face, in the darkness of his eyes.
Then it was gone. All of it. As though someone reached behind his eyes and turned off the lights.
"Of course," he said. "My apologies for the confusion."
He stepped back. Turned toward the window. Put his hands behind his back, one glove gripping the other, and looked out at the Miami skyline like I wasn’t in the room anymore.
My pulse was still racing. I was about to leave when the door slammed open.
Miles.
He was holding his phone out and I could see the screen from where I stood, the headline big enough to read from across the room.
"It’s everywhere." His voice was tense in a way I’d never heard from Miles. "Trending on three major platforms."
The photo on his screen. Us. Against the hotel wall. My hands on his shoulder. His hands on my face. My face tilted up, eyes closed, mouth on his.
I stared at the photo. My face was visible. Clear. Unmistakable.
The shadow. The shape in the valet lights that I'd seen and blinked away and told myself was paranoia. It wasn't paranoia. It was a camera. Someone had been standing in the dark with a lens pointed at us the entire time.
My face was on the internet.
I ran out of Jace’s office. Past Miles. Past the empty desks. Down the corridor. My heels were clicking on the floor. The sound was too loud and the walls were too close. It was hard to breathe.
I made it to the bathroom and locked the door. I put my back against it and slid down until I was sitting on the cold tile with my knees pulled to my chest.
I was exposed. Again.
By getting too close to a man. Again.
My face out there for anyone to find, for him to find, when all I’d wanted was to disappear.