Chapter Two
O h, my fucking god! I’m pacing the length of the bathroom trying to stop myself from having a panic attack.
Deep breaths. In and out.
I know I only have a small window before someone comes to check on me but I’m hoping that maybe if I pass out, they’ll just send me to the emergency room and I won’t have to have this meeting with the guy I hooked up with three months ago. “Oh my god,” I say out loud just as I press the contact for my older sister for the third time in the span of a minute. When she sends me to voicemail, again, I leave her a panicked message.
“Heaven forbid I need you for something! This is a nine-one-one EMERGENCY!” I say before letting out a sigh. “Not life-threatening, just maybe the worst thing that could ever happen to me short of that.” My older sister is five years older than me and a litigator so there’s a good chance she’s in court today, but HELLO, my life is going up in flames! “If I don’t answer when you call me back it’s because I’m in meetings. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.” I squeeze my eyes together hoping that when I open them, I’ll be transported somewhere else.
While they’re closed, I wrack my brain trying to remember if I ever heard his last name at the wedding reception but I come up empty.
I open my eyes to stare at myself in the mirror. “You did nothing wrong. He did. He should be pacing his office. Why are you worried?”
It’s not necessarily that I’m worried, it’s more embarrassment that I have to face him.
I stare at my reflection, happy that I’d gone with the mid-length black business dress that cinches my waist and tastefully highlights my curves. Coupled with my favorite black heels, I’ll admit I look good and am happy with my choice of outfit for the first time he’s seeing me in three months. I touch up my lipstick and add a few more coats of mascara before tucking a few strands behind my ear.
“Let’s get this over with,” I whisper to myself as I push my way out of the bathroom. I make it to the lobby and allow someone to walk me to his office.
“He’s expecting you. Go right in!” A red-haired woman, who I assume is his assistant, sits several feet in front of his office door and gives me a sweet smile. I don’t go in right away and I hear her speak again. “He’s very sweet. Much nicer than the CEO.” She whispers the last part like it’s a secret as she comes around her desk and points at the office at the end of the hallway. “Mr. Beckham? Kind of a bear. Mr. Holt is all bark and no bite and sometimes his bark is more like a yap.” She giggles as she pushes her glasses up on her nose. “I’m Christine.” She’s shorter than me and her red hair is such a gorgeous color I can’t help but wonder if it’s natural with green eyes and freckles that dot her cheeks.
“Marissa.”
“Honestly, the worst thing about Mr. Holt is Mrs. Holt,” she says and my neck snaps to her so hard I swear I hear something crack.
“What?”
“Mrs. Holt? His wife. God, she’s the worst. I keep hoping he’ll leave her but…I guess six years is a long time.”
Oh. My. God.
“Six…years?” I stammer. No. No. No!
“Yep,” she says casually, like she hasn’t just detonated a bomb five seconds before I’m supposed to walk into a war zone. I feel like I can’t breathe and I’m wondering if all of this is worth it. What if I just walk out of here and never come back? Okay, I suppose that’s job abandonment, but maybe Chris, or Mr. Holt would understand. Now that we can add infidelity to the list of infractions, I’m sure he’s even less excited about me being here.
I’m contemplating this when the door opens and I’m face to face with the guy who I told myself to forget about but have thought about nonstop for three months.
I’d been hurt. Spent three months rationalizing the fact that he disappeared and never tried to contact me.
But now I know the truth.
He’s MARRIED?
Oh, I am pissed.
“Miss Collins, please come in.” He says, extending his arm into his office and I enter, wanting to scream but realizing that may be the fastest way to get fired.
He closes the door behind me and when I turn around, he gives me a look that probably matches the look on my face. Despite the anger building inside me, I can’t deny how good he looks in his gray suit. Maybe Armani? Or Tom Ford? Zegna? It looks expensive. His hair is a little wilder than it was at the wedding, some of it falling a bit over those gorgeous blue eyes that I can see vividly in my dreams.
“What are you doing here?” he says, his words hard but low and my mouth drops open because why the hell is he asking me that?
“Excuse me?” I cross my hands over my chest and watch as his eyes zip to the movement before moving back up to meet my gaze. I narrow my eyes at him as if to say don’t even think about it.
“Did you ask Alexis where to find me?” he asks as he breezes by me and leans up against his desk, his brows furrowed and his entire posture tense and combative.
“No? I was just as surprised to see you here. And for the record if I had told Alexis about that night, which I absolutely did not, don’t you think she would have told me that you were married?! ” I snap, raising an eyebrow at him. “Surely would have saved me the shock of learning about it from your assistant twenty seconds ago.”
His face falls and he lets his head drop before letting out a sigh that makes it seem like his whole body is exhausted. One of those sighs you let out when you feel like you’ve got the entire weight of the world on your shoulders and you just want a reprieve from all of it.
“I’m sorry,” he says still staring at the ground, like he can’t even meet my eyes.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You have a lot of things to be sorry for; you’re going to need to be more specific.”
“Everything.” He finally looks up at me. “I shouldn’t have…that night.”
I swallow and take a deep breath in and out through my nose, doing my best to quell my anger. “You weren’t wearing a ring.”
“I took it off.”
I scoff and shake my head, disgusted. “So, you went out with the intention to cheat?”
“You don’t get it.”
My lips form a straight tight line. “I surely do not.” My tone is clipped.
Anger flashes across his face. “You don’t have the right to judge me.”
“You stuck your dick inside of me without telling me you had a wife at home and then left me in your hotel room without so much as a goodbye, I have a fuck ton of rights,” I retort. He has got to be joking.
“I left a note,” he says, like that makes everything better.
“Which was honestly worse than not saying anything.” I swallow, fighting the tears because I refuse to spend any more time being upset about him. “That was the shittiest thing anyone has ever done to me.”
He narrows his eyes in sadness. “I’m so sorry. Holly started calling—”
“Ahhh.” I put a hand up, my blood starting to boil upon hearing his wife’s name. “Please do not try to explain, it will only make it worse.”
“My marriage isn’t…” He lets out a breath. “We aren’t happy.”
“Sounds like bull. You’re a rich guy who cheats on his wife. That really lacks originality, Chris. And based on the way you treated me, I’m going to assume it wasn’t the first time.”
“You don’t know shit about it,” he snaps. His blue eyes are cold and his tone is angry.
“And who’s fault is that?”I snap back.
He sighs and the look of anger is replaced with contrition before he moves around his desk to sit in his chair. “You don’t understand. I hated leaving you like that.” He leans back in his chair and stares at me. “I wanted you that morning. Wanted to take you to breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Hell, hide away with you in the Hamptons for the week.”
“You’re married, Chris. You were going to do all that before, what? Going back to your wife? Did you think I would just be okay with you being married? Maybe you’re used to women like that, but it’s not me.”
“No.” He pauses before he speaks again. “I know, and that’s why I left because I knew I’d want more with you and I didn’t have more to give.”
His words hit me hard causing conflicting feelings to arise. On one hand, I finally feel the validation that I’ve wanted for months. That I wasn’t the only one that felt something. That there was something there. On the other hand, I’m angry that he put us in this situation when there’s nothing either of us can do about it.
Neither of us say anything for a few moments before I speak up. “If what you’re saying is true about not being happy…is divorce not an option?”
He doesn’t respond right away and he rubs his forehead like maybe he’s going over his answer before he says it. “It’ll cost me a lot.” He looks at his computer. “Like a lot. ”
“Oh,” I whisper. I’d recently seen while I was researching this job that Wes Beckham, the CEO of the company had just hit Forbes’ youngest billionaires list. I assume as CFO of the company, Christopher Holt must definitely be dancing around the high hundreds of millions. I think about my student loans and credit card debt and briefly wish I could be the kind of woman who could date a married man for a few months. Forty thousand dollars seems insurmountable at times for me, but to a man like Chris, it’s probably nothing. “Are you going to fire me?”
“What?” He shakes his head as if my suggestion was the most ludicrous part of this conversation. “No, no of course not.”
“I just mean…is it okay for me to work here given our history?” I don’t know what answer I’m hoping for. Part of me hopes he’ll say no. That it would be too hard to be around me and that he’d write me a stellar recommendation to go literally anywhere else, but the other part of me wants this job. I’ve done my research and this company is just new enough and already wildly successful that getting in early is a very smart decision. It’s like getting in on a start-up that is on the verge of really exploding.
“What happened between us was before you worked here. It’s okay. It’s no one’s business.”
“Okay,” I shake my head. “I won’t tell anyone, of course.”
“Probably best.” He gives me a sad smile. “Beck knows.”
“Beck?” I ask, wondering who he means.
“Wes. The CEO. He’s been my best friend since college. He knows I slept with someone at Owen’s wedding. Not specifically you, of course.”
“Oh,” I repeat.
He leans forward and twiddles a pen between his fingers. “Yeah, I kind of haven’t stopped thinking about you so, yeah he knows.”
I blink several times trying to keep the tears at bay again because none of this matters. It doesn’t matter that he felt something or that I did or that he can’t stop thinking about me.
He’s married and that’s it.
“Well, I appreciate the opportunity,” I say. “And ummm, I’ll send in the next person.”
“Marissa,” he calls as I turn towards the door and when I turn back to face him, he’s moving towards me. He grabs my hand and rubs his thumb over my knuckles gently. “Please don’t hate me.”
“This would be easier if I did,” I whisper.
“Fuck, I am so sorry.” My older sister Autumn sits across from me drinking a cosmopolitan as we eat our favorite sushi from the restaurant near her apartment she shares with her fiancé. I just finished going through the details of my day from hell and I feel like I’ve just been to war. Autumn knows all the gritty details from my night with Chris. I had broken down and told her after several glasses of wine, even though I’d contemplated not telling her at all because she has only ever slept with one guy and she’s currently got his ring on her finger.
“Oh, did I mention my boss also yelled at me?”
She gasps as she holds her drink an inch from her mouth giving me her signature older sister, I will kill someone for you look, followed by I will find a way to sue him too. “Wait. He yelled at you too?”
“Oh no. Not him. His boss. The CEO. Wes Beckham? Kind of a dick. A few people warned me and they were not kidding.” I rub my head in memory of crying in the bathroom after he yelled at me for emailing him the wrong sales report.
On my first day!
I have thick skin so the tears didn’t come just because of him, but the day as a whole was awful.
“I can’t believe he’s married. I say this with all the love in my heart, but I swear I would not survive the dating scene. I don’t know how you do it.” Autumn shakes her head with a shudder.
“Thanks,” I mutter followed by my fakest smile.
“Listen, I’ve offered several times to hook you up with Eric’s friends,” she says, referencing her fiancé.
“I’m good,” I say, not because I don’t like Eric. I do. He would do literally anything in the world for my sister, which he proved when he turned down going to Stanford Law School—his number one choice of school—because my sister got into Yale which was her number one choice.
Yes, they’re both lawyers and both fucking insufferable at times.
Eric is okay, but the company he keeps? Fucking awful.
It makes me want to keep one eye on Eric at all times because don’t assholes usually travel in packs?
“Fine, but let me know if you change your mind?” She points her chopsticks at me. “I know you’re still young, and maybe not thinking about marriage but your mid-twenties will sneak up on you before you know it!”
“Okay, and?”
“And don’t you want to be married by thirty?” she asks, her eyes wide. We look almost identical except her hair is lighter and straighter with bangs and her eyes are a lighter brown. But we are the same height and build and bone structure; people oftentimes think we’re twins.
“I’m twenty-one, Autumn,” I reply, sardonically.
“Just sayin’.” She shrugs before taking a long sip of her drink.
“You’re twenty-six and you’re not married.”
“And mom does not let me forget it.” She groans. “I am trying to spare you the drama. I even have it easier because I’ve been with Eric for forever, but if I’d been single? Jesus, I can hear her now.”
I’m the youngest of three with an older brother, Shane, who’s a neurosurgeon married to a psychologist with two children. Then my lawyer sister is engaged to another lawyer. And then there’s me: single, still living at home, and working in sales. In a family of overachievers, care to play which of these things is not like the other?
“Then again,” she adds, “you are the favorite. Mom and Dad don’t put half as much pressure on you.”
Here we go.
According to both Shane and Autumn, I have somehow become the favorite because I have the least amount of pressure on me about anything. I got to pursue whatever I wanted whereas they were only given the choices my parents approved of. My sister wanted to be an art major in undergrad before my parents swiftly nixed that and my brother wanted to study philosophy before my parents told him, “ We think the fuck not .”
I’ll give my parents that one because what exactly does someone do with a philosophy degree?
I wince at her words. “I don’t think that’s the flex you think it is. It means they don’t expect me to amount to anything.” I tuck some hair behind my ear and try to ignore the gnawing feeling in my gut that my parents think I’m a lost cause.
“No, it means they expect you to amount to whatever you want and in your own time,” she corrects. “But that’s the beauty of being the baby of the family.”
I feel the prickle of annoyance in my nose and scrunch it. “You act like they coddle me.”
“You’re the only one still on their credit cards.”
“I’ve been out of college for three months!”
“You’re also the only one that got a car at sixteen,” she combats and I already know she’s got a list of these arguments waiting.
“Dad had just become the chairman at his company! Also, he had just finished helping Shane with med school and you with your first year of law school. You and Shane ran Mom and Dad way more bills than I ever did. They already told me they’d help but weren’t paying off my student loans.”
“Probably because you live at home.” She takes a healthy sip of her drink. “But here’s another one, you’re the only one who got to study in Paris for the summer in high school.” I purse my lips together because, okay I’ll give her that. Autumn begged our parents to let her go and they told her no. “Face it, you’re the favorite. Also, it means they’re living with you when the time comes.”
I snort. “Good one. Dad is going to live with Shane and Mom will go anywhere Dad goes.”
“Fair point,” she says with a giggle. “So, what’s going to happen with you two?” she says changing the subject.
“With who?”
She furrows her brows and blinks her eyes at me several times in confusion. “You and your hot boss, obviously.”
I shift nervously on the barstool, not wanting to get into this. “How do you know he’s hot?”
“One I know the kind of man that turns your head, Marissa Lee, and two, I googled.”
I sigh. “What do you mean ‘what is going to happen?’ He’s married. That’s it. Case closed.”
“You think he’ll leave her?”
I snort. “Do men ever leave their wives?”
“Sometimes.” She shrugs.
“Something tells me the door has closed on him leaving her based on what he said.”
“Or maybe he hasn’t had the right incentive.” She reaches across the table to tap my nose and gives me a dramatic wink.
“I don’t want to be any man’s incentive to leave his wife.”
“So, if he leaves her, you won’t give him a chance?”
“We are talking about something that isn’t even close to happening! I don’t want to even think like it’s an option. Besides, I still don’t like how he handled everything.”
“Hmm you’re being a wee bit holier than thou and it’s so unlike you.” She scrunches her nose. “It’s weird.”
“He’s married, Autumn! Since when are you not a rules girl? You literally went to school for a career that makes people adhere to them.”
“Laws yes, but not rules of the heart.” She puts a hand over her chest.
“Oh, you’re drunk.” I snort as I pick up my phone to text my future brother-in-law. “I’m texting Eric.”
“No!” She puts her hand over my phone to stop me. “Listen, I’ve never seen you talk about anyone the way you talked about Chris.”
“It was great sex. That’s all.”
“You liked him.”
“I liked his dick,” I correct
“ And him,” she retorts.
I cross my arms over my chest and let out a bored sigh. “Okay fine, so what if I did?”
“Oh my gosh, it’s like Scandal ! You guys are like Fitz and Olivia!”
“Okay, first of all, don’t start.” I groan, thinking about my sister’s obsession with that show. “Secondly, they were toxic as hell.”
She shrugs. “You still rooted for them.”
“I mean, yeah, of course. That was the point. It’s also fiction. I would not survive one day as Olivia Pope.”
Her eyes widen as she points at me. “And it totally fits! You said his wife was awful.”
“I said he said that. But what else was he going to say? ‘Sorry but I’m madly in love with her, that night was just a lapse in judgment?’”I scoff before taking a sip of my drink.
She sighs and picks up another piece of sushi before swirling it around her soy sauce. “Fine, you’re right.” She looks at her drink. “And I think you’re right, these were stronger than I thought.”
I shake my head at her, knowing that she’s going to be complaining about her hangover tomorrow when my phone lights up next to me. I stare at it skeptically when I see it’s a number I don’t recognize.
Definitely not answering that, I think because whatever random number that could be calling me at seven-thirty on a Monday night is someone I don’t want to talk to. It stops ringing and I don’t see a voicemail notification so I assume it’s a spam call. No more than a few moments later, my phone lights up with a text message from the same number.
Unknown Number: Hey, it’s Chris.
My mouth drops open and while I’d normally tell my sister, she’s clearly in another world right now and would probably suggest sending him nudes. I drop my phone into my lap and type out a reply.
Me: Hey, I’m getting dinner with my sister. Did you need something?
I’m pretty sure he’s not calling me regarding anything work related, but I’m going to play dumb for the sake of self-preservation. I do, however, save his number in the meantime.
Chris: How is that?
Small talk? Is he serious?
Me: It’s fine.
Chris: You tell her about how awful your first day was?
I narrow my eyes at my screen because I know he’s not making light of this clusterfuck.
Me: She’s aware that I’ve slept with my boss, yes.
Chris: I feel like shit, you know.
Me: Well, that makes two of us.
Chris: You shouldn’t. You didn’t know.
Like that matters! I realize I haven’t said anything in a minute and when I look up, I see Autumn on her phone grinning like a woman in love. I look back down just in time to see another message come through.
Chris: Can I see you? Outside of work?
Me: You cannot be serious.
Chris: Just have dinner with me. Please.
“I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back,” I tell my sister as I get up from the table. I’m barely around the corner before I have the phone to my ear.
“Hey,” he answers on the first ring. “I know you’re at dinner. I’m sorry—”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“You’re married.”
“I know.”
“And you’re asking me out on a date?”
“Yes.”
“Chris, can’t you see how fucked up this is?”
“Yes,” he says sadly and I’ll admit I’m impressed that he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t make an excuse. I guess he’s got nothing left to do but own it at this point.
“Tell me what makes her so terrible.”
He sighs. “Can I tell you over dinner?”
“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”
“We’ll go somewhere outside of the city. There are fraternization rules in place, yes, but no one—”
“I meant caught by your wife , Chris.” I frown, realizing that he cares more about our company finding out about our affair than the woman he’s cheating on. I can’t ignore the judgment coursing through me over that thought.
“Oh…no. She doesn’t care.”
I frown and narrow my eyes as I try to figure out what the hell he means by that. “Do you have an open marriage?” Because if that’s the case, I still don’t want to get involved, but then maybe I can stop feeling like I fucked this poor clueless woman’s husband.
“Not exactly.”
“You’re talking in circles.”
“She doesn’t care that I sleep with other women.”
Other women. Plural. Love that.
“So, there’s multiple of us. Just what every woman wants to hear,” I reply with all of the sarcasm I can muster in an attempt to mask the underlying hurt.
“As much as it pleases me that I’ve struck a jealous nerve, I don’t want to piss you off any more and I know I’m on thin ice,” he says and I’m pissed at myself for reacting to that. “I haven’t slept with anyone since I slept with you.”
“You mean anyone other than your wife?” I ask weakly, not sure how either answer will make me feel.
“No. I haven’t slept with anyone at all since I slept with you. Holly included.”
I groan as I put a hand over my eyes. “Please stop saying her name. I am trying not to picture her as a person with feelings and emotions and someone who will get hurt.”
He snorts. “Trust me, she does not have feelings.”
I lean against the wall in the hallway next to the restrooms. “Answer me. Why did you marry this awful woman? Because I’m having a hard time understanding why you married her in the first place if she’s so terrible. And what even makes her so terrible? It makes me feel like you’d say anything. For all I know, she’s as sweet as Mother Theresa and you just have a wandering dick.”
“That’s not it and if you just let me take you to dinner, I’ll explain everything.” I can hear the begging in his voice.
“Or you could just explain it now.”
“Aren’t you at dinner with your sister?”
“I can call you when I get home.”
He lets out a sigh, “I also want to take you to dinner as an apology. For…that morning.”
“It’s fine, I’m over it.” Hardly.
“I’m not,” he says simply. “Please. One dinner. I’ll expense it if it makes you feel better and we can say it was a business dinner.”
I chew nervously on my thumbnail, careful not to ruin my manicure but needing something to distract me momentarily. “Chris…”
“Please.”
“What do you think dinner is going to accomplish? Sleeping with me again?”
“No.” He pauses. “Well, maybe,” he answers honestly, and I’ll admit I kind of respect that.
“That’s not happening,” I say a little harder than I intend to and I’m not sure if it’s for his benefit or my own.
“Let me live in my delusion.” He chuckles and I bite my lip to stop the giggle bubbling in my throat. “I respect your boundaries, and I would never do anything you didn’t want.”
I shake my head even though I know he can’t see me. “I’m not worried about that.” I never thought for a second, he would force or coerce me to do anything. I’m not worried about him using his power as my boss against me.
“What are you worried about?”
“You charming my dress off again.” Since we are being honest.
“What if I promise to be a perfect gentleman?” he asks. “Unless of course, you ask me not to.”
I scrunch my eyes together. This is a really bad idea. “One dinner.”
“Yes,” he says, like a prayer. “Yes. When?” he asks immediately, like he doesn’t want to let me off the phone until I give him a day.
“Maybe Friday?”
“That’s too far away.”
I need time to get myself together.
“How about tomorrow?” he asks and as much as I want to say yes, I refuse to make it that easy. Make him sweat.
“I can’t tomorrow,” I say, already making a mental note of what reason I can’t in case it comes up.
“You really going to torture me until Friday?”
I let out a breath. “Thursday, final offer.”
“Okay. Yes. Thursday is great.” I can hear the relief in his voice.
“Just dinner and we are only talking,” I reiterate.
“Of course.”
“I want the truth, Chris. No bullshit.”
“None, I promise,” he says immediately.
“Okay.” I nod, suddenly feeling awkward and unsure how to end the conversation. Or if I even want to. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your dinner with your sister.”
“Thank you. Have a good night.” I end the call and make my way into the restaurant to see my sister staring in my direction.
“I was about to come looking for you. Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod. I don’t want to tell her about dinner with Chris because I know she’ll want to talk about it and I’m not even sure how I feel about it yet.
I try to tell myself that it’s just a harmless dinner but I hear the unspoken lie loud and clear.