Chapter 11 Tessa
TESSA
The silence in my apartment is a threat.
Usually, I love Sunday mornings. I love drinking cheap coffee in my pajamas and reading a romance novel while my cat, Barnaby, judges me from the top of the bookshelf.
But today, the silence is suffocating. It presses against my eardrums like deep water.
I’m sitting on my couch, staring at my phone. It’s lying on the coffee table, face up, like an unexploded bomb.
Asher: The probability of you sleeping with him is 98%.
I haven’t replied. I haven’t replied to Owen, either, who texted me at midnight—Missing you already, trouble—and again at 8:00 AM asking for coffee.
I’m paralyzed.
“I ruined it,” I whisper to the empty room. “I absolutely, completely ruined it.”
Barnaby jumps down from the shelf, landing with a soft thud. He trots over and butts his head against my shin, demanding attention. I scratch him behind the ears automatically. My mind is racing.
I slept with my boss, Owen Branson, and Asher knows.
The Watcher. The one who sees variables and outcomes. He warned me. Owen breaks things.
Does that mean Owen’s going to break me? Or does it mean I’m the one breaking them?
The image of the three of them—standing in the office, united, unbreakable—flashes in my mind. They survive because they’re a unit. Ethan commands, Asher calculates, Owen charms. They’re a closed circuit.
And I just stuck a fork in the outlet.
I stand up, my legs shaky. I need to see it in black and white.
I walk to the small desk in the corner of my living room where I keep my important papers—mostly takeout menus and expired coupons. I dig through the stack until I find the blue folder.
The lease on my life. My contract.
I open it. The pages are heavy bond paper. The edge is sharp enough to cut skin.
I flip through them, my heart beating fast. Pay. Dental. How they own my soul and every thought I have between nine and five.
I find it on page twelve.
Section 8.4: Fraternization and Conflicts of Interest. Employees are expected to maintain professional boundaries at all times. Relationships between supervisors and subordinates that may compromise the integrity of the company or create a conflict of interest are strictly prohibited.
Strictly prohibited.
It doesn’t say discouraged. It doesn’t say please tell HR. It says prohibited.
“I can be fired for cause,” I whisper, reading the next paragraph. “Termination effective immediately… Immediate repayment of all signing bonuses and relocation stipends.”
I stop reading. The words blur on the page.
Immediate repayment.
I don’t have it.
I don’t have fifty thousand dollars. Not anymore.
I’m trapped.
If I stay, it’s a soap opera that’ll inevitably blow up in my face. The tension is unsustainable. Eventually, Harper will find out. The press will find out. Eventually, one of them will make me choose, and I’ll lose the other two, and the guilt will eat me alive.
But if I leave—if they fire me for cause? They’ll come for the money I already spent.
I clutch the contract, my hands shaking.
I didn’t just have a fling. I signed a legal document promising I wouldn’t do exactly what I just did.
If Ethan finds out, and Ethan always finds out, he won’t just be the angry older brother. He’ll be the CEO protecting his assets.
He’ll fire me.
I need this job—the salary to pay off my loans, and the career boost.
But more than that… I love the work here. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m building something that matters.
I traded it all to get laid and eat some goddamn pancakes.
My phone buzzes, dancing across the wood of the coffee table. I jump, dropping the contract.
A FaceTime request pops up. Harper.
The guilt hits me so hard I actually feel nauseous.
I can’t answer. I can’t look her in the eye. But if I don’t answer, she’ll know something’s wrong. Harper’s got a sixth sense for my disasters. If I ghost her now, she’ll send a search party.
Or worse, she’ll call Ethan.
I scrub my face, plastering on the pageant-girl grin I mastered at ten.
I accept the call.
“Bonjour, bitch!”
Harper’s face fills the screen. She looks radiant. She’s wearing a beret—ironically, I hope—and sitting at a café table with a croissant the size of her head. The Eiffel Tower is visible in the background, looking like a postcard.
“Harper!” I say, my voice pitching a little too high. “Look at you! You’re in Paris!”
“Of course I am in Paris!” she squeals, spinning the camera around to show me the street. “It’s amazing, Tess. The bread is better. The coffee is better. The men are… well, the men are rude, but they dress really well, so I forgive them.”
She turns the camera back to her face. Her green eyes—Owen’s eyes—narrow slightly.
“You look tired,” she observes. “Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Or is Ethan working you to death?”
“I’m eating,” I lie. “And sleeping. It’s just… launch prep. You know how it is.”
“I do,” she sighs dramatically. “My brothers are workaholics. Well, except Owen.”
I flinch.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Owen is… fun.”
“Has he tried to drag you to one of his weird experimental yoga classes yet?” Harper asks, tearing off a piece of croissant. “Or tried to get you to invest in a cryptocurrency based on alpacas?”
“No,” I say. “He just… took me to lunch.”
“Lunch?” Harper pauses, a piece of pastry halfway to her mouth. “Just lunch?”
“Work lunch,” I add quickly. “To discuss the appetizers for the launch party. He wanted my opinion on crab cakes.”
“Oh, thank god,” Harper laughs. “For a second, I thought he was trying to charm you. You know how he is. He flirts with anything that has a pulse. He can’t help it. It’s like a reflex.”
My stomach twists.
He flirts with anything that has a pulse. Is that what yesterday was? A reflex?
You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, he’d said.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice hollow. “Just a reflex.”
“Anyway,” Harper continues, oblivious to my internal meltdown. “How’s the dynamic? Is Ethan being nice? Is Asher… speaking?”
“Asher speaks,” I say, thinking of the dark car ride. You wanted to be seen. “He’s just… observant.”
“He’s creepy,” Harper corrects fondly. “But he means well. He just sees the world in code. And Ethan sees the world in threats. You’ve got to be patient with them, Tess. They’re damaged goods.”
I frown. “Damaged?”
Harper’s smile fades a little. She sighs, looking down at her coffee.
“You know. The military. The stuff they don’t talk about. They came back… different. Tight. Like they were holding onto each other for dear life. That’s why they’re so protective of the company. And of me. It’s the only thing they feel like they can control.”
She looks up at me, her expression earnest.
“That’s why I’m so glad you’re there,” she says softly. “Because they actually listen to you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever seen them let inside the circle without running a background check first.”
The guilt is physically painful. It sits like acid in my stomach.
They let me inside the circle, and I slept with one of them.
“I won’t let you down, Harp,” I whisper. The lie tastes bitter in my own mouth.
“I know you won’t! You’re the best.” She glances off-screen. “Oh, crap. My lunch break is over. I’ve got to get back to the studio before my supervisor kills me. Love you!”
“Love you too.”
The screen goes black. I drop the phone onto the couch cushion and bury my face in my hands.
Damaged goods. Family. Trust.
I can’t do this. I can’t be the thing that breaks them apart.
I grab my phone and open the thread with Owen. I stare at his last message.
Owen: Coffee? I can be there in twenty minutes.
I start typing. My fingers are shaking.
Me: We need to talk.
It’s the universal text for This is over.
Owen: Ominous. Should I be worried?
He replies instantly. Of course he does.
Me: I’m serious, Owen. Friday night… It was amazing. But it was a mistake.
Three dots appear. Then disappear. Then appear again.
Owen: It didn’t feel like a mistake.
Me: It was. You’re my boss. You’re Harper’s brother. She just called me, Owen. She trusts us.
A long pause.
Owen: I know.
Me: It can’t happen again. We have to be professional. For real this time.
I wait. My heart is pounding against my ribs. Part of me—the reckless, stupid part that loved the way he looked at me in the shower—wants him to fight for me. I want him to say screw the rules, I’m coming over.
But he doesn’t.
Owen: Okay.
One word. Simple. Final.
Owen: If that’s what you want, Tess. Professional.
I stare at the screen until the tears blur my vision.
“It is,” I whisper. “It is what I want.”
I lock the phone and throw it across the couch. It’s the right decision. It’s the safe decision.
So why does it feel like I just broke my own heart?
It’s 11:45 PM, and I can’t sleep.
I toss and turn, kicking off the sheets, then pulling them back up. Every time I close my eyes, I see Owen’s face. I feel his hands on my hips.
I sit up, groaning.
“I need a distraction,” I tell Barnaby, who’s sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed.
I grab my phone. I scroll through Instagram, but it’s just happy couples and brunch photos. I open TikTok, but it’s too loud. My thumb hovers over the Mosaic icon.
The internal alpha build.
We rolled it out to the employees and a closed test group last week. I’ve got a profile, mostly for testing purposes, to check the UI flow. I named my persona Red.
I open the app. The interface is dark, sleek. It feels like a shadow.
The new Be Seen branding I fought Ethan for is front and center.
You aren’t broken. You’re just buffering.
I navigate to the Echo Chamber, the anonymous forum where users can post thoughts into the void and see who resonates. The feed is active. It’s midnight, the peak time for the lonely.
User774: I just want someone to ask me how my day was and actually care about the answer.
NeonSky: My apartment’s too quiet. I forgot what my own voice sounds like.
I stare at the words. Real people. Real loneliness. I type into the text box.