Chapter 41
Scottie gripped the warm paper bag containing Willow’s favorite Chinese takeout and walked out of the elevator.
Silence greeted her on the usually busy thirteenth floor. Everyone had probably long since gone home, just Willow was still here, working late for the third time this week to make up for time she had lost dealing with tech glitches.
Willow truly was the hardest-working person Scottie had ever met. She knew how much it stung that some people in the company assumed she was lazy or incompetent. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The frosted glass door leading to the bullpen stood open, and Scottie slipped inside.
Most of the overhead lights were turned off. Only one corner of the room was lit: the area around Willow’s desk. Darkness had fallen outside, and raindrops clung to the floor-to-ceiling windows, blurring the lights from surrounding buildings and the MAX stop across the street.
Scottie’s gaze veered across rows of empty desks and immediately zeroed in on Willow.
They hadn’t seen each other since Sunday. Seventy-two long hours without a single glance at her, so Scottie paused at the edge of the cubicle labyrinth to drink her in.
Willow sat at her desk, shoulders hunched, her attention firmly locked onto her two-monitor setup. She hadn’t noticed Scottie yet. Her normally neat ponytail was coming loose, as if she’d tugged at her hair in frustration. Faint shadows lingered under her eyes. Clearly, she wasn’t sleeping enough.
Scottie worried that she was running herself ragged, but Willow had brushed off her concern, saying she just had to make it one more week, until the big presentation.
Of course, Scottie worried anyway—hence the takeout delivery.
The only good thing was that the tech hiccups had been surprisingly rare lately.
Willow hadn’t texted or called with an emergency in at least a week.
No Outlook tantrums, no paper jams, not a single corrupted file…
which was great, of course, but it also meant they hadn’t gotten to spend any time together at work.
Wait a minute! If the glitches were taking a break, why was Willow working late to make up for lost time? And why had the tech disasters stopped? Shouldn’t the pressure of the approaching presentation make them happen more frequently, not less often?
Something wasn’t adding up.
“You trash heap of an ERP system,” Willow muttered. “And here I thought German engineering was supposed to be efficient, not whatever the hell this is.”
Ah. Scottie bit back a smile. Even annoyed, Willow managed to sound adorable. Clearly, she was wrestling with SAP. So the tech glitches hadn’t stopped after all.
Scottie crossed the bullpen. “Hey, you.”
Willow jumped. She snatched her hands away from the keyboard as if she’d been caught in the middle of hacking a government website. “Scottie!” She pressed her fingers to her chest. “You scared me half to death! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry. You were so focused on your work, I doubt you would have noticed a marching band walking in.”
A tired smile darted across Willow’s face. “I much prefer you to a marching band.”
“Yeah, especially since the marching band wouldn’t have brought you this.” Scottie held up the bag, then set it down on the corner of Willow’s desk. “Sesame chicken noodles, dumplings, and spring rolls. I hope this makes up for scaring you.”
Willow’s stomach let out an appreciative rumble. “That’s so sweet of you. Thank you! I’ll eat as soon as I finish this.”
Scottie leaned a hip against the desk. “Something giving you trouble?”
Willow waved her hand. “Oh, just SAP being SAP.”
“Why don’t I take a look while you eat?” Scottie nudged the food toward her.
“It’s fine. I’ve got this.”
Scottie studied her for several moments. Something was wrong. Not with SAP but with Willow. She could almost see Willow’s walls snapping back into place, and she didn’t understand why she was suddenly being shut out. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Willow said, but she didn’t meet Scottie’s gaze.
“Why won’t you let me help you?” Scottie couldn’t stop the frustration from leaking into her tone. “I thought we were past this whole one-woman army thing, where you think you have to solve every problem by yourself.”
Willow pushed her desk chair back and stood so they were face-to-face. Her eyes flashed as she went from defensive retreat to heated counterattack. “Maybe it’s because if I let you help, you’ll get in trouble with your boss again and lose your job!”
Scottie’s pulse stuttered. “How do you know about that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Willow replied. “What matters is that you put your job on the line, without even telling me! What were you thinking?”
Scottie gripped the edge of the desk with both hands. “What was I supposed to do? Stand by and let that jackass Sorensen fire you?”
Willow inhaled and exhaled audibly, as if fighting down the urge to shout.
“I appreciate that you tried to protect me, Scottie, but I never wanted you to risk your job for me, and I think you knew that. That’s why you did it behind my back instead of telling me you weren’t going to document anything. ”
“Maybe, but—”
“Maybe?” Willow drew out the word with a skeptical look on her face.
Oh no, Willow Greene. I know what you’re doing. Willow was trying to make this all about Scottie to distract from the fact that she’d been dealing with her tech issues by herself all week. But Scottie wouldn’t allow that. “What if I had told you? What would you have done?”
Willow opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Be honest,” Scottie said. “You would have done exactly what you’re doing now: pushed me away and tried to muddle through on your own. You wouldn’t have asked me for help, even if technological Armageddon happened. Am I right?”
Willow visibly deflated. She dropped back onto her chair and swiped a tiny scrap of paper off her mouse pad. “Okay. Yes. That’s probably what I would have done. I don’t want you to get fired because of my problems.”
Scottie perched on the edge of the desk, closer to Willow but not encroaching onto her personal space.
“But that’s the thing, Willow. There’s no such thing as your problems and my problems. Just ours.
We’re supposed to be a team.” She looked at Willow, desperate to get through to her.
“Do you have your VIP girlfriend badge with you?”
Willow stared at her. “What?”
“Just humor me.”
“Yes. It’s right here.” Willow dug through her purse and pulled out the laminated card. “Why?”
Aww. So she did carry it wherever she went. It gave Scottie hope. “Have you read the fine print?”
“Fine print?” Willow echoed.
Scottie made a swiveling motion with her finger. “It’s on the back. I didn’t want to point it out in front of my entire family since I wasn’t sure you’d be comfortable with that.”
Willow turned the badge over in her hands.
The fine print on the back of the laminated card said: This badge grants its wearer lifetime access to: priority tech support, emergency coffee/chai latte/takeout delivery, and unlimited hugs and kisses.
Her gaze snapped back up, and Scottie knew exactly what phrase she was staring at: Lifetime access.
“That’s what I want, Willow,” Scottie said quietly.
“A lifetime with you. I know we’ve only been dating for a month, and maybe I should slow down, be more careful to avoid getting burned again, but my heart is already in this, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
I’m all in for life, and I don’t want to keep sorting problems into mine and yours. Because, dammit, I love you!”
She’d been holding those words in for weeks, afraid to scare Willow off with too much, too soon. Blurting it out now, in the middle of an argument, wasn’t the romantic moment she had envisioned. But if a lifetime together wasn’t what Willow wanted, she would rather know now.
Willow went absolutely still.
Great. Now she had done it—scared Willow off. But she wouldn’t take it back.
“Scottie…” Willow whispered. Her voice broke. “That’s… I… The ‘for life’ thing is scaring the living daylights out of me.”
Every bit of anger, fear, and frustration drained from Scottie’s body, and her heart went out to Willow. “I know,” she replied gently. She’d been aware of Willow’s history, of course, or at least the little pieces Willow had let slip.
Willow glanced at the VIP girlfriend badge and smoothed her thumb across the fine print. “It’s not that I don’t want it, but…I’ve never been good at relationships. Never managed to achieve a happily ever after. The best I could do was a happy for now.”
“I get it,” Scottie answered. “After Tanya broke up with me, I felt that way too. I spent months trying to figure out where I went wrong. How we went from our happily ever after to ‘I want more from life than this.’”
Willow reached out as if to touch her hand but then didn’t.
“Finally, I figured something out,” Scottie continued.
“A happy ending is not a finish line that you cross once and then you’ll be happy forever.
It’s not a goal; it’s a journey. A choice that you make every single day—a choice to be there for each other, no matter what.
Tanya stopped making that choice. But I want you to know that, with you, I never will.
Like I said, I’m all in for the rest of my life. ”
Willow clamped her teeth around her lower lip, maybe to hide its trembling.
“But it’ll only work if you make the same choice. If you’re all in too.” Scottie paused and gathered all her courage. “Are you?”
~ ~ ~
Willow didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure she was still breathing. All she could do was stare at Scottie.
Her words echoed through Willow’s mind on auto-repeat, and the “I love you” made her heart thump against her ribs.
Every fiber of her being yearned to throw her arms around Scottie, kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe, and tell her she loved her and would be hers forever too.