23. Mine
MINE
JUNIE
I don’t make mistakes at work. Ever.
Yet here I am, correcting the same calculation error for the third freaking time.
And it’s not because the math is hard. Math is, in fact, the easiest thing in my life right now. No, I’m fucking up because my brain is stuck on one word and one word only.
Mine.
Not just the word, but how he said it. Low. Graveled. Throaty.
Determined.
He said mine while I shook apart from the sheer force of my orgasms and decided I no longer had a functional nervous system.
Fucking possessive bullshit that I have no business being turned on by.
Yet here I am.
And now I’ve been typing the same vendor reconciliation email for forty-five minutes.
I really need to get a grip.
No, what I need is for my brain to stop replaying the exact moment Cole said tell me you’re running and start doing basic arithmetic again. I am a professional. I have a CPA credential and a grudge against the IRS on Cole’s behalf. I can do this.
I close out of my spreadsheet. Take a deep breath, scan the area to make sure that Nana Mae isn’t once again sneaking around the corner on a fact-finding mission, and purposefully avoid looking into Cole’s open office door.
Only then do I open a new spreadsheet.
It doesn’t help that I can hear Cole on a phone call in his office or feel his gaze on me while he speaks. His voice has a flatness he uses when he’s pretending to pay attention, but it only takes one syllable for me to know he’s not.
I don’t know who he’s speaking to, and I’m aggressively not thinking about who it could be. It’s not my business. We haven’t reached the who are you talking to stage of this…whatever this is.
Though considering the ring on my finger and the hickey just above my collarbone, I suppose the argument could be made that we are well into…this.
The lines of my spreadsheet blur before me, so I stomp out of my office and head for the coffee machine, all the while feeling Cole’s focus on me until I’m out of sight.
It’s a strange thing to feel someone watching you. And it’s really inconvenient when it reminds you of nothing but what his tongue can do to your most intimate places.
Jesus, who the hell am I?
I’m Juniper Fucking Mercer, and I do not allow men to derail my career.
Humph.
That little pep talk almost clears my head. It’s clear enough to do basic math anyway. Now all I have to do is block out all other sensory input.
Headphones it is.
I also angle my monitor to the far wall for good measure.
And finally, I get to work.
My first real breakthrough comes an hour later—an address.
One of Devin’s shell companies routes through an LLC registered to a PO Box in Charleston.
A quick plug into GPS tells me that it’s only ninety minutes from here.
Close enough that somebody, at some point, drove there on purpose.
Close enough that this is not a man who disappeared into the ether with his spoils—this is a man who set up shop a tank of gas away, living off the fruits of someone else’s labor.
And it pisses me off.
I stare at the address for a long time.
I could go ream this guy a new asshole. I’d even enjoy it.
Six weeks ago, I would’ve already been halfway there because Viper does not sit on information that can be weaponized.
At least not when someone so clearly deserves it.
My fingers move over the keyboard of their own will. It’s like an out-of-body experience I have no control over as they click a few buttons to email myself the address.
Then I stare straight ahead and sit on my hands so I don’t grab my keys.
Cole asked me to give him until the end of the week.
That’s three more days. He asked me, to my face, for three days, and he doesn’t ask for anything, ever.
My mind is attempting to rebel at the idea of giving it to him because I was raised on Fen’s operational philosophy of ask forgiveness, not permission.
But Cole isn’t Fen, and this isn’t a college prank. The Junie that would’ve driven to Charleston by lunch is not, apparently, the version of me that got out of his bed this morning.
I drum a solid beat against the grain of the wood table I work at every day, and the engagement ring I shouldn’t be wearing catches too many damn rays of light.
Old Junie wouldn’t be wearing the ring, and old Cole wouldn’t have asked for three days.
That’s progress, so I close out of the damn spreadsheet, and give him the damn three days.
I don’t know how to reconcile pre- and post-Colegasm Juniper.
Or when I started thinking about myself in the third person.
This is, I’m pretty sure, what people mean when they talk about personal growth, and I would like it noted for the record that it’s supremely annoying.
My phone buzzes, and for once I’m thankful for the distraction that is Fenway Jones.
Right up until I swipe across the screen and see his message.
Fen: Don’t freak out.
I slowly spin my chair so Cole can’t see what’s happening with my face.
Junie: What did I say about telling me not to freak out? You need to work on your freaking delivery, Fenway!
Junie: Telling me not to freak out makes me freak the fuck out.
Fen: Fair.
Fen: Okay, freak out. A little. A controlled freak-out. Like a prescribed burn.
Oh my God. Am I breathing in shards of glass? I must be. Right? That’s why my throat feels this way?
Fen: Grace is cooked, Spite-Berry.
I stare at my screen while my fingers tremble over letters.
Junie: Explain.
Fen: I told you.
Fen: I fucking told you she was playing her hand too hard. It’s the timeline contradiction.
Fen: She did three interviews, three different versions of when you “attacked” her. I fed the discrepancies to a creator I’ve worked with before, and she cut a side by side. It’s at 2M views and climbing.
No. No. No.
Yes, I want Grace to fall.
No, I do not want to be included in a fresh wave of ToxicTok.
Fen: The Scout Report quietly pulled the original piece this morning. Their legal department reached out to mine to “clarify the factual basis of the prior reporting.”
Fen: The Unfiltered Hour just issued a statement.
Fen: The baby registry is still up btw. A king among thieves.
Junie: Holy. Shit.
Fen: I told you.
Fen: Never doubt me, my infamous little Spite-Berry.
Fen: I’m currently crushing a glass of champagne with Hudson. Well, I’m crushing one, he’s scowling at his phone.
Fen: If you were here, you’d get a hug that would dislocate your shoulder.
I set my phone down because my fingers are a live wire of electricity searching for an outlet.
I read the messages again.
The anger that always propels my spite takes a little longer to surface this time. Interesting what happens when you have no cause to reach for it for extended periods of time.
Vengeance dances across my chest with fiery tips though. It’s a joy with teeth. It’s the joy I’ve been storing in a jar under my bed for two months as the Internet called me names while Grace profited. It’s the joy I’m owed, and every cell of my body is preparing to claim it.
I open Instagram and scroll. It feeds my rancorous heart in seconds.
Then I move onto TikTok and the hunger grows, manic in its ascent and vital to my exoneration.
My fingers move on muscle memory to my drafts folder where there’s a seventy-one-word reply to Grace I’ve been accidentally maintaining, lovingly, like a sourdough starter.
I stare at it, and the glow shining in my heart moves outward toward my limbs as I add a seventh sentence.
P.S. The “natural” cry face you’re using in your TikToks is the one you practiced in my bathroom junior year before your Falling for Love audition tape. The lighting’s better now. The chin wobble’s the same.
It’s mean.
It’s extremely gratifying.
It is, objectively, the best sentence of the entire draft.
My thumb hovers over send.
And then, unbidden, Cole’s voice enters my mind.
“Tell me.”
I shake it away. Cole meant tell him when I’m about to run. Not tell him I’m about to stick a knife in my arch-nemesis.
“Tell me.”
Fuck. He’s like an annoying angel on my shoulder.
But if I do this, I’ll have to explain it to everyone, not just him.
Not that Cole would forbid it. He won’t. Cole has never forbidden me anything in my life, and if I sent this right now, he’d probably watch the fallout with exasperation and concern, then fix the leaky faucet in my bathroom.
So he’s not the problem here.
The problem is that I’d want to defend my actions.
Constantly defending means you’re never moving forward.
If I act, then I’d be defending my pattern of metabolizing pain by lighting it on fire.
I swallow thickly.
I don’t know what I’ll do with all these new…epiphanies.
This is why I suck at adulting, and it’s not something I want to discuss with Cole Whittaker.
It’s not something I want to discuss with anyone. Ever.
It’s something that Bea would have a freaking field day with.
My thumb is still hovering over my screen, and then I delete the draft. For real this time.
I think my guts are actually quaking. It’s like being on a rickety old wooden roller coaster that jolts every splintered beam straight through your bones.
I’ve never in my life deleted a weapon I’d spent so much time honing.
Junie: I won’t react.
Fen: …
Junie: I trust you to do your thing.
Fen: Who are you, and what have you done with my Spite-Berry?
Junie: I deleted my draft, but I have it memorized if you want to read it.
Junie: It was Spite-Berry’s crowning jewel.
Fen: THAT’S MY GIRL!
Fen: …
Junie: Just drop it, Fen.
Fen: You know that’s not my style.
Fen: Seriously, Junie. I’m proud of you.
A lump forms in my throat.
Fen: Cole will lose his shit when he finds out.
I drop the phone into my lap, and my thumb lands on the diamond without me asking it to.
Katie arrives at four with zero warning. My head is pressed against the table because I’m not myself and Cole stormed off…somewhere, hours ago, so I slipped across the drive to lick my wounds without Nana Mae snooping for information on the state of relations.