Chapter 16
grayson
How I didn’t drag her away from the party, sprinting through the lobby toward the elevators, I’ll never know.
And frankly, I should’ve. The rest of the night, we were barely around each other, let alone in the vicinity where I could touch her—which is what I really wanted.
I thought we had a window to make an escape, but just as I was about to pull us out of there, Howard stepped in front of us, blocking our path, insisting that we were needed for the next reindeer game.
If he saw the fake excitement on our faces, he didn’t react.
Declan did, who was standing behind him, laughing under his breath.
He knew we weren’t going to say no. Between them not making their decision yet between Kat and I, and that Howard was in his formal Santa suit—beard and all—it felt wrong to deny him.
Except that the one reindeer game led to another. And another. And another. It wouldn’t have been horrible, except a few were men versus women. How am I supposed to flirt and hold her hand and touch her in every acceptable way when she’s across the room from me?
Then again, going head-to-head with her was pretty fun. The look of competition in her eyes? The way she bites her lip when she’s concentrating? It put our situation into perspective that yes, she is my rival, but sleeping with the enemy could—and will—be a lot of fun.
That is, if I can just figure out where she's at.
The party ended about thirty minutes ago, and the guests are finally starting to make their way to their rooms. Some are carrying their sleeping children. Others are stumbling, but all smiles, as they get on the elevator. But Kat is nowhere to be found.
“Where are you?” I whisper to no one. But it’s then that I see a figure standing outside on the balcony, looking like a vision under the light of the moon and the snow coming down.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask, quickly slipping off my jacket and putting it around her shoulders. “Aren’t you freezing?”
I wrap her in my arms to keep her warm, though it’s not as cold as I’d expect for the fact that there’s ten inches of snow on the ground. That much snow where I’m from is only mildly inconvenient. But in Tennessee? This is record-setting.
“I’m better now,” she says. “Sorry I disappeared. Just wanted to get some fresh air, and you were chit-chatting with Declan.”
Ah, that’s when she snuck out. “Yes. He found another podcast he thought I’d like. It’s a historical sports one. Who knew I’d bond with a dude during a pitch about podcasts?”
“Who knew you’d bond with him about anything, after the looks you were shooting him after we arrived.”
I shrug. “He’s not so bad.”
She turns around in my arms, quickly wrapping hers around my midsection. “That’s not what you thought the first day we all met.”
I laugh and squeeze her tighter. “I didn’t like how he was looking at you.”
“And how was he looking at me?”
I know this is payback from earlier when I made her repeat when I called her mine. “Like you were available. That he wanted you.”
“But I was.”
I shake my head. “Technically, yes. But that didn’t mean I liked it.”
She lifts up on her toes to give me a small kiss. “You know I never would’ve done anything with him, right?”
“I do now.”
“I don’t….or should I say…didn’t cross that line in the business world. And that definitely included clients.”
“Again, I know that now,” I say. “But then? All I saw was him getting something I wasn’t. It also didn’t help that I just learned who you were, so I was still processing that. Actually, can we just forget how I acted that first night and chalk it up to a brief episode of douche-y rage?”
“We can,” she says as she turns back around so we’re both looking at the snow. “That is, if you can forgive me for my chronic stubbornness.”
I lean down to press a gentle kiss behind her ear. “Am I forgiving Kat or Katherine?”
There’s a shift in the air that has nothing to do with the snowfall or the wind. I pull her in tighter, wanting her to know that whatever she wants to say, I’m here for her.
“I used to work for a firm like you do. I was one of those young, excited, do whatever you ask them to do junior executives. Work sixteen-hour days. Weekends. Anything to get ahead.”
“Oh, the days,” I say. “Where you’d take any scrap of work they’d give you, and you treated it like it was the most important thing in the world.”
“Exactly. But from the beginning, one of mid-level publicists took a liking to me. He said I had good ideas and invited me to be on his team for a huge product rollout. I was the only junior to be asked to come on board. I was so excited.”
I pull her in tighter to me, having a feeling where this is going. Still, it’s her story, and I’m going let her tell it, no matter how long she needs.
“He used a lot of my ideas during that time, but I didn’t think anything of it. It was a collaborative effort. I was part of the team. The team got the win. I assumed that’s how things went.”
“Normally they do,” I say. “But I’m guessing there’s more?”
She nods, and I feel her hands gripping tighter onto my forearms. “After that project he asked me out. The only policy about dating in the workplace was that senior executives couldn’t date subordinates. But since he wasn’t in a senior leadership role yet, we were good.”
Yup. I know where this is going. And I already want to kill this guy.
“It started good, just like any other relationship. Fun dates. Knowing looks across the office. Before I knew it, I had a key to his place and had all but moved out of the apartment I had with Logan.”
“And knowing our business, that meant you were bringing work home with you.”
“Exactly. And since we worked together, the conversations we had felt more collaborative than anything. He’d ask me what I’d do in a certain situation, or what ideas I had for a hypothetical product campaign.
I answered honestly, because that’s who I am, and didn’t think anything of it.
They weren’t groundbreaking ideas, in my opinion.
Because if they were, he, or someone above him, should’ve thought of that, you know? ”
“Oh I do,” I say. “I also know that just because you’re higher on the food chain doesn’t mean you’re the smartest person in the room.”
“I know that now,” she says. “But then I thought I was just brainstorming ideas. Sure, he’d use a few of them, but I really didn’t think anything of it. And when I’d ask him if he did use it, he’d pass it off. Make it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal. And after a while, I figured it wasn’t.”
“I’m guessing this hit a boiling point?”
“It did,” she says, taking a deep breath before continuing.
“He had the chance to pitch for a multi-million-dollar campaign. He couldn’t fuck it up.
A promotion was on the line, and I knew the stress was getting to him.
So every night we’d go back to his place and work on it.
We thought of everything: How he was going to use his advertising dollars. Strategy. Media rollout. Press tours.”
“When you say ‘we’ I’m guessing that meant you.”
I feel her shrug against me. “I thought I was helping. It wasn’t until much later that I truly realized I put together his entire presentation for him.”
I’ve seen this happen; people taking credit for another’s work is more prevalent in firms than I care to admit. But someone you care about doing it to you? That has to fucking sting.
“What happened?”
“He got the account. And the promotion.” She pauses for more than a few beats, and by the way she’s breathing, she might be holding back a tear. “It was a huge account for the firm, so they had this big office celebration party, champagne and all. And of course, Jeff gave a speech.”
“Of course he did. Let me guess, he didn’t thank you.”
“I would’ve liked to have just been mentioned,” she says.
“Mind you, it wasn’t a secret that we were dating.
So the fact that after he thanked everyone, from his bosses, to the assistants, to legal, to graphics, and even to the food delivery person for keeping him well fed during all the late nights he put in, but not me, stung.
Not once. Not a thank you. Not anything. ”
“Fuck, Kat. What an asshole.”
“He was. And I was livid. It’s one thing to use my ideas—and I know he did because he practiced his pitch speech on me the night before he gave it, and I saw the slides that I designed and put together—but to not even give me a passing ‘oh, and thanks Kat,’ sent me over the edge.”
“You didn’t go by Katherine then?”
“I did. Mostly,” she says. “When I presented to clients, I was more formal. But when it came to around the office, Kat felt fine. Katherine is such a serious name. And at that point, the only person who called me that was my mom, when I was in trouble, or Logan, when he was fucking with me. Kat, I thought, made me more relatable.”
“Makes sense.”
“It did, until the day that Katherine Smith was fully born. Which was also the afternoon after this party.”
“Part of me is scared to hear it. The other part of me is hoping you kicked him in the dick.”
“You’re right on both accounts. I tried to confront him at the office after the party settled down.
Maybe not confront, but ask him why he seemingly forgot about me.
He wasn’t in his office, and no one had seen him.
I would’ve asked the assistant that served the group of mid-level publicists, but she wasn’t at her desk either. ”
“Oh fuck.”
“Oh fuck is right.” Kat grips on to my arms tighter. “I eventually found them in a stairwell. Let’s just say they were using the rails for balance.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “No one should have to catch someone like that.”
“It sent me into a rage,” she says. “It was my final straw. Once he got his pants up, and the assistant quit acting like she was shocked that I existed, we had it out, in the middle of the office. It was like I had an out-of-body experience and just started screaming. For how he used me. How he was cheating on me. How three days prior he took my lunch that I was looking forward to eating.”
“The bastard,” I say. “I promise I’ll never take your food.”
She laughs at my joke. “I don’t know who I was at the moment, but I was absolutely causing a scene. I had to get dragged into my boss’s office to calm down.”
“What happened next?”
“I was suspended for a week and demoted to basically an assistant, with no roles in any accounts. Jeff and what’s-her-face got a warning.”
“Oh, that would piss me off more than them doing what they did.”
“It did. But the boiling point was when I went to his apartment that night to grab my things. I took Logan with me, not wanting to be by myself. Of course, she was there, looking smug as hell, like she won some sort of prize. I asked to talk to him about what happened, not because I’d take him back but…
I don’t know…I wanted some sort of closure. ”
“That’s understandable. What did he say?”
“That I was getting mad over nothing. That I overestimated how much I helped with his presentation. That I was delusional in thinking that I should get any credit when all I did was type a few slides for him. Oh, and that we weren’t that serious, and he doesn’t know why I acted how I did.
For reference, we were together for a year. ”
“Motherfucker,” I growl out. “I fucking hate this guy.”
“Join the club. We have matching hats,” Kat jokes as she turns around in my arms. “That was the day I realized mixing business and pleasure was the worst idea in the world. That getting your heart broken is one thing, but also someone using you in the work space, copying ideas, all-out using me? Honestly that was harder to get over.”
“That’s when Katherine was born?”
She nods. “It was a reminder of who I was in that space. Not that I was tempted again, but it was a good insurance policy. Tight buns. Light makeup. Strictly business. That was my persona until Logan told me one day that he wanted to hire me on full-time at GameTech. That I could leave the world where I had to see Jeff every day and get stares from coworkers whom I thought were my friends. The rest is history.”
“Except the rule.”
“Except the rule.” She finally looks up at me, her eyes a little sad, but I see hope in them as well. “I’m scared, Grayson. I know you aren’t Jeff. I know that in my bones. But putting myself out there like this when I said I never would again…that’s a scary place to be.”
“I get that,” I say, taking each of her hands in mine and bringing them to my lips.
“I know words can be empty sometimes. So me telling you that I’d never use you in that way, or put you in that position, or cheat on you, can only go so far.
But please know, I hate liars. And cheaters.
I don’t even like using cheat codes in video games. ”
This makes her laugh. “Make sure to tell that to Logan. He appreciates a video game purist.”
“I will. I can’t wait to meet him.” I bring our joined hands between us, laying them over my heart.
“Just know that I think you’re amazing. Smart.
The way you talk to clients…I get now why you beat me.
You’re fucking brilliant, Katherine Smith.
And I’d never want to dull that shine or steal it from you.
I’d just be the lucky bastard who gets to be along for the ride. ”
I watch as a single tear flows down her cheek. I take my thumb and brush it away, making sure to keep my hand exactly where it is.
“Grayson?”
“Yeah Vixen?”
I watch as she gives me a pleading look. “I’m ready.”
“For what?”
She puts her free hand over the one that’s resting on her cheek. “For you to kiss me.”
Five little words. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to hear them. It’s why I don’t wait another second to grant her wish.
Her lips are a little tentative as we meet, but that only lasts for a second until we sink into each other.
My hand wraps around the small of her back, bringing her into me as her hands cup my face.
It’s only been a few days since we’ve done this, yet it’s felt like years.
I’ve missed this. Missed her. The taste of her lips.
The way her tongue is always searching for more. How her body melts into me.
Her saying that she was ready for this was a huge step for her. But I know the feeling. Because so am I. I’m ready for it all.
We pull away, just enough to catch our breath, but neither of us move from where we’re standing.
“We’re doing this, aren’t we?”
I nod and tap our foreheads together like I have so many times this weekend. “I’m in if you are.”
She lets go of my hands, looping them around my neck to bring me closer. “All in.”