Chapter 6 #2
“What are you doing?” I snap, feeling more panicked and more uncomfortable than ever. I wasn’t prepared for this, for him to be in my territory. He left it a week, enough time for me to forget. And then he turns up and demands answers from me. “Did you know my boss wouldn’t be here?”
The room suddenly feels hot, and I’m feeling more flustered than I want to let on.
“No.” Zach is infuriatingly calm, with his hands loosely clasped over his stomach and his eyes twinkling in amusement.
Fury slowly spirals inside me, and I resent that he’s obviously manipulating the situation for his benefit; to have me and him be alone together. “You could have had this meeting anywhere. Why are you having it here?”
“Where else should I have it?” There’s a hint of mischief in his eyes. “You don’t think I engineered this, do you?”
It’s the way he says it, that makes my spine go ramrod straight. “You people would know the first thing about engineering situations.” I spit the words out with such venom that he tilts his head, eyes widening. I can’t help it. Years of simmering resentment come flooding out.
“What are you implying?”
I close my eyes, slowly, then open them. “Please leave me alone. Please,” I beg. “You being here is just going to cause problems for me.”
He sits up, leans forward. “What problems? What are you talking about?”
When I don’t say anything, he persists. “I can see that your boss isn’t nice to you. I sense that you do a great job because all I hear are glowing reports about you—”
“You’ve been asking about me?”
“No. Cecil and the other managers commented. I know you’re brilliant, Maya. “
I roll my eyes, and he sees it. He’s trying to be my friend. Trying to butter me up, but I don’t need compliments. Not from someone like him.
“I also happen to know that the company isn’t doing as well as the image you’re trying to portray,” he continues, ignoring my petulant reaction, but I snap to attention at his words.
“Cecil wouldn’t say it, which is why I wanted a meeting with him.
I wanted to go through the slides. There were a lot of things missing in that presentation, and that’s what I want to talk to you about. ”
He’s smart. I almost blurted those words out. Thank goodness I didn’t. “You should ask Cecil. He’s the one who has control over what gets shown and what doesn’t. I’m just the junior who puts it all together.”
“You’re not just a junior. I saw how you held that event together, and to learn that you put the presentation deck together as well—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve already heaped tonnes of praise on me for that. Please stop.”
He shifts in his seat. “I don’t understand why you’re so hostile towards me. It feels like too strong a word to use, and yet it feels exactly like that.”
“I’m not hostile towards you.”
“No?” His brows squish together as if he doesn’t believe me. My behavior doesn’t support that claim, so he has every reason to doubt me.
But I have every reason to be wary.
Zach probably knows everything about his father.
And his father is a deplorable man; a cheater whose actions drove Zach’s mother to suicide.
He was clearly shaken up by the trauma of her death, but he never hated his father, even though his brothers did.
I was never around them much because Zach and I found ways to avoid them, but I remember them being rude and rebellious, whereas Zach was the softer, gentler one.
He didn’t hate his father. Instead, he explained his father’s sins away.
He told me he was very young when it happened, but that was then.
He’s an adult now, and I can’t understand why he still wants any part of his father’s life.
In my eyes, he seems like a lackey chasing wealth rather than a person with his own moral compass.
“Every time I see you, you remind me of the good in my past,” he says.
I swallow, hating that he’s bringing the conversation back to personal matters.
Maybe he’s not flirting. He’d be silly to.
He’s just remembering the past and feeling nostalgic about it.
It’s getting harder to keep the barrier in place, especially since he came to my rescue when I dropped and damaged Cecil’s laptop.
That wasn’t orchestrated.
That was Zach being Zach.
I’m trying not to be drawn to him physically and emotionally, but the past leaks into my present, and being around this man after all these years, remembering the boy he used to be, and seeing the man he’s become, I’m struggling to fight my feelings.
He’s undeniably handsome, in a cool understated way, but with him it’s more than just subtle good looks. Zach has a heart of gold. He means well. He loves the best in everyone. He idolized his father.
I thought about him for years, even after Mom told me what happened.
After a while, I convinced myself that I was yearning after an illusion.
That he probably hadn’t given me much thought after I left.
I can never forget that he looked so smug and confident as he waved at me. He didn’t look like he was shaken up.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he asks.
How can I explain the push-pull reaction my body experiences whenever he’s close? I’m fighting nostalgia tangled with attraction and distrust, and seeing him again just now, in this claustrophobic glass-walled room, my body reacts before my mind can stop it.
I feel sorry for him, for the trauma he’s suffered, but my mom and I also suffered.
Maybe he doesn’t know what happened, but our lives changed for the worse and I’ve been carrying around hate for so long.
Now I find myself trying to resist the undeniable pull towards someone who was once my first crush.
My first kiss. My first something. It’s half-formed, half-finished.
Our time together, interrupted abruptly.
Now that he’s appeared, just as abruptly, just as unexpectedly, I’m fighting to deal with it.
With him.
He would have caught my eye regardless, even if I’d never met him before. Even if he hadn’t introduced himself at the VIP event. Zach being the one I shared my first tender kisses with just complicates all the boundaries and blurs all the edges.
“How have you been?” His voice turns low. He doesn’t care for the slides anymore.
“Good, thanks. Is that all—about the presentation deck? You had questions, I take it you don’t anymore?”
His face hardens, and he seems displeased with my response. I thought he might. It confirms what I suspected. This is just a pretence to get me here, to talk to me. The presentation deck and arranging a frivolous meeting with Cecil? Purely theatrical.
Zach is a just another Knight up to the old tricks of manipulation and control.
“I do have questions, but so far you haven’t answered them,” he says, tightly.
“Like I said, it’s better if you ask Katherine or Cecil. I have work to do here, so I need to get back.”
“I won’t take up too much of your time, but … can’t you even tell me how your mom is?”
I shift in my seat, feeling uncomfortable now. Feeling trapped and uneasy with his persistence. “She’s good.”
He nods. “Is she still working?”
“She is.”
“I always wondered what happened when—”
“Zach ...” I shake my head, struggling for words. “Please keep this professional.”
“Is it so wrong of me to want to know what happened and where you’ve been, how you’ve been, how you are?”
I don’t say a word.
“It was so unexpected, running into you like that. It was nice. It was ... the best thing, seeing you again.”
His words knock the air out of my lungs.
It was the best thing seeing me again? I blink a few times, unsure of how to respond to that.
For Zach, us meeting seems to have been a bigger event than it was for me.
He sees it through rose-tinted spectacles, whereas I see it in another light. Something dark and foreboding.
“I was supposed to be somewhere else on the night of the VIP event,” he confesses, sitting back, his hands resting on the arms of the chair. “But I’m so glad I canceled and went to the event.”
My mind starts to drift and wonder what it was he canceled. A date? An important meeting? Does it matter?
It seems to matter to him because he’s carrying on like we never lost touch. Like it hasn’t been fourteen years since we last saw each other.
“What do you want from me, Zach?” I ask wearily. My heart pitter-patters inside my chest. He’s not sitting too close, but I can feel his presence as if he’s touching me. I hate how easily my body remembers him, and how my mind drifts, absurdly, to whether he’s single or if he’s seeing someone.
And if he is, what sort of woman he’s with. Whether she fits into his world as effortlessly as I never could.
The thought spirals before I can stop it, pulling me into questions I don’t have a right to ask. I clamp down on it hard, annoyed with myself for drifting there at all.
“What do I want? I want you to tell me why you’re so indifferent to me. Why did you hide from me at the VIP event?”
“I had things to do. It wasn’t a social event for me.”
I glance out of the windowed wall, and suddenly feel paranoid that people might hear us. That Katherine might suddenly appear. She won’t like this at all, me and Zach sitting here, like this.
“Come to dinner with me.”
Dinner?
No. I can’t. Not ever. Mom would never forgive me.
“No!” I shriek. Then look out onto the open plan office. A few people look up, and I turn away, heat rising along my cheeks.
“Why not?”
“Not possible.”
He throws his hands up in the air, clearly exasperated. “Why not, Maya? You hid from me at the VIP event.”
“I was busy. I had work to do.”
“You hid. Tell me you didn’t hide.”
I look at him, but I can’t say it. I can’t lie to him. I’ve never lied, and I’m not about to start now.
“Why are you avoiding me, Maya?”
“Why are you doing this?” I snap.
“Doing what?” He sounds genuinely surprised. “We find each other after so many years, and you don’t want to talk about the past?”
I do not. But I can’t say that to him because it will only make him question me more. One thing is slowly dawning on me: he has no idea why we left.
He leans back in his chair, crosses one leg over the other, casual as ever. “You’re seeing someone.”
His statement blindsides me. “I’m not—” And now I’m mad at myself.
I didn’t mean to answer so fast. To tell the truth.
I should have made up a pretend boyfriend.
Maybe that would have kept Zach at bay, because the way he’s looking at me right now, tells me he’s interested in me for more reasons than just the past.
“Then, have dinner with me. I take it Cecil never said anything about the laptop.”
I see what he did there. He reminded me of why I should go. I grind down on my teeth, hating that he’s added a layer of complication to my life that I don’t need.
“He never noticed. And, thank you, again,” I try not to sound as sarcastic as I feel. “And please, thank your brother.”
“We already did, that night.”
I nod, clenching my jaw, knowing that he’s waiting for my answer. He’s not going to give up. If I decline his invite, he’ll hound me again, and as much as I hate the Knights having control over other people’s lives, this is one instance where it makes sense for me to give in.
“One dinner,” I say, quietly. “Just the one.”
“One dinner then—”
The door swings open and Katherine appears.
“Am I interrupting something?” The false smile on her face tells me that I’m in big trouble.
“Not at all.” Zach sits back, looking more relaxed than should be legal. I, on the other hand, feel like my heart is about to punch its way out of my chest, beating too hard for this pin-drop silence.
I knew Zach Knight would be nothing but trouble for me.
“I ... I was just leaving,” I say, starting to get up.
“We haven’t finished.” Zach’s smooth tone makes me irate. My job is on the line here, not his. He could get away with murder and he’d still be fine.
“Of course.” Katherine offers him another sugary sweet smile before closing the door and leaving. My body sinks into my chair, palpitations still so loud, I wonder if he can hear them.
“She’s a dragon.”
“She’s my boss,” I snap, “and she’s going to make my life hell.”
“Does she always?” Concern fills his eyes.
“I told you I needed to get back to my desk.” I don’t want to make a scene, but a part of me wants to scream at him. He’s managed to do the thing I’d been avoiding. Having Katherine find us in here alone.
“We’re done,” he says, cheerily, while I silently seethe. “Let’s swap numbers, so I can give you the details about dinner.”
I open my mouth to protest, then give in completely. Katherine wants my head on a platter, so I need to quietly get back to my desk, and fast. I tear off a piece of paper and scribble my number on it.