9. Violet
NINE
VIOLET
I had a mountain of work to get through.
The draft of Book Three had been sitting open on my personal laptop since morning.
I'd hammered out eleven new pages the night before, and they needed formatting, polishing, and uploading to the platform before the week slipped away.
My protagonist, Sandra, had just discovered that Nicholas knew about her secret writing, and the fallout of that meant I needed to be deep inside her head.
I was nowhere near Sandra's head.
My mind had been stuck on that lunch since the moment it ended.
I kept picturing Sloane and Olivia across from me, Simon beside them, and how curious he'd been about my life.
He'd asked questions and taken in my answers like they carried weight.
He'd leaned in when I spoke. He'd followed up on passing comments, built on them, asked the next logical thing.
He'd shown real interest in me, and it lit a dangerous warmth in a part of myself that wasn't allowed to feel anything for him.
I set my pen down and leaned back, exhaling.
It meant nothing. That was the hollow conclusion I kept circling back to, the one I needed to believe.
He was a curious person by nature, always had been.
Sloane was curious about my life too, and I'd never once picked apart her interest beyond the simple fact that she was my best friend and that's what best friends did.
Simon asking about my gym habits was no different.
People asked questions. It was standard social currency at a lunch table with four people.
I picked the pen back up and stared at my notes.
He'd said, "You're perfect like this," and the raw honesty in his voice proved he meant it.
That moment was the one I couldn't explain away.
He'd locked eyes with me right before the line, and I'd dropped my gaze to the table because I had no idea what to do with a look like that.
I was staring at the same invisible table now, frozen at my desk.
But this wasn't a story. This wasn't a V.M. Ashby novel where the brooding CEO falls hopelessly for his assistant and charms his way through corporate complications to a clean, permanent happily-ever-after. This was a real office in a corporate tower, and he was my actual employer.
Whatever charge hummed under our conversations was warmth on his end, born of grief. Losing Elena had cracked his armor open, and I happened to be standing close enough to feel the heat.
He didn't like me. Not in any way that mattered.
I exhaled and forced my attention back to the screen. I needed to get that lunch out of my head and write.
The Beatrice Holm sales figures had come through that morning.
Five hundred thousand copies moved in two days, the publishing industry's biggest debut in over a decade.
The whole floor had been crackling ever since the dashboard updated.
A celebration was set for that night, a full evening event with premium catering, a rented venue, and a high-profile guest list that would force a formal speech out of Simon.
Beatrice Holm wrote romance too, though nothing like the scrappy, serialized, anonymous stuff I published as V.M.
Ashby. Hers was elevated literary romance, reviewed by critics, debated by scholars, shelved next to "serious" literature.
She wrote about real couples, catching the gritty texture of two people who'd sat across from each other at their worst moments and chosen to stay together anyway.
Her fans spent hours arguing over whether her protagonists came straight from her real life.
Whenever the question came up, she swore it was pure fiction, but she sold the denial with a sly edge that made people believe the opposite, which was probably the whole point.
Her debut had made three of my stoic colleagues weep on their train commutes, a fact I knew only because they'd confessed it to me with the earnestness of people who rarely cry in public.
I wanted to be that good. Maybe not in the same prestigious register, but just as committed.
Just as true. Simon had said once, during our midnight call, that writing was subjective, and the only thing that counted was whether the reader felt something.
I'd scribbled that line in the margins of my notebook. I hadn't told him about it.
I checked my phone.
Still nothing from the landlord. I'd texted him twice, and the read receipts sat under both messages with no reply.
The lease was expiring fast. I'd been plain about renewing and given him plenty of time to draft the paperwork, and building management had answered with a silence that sat at the back of my mind, a worry that kept snagging at me, one I shoved past because dealing with it took energy I was spending elsewhere.
I set the phone face-down and dove back into my work.
The elevator dinged at the end of the hall.
I rose to my feet on instinct. Steady footsteps came around the corner, and Simon appeared in a sharp black suit with a crisp white shirt underneath, the jacket sitting square on his broad shoulders. He stopped right in front of my desk, a knowing smile already playing on his lips.
"So, you decided to complement rather than match today," he said, his eyes sweeping over my dress.
I glanced down at my outfit. The off-white pleated dress fell a modest few inches past my knee, clean and tailored, with a cut that swayed whenever I moved.
"I thought complementing would be a much safer bet."
He nodded, like he was giving it serious thought. "You nailed it." He paused, his gaze going soft. "You look beautiful, Violet."
I smiled up at him, a flush rising to my cheeks. "Thank you, sir."
He tilted his head, shifting gears. "I have something to tell you."
I lifted my eyebrows. "What is it?"
"Olivia had a really good time the other day," he began, sliding one hand into his pocket. "With you and Sloane. She wants to invite you up to the lake house for her birthday weekend."
I blinked, stunned. Warmth flooded my chest. "Really?"
"She asked for you specifically. She wants Sloane to come as well."
"Sloane isn't here right now," I said, trying to process the invitation, "but I'll reach out to her. I'm sure she'll bend over backward to make it work. And if she can't, I'll let you know right away."
He gave a satisfied nod. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, reached over, and settled it on my shoulder, giving it a brief, firm press. "Don't work too hard today, all right? Make sure you take a breath somewhere in there."
"I will." He dropped his hand, turned on his heel, and headed for his office.
I watched him go until the door clicked shut, then made myself turn back to my monitor.
I spent the rest of the day drowning in work.
Past seven, I still hadn't finished everything on my plate, and I needed to get home to tackle my writing on top of it.
I knew if I stayed any longer, the executives would drag me into the Beatrice Holm celebration.
They didn't like me, but they'd never pass up the chance to shove a drink into my hand just to see what kind of mess followed.
I packed my bags and fled the building.
The train ride home took twenty minutes. I lugged my heavy bags on both shoulders the final three blocks from the subway station to my building.
At my door, I pushed my key into the deadbolt.
It slid in, then stopped.
I tried again, pulling it out and shoving it back in, twisting left, then right. Nothing. The key just sat in the cylinder without catching the pins. Frowning, I stepped back and looked at the door, then glared at the key, then tried a third time, slowly. The key turned halfway and jammed.
The lock had been changed.
Panic flaring, I knocked. I knocked again, louder, which made no sense because I lived alone and there was no one inside to answer, but my fist hammered the wood anyway.
I ran to the neighbor's door and pounded on it.
Nothing. I tried the door across the hall.
Nothing. I sprinted down to the lobby and found the super's office dark.
I dialed his cell, and it rang and rang before dumping me into voicemail.
I stood in the dim lobby, gripping my phone and staring at the rusted wall of mailboxes.
My laptop was locked inside. My clothes were inside. My external hard drive with all my backups was inside. Everything I owned that wasn't shoved into these two tote bags was trapped behind that door.
I dialed the landlord next. It rang twice. Voicemail.
Beaten, I sank onto the cold lobby steps.
I'd texted him. I'd followed up. I'd been plain about renewing the lease and given him room to respond, and he'd handed me nothing.
Now I was sitting in my own building's lobby with two bags and no way through the door he'd apparently decided to seal without a word of warning.
He wasn't answering. The super was gone.
The building loomed quiet around me, and none of it gave me a way out.
I was stuck, and being stuck pressed down on me, because every direction I reached for hit a wall.
I couldn't get into my home. I couldn't reach a single person with the power to help.
Worst of all, I couldn't write without my laptop, and I needed to write, because Sunday was coming.
V.M. Ashby hadn't missed a midnight deadline in three years, and I wasn't about to let a coward of a landlord who couldn't return a text be the thing that finally broke my streak.
I couldn't call my parents. My mother would weaponize it on the spot, spinning it into a lecture about the poor life choices that had led me here, and I didn't have the reserves to survive that conversation. I couldn't call Sloane either. She was out of town and unreachable.
Sitting there with my phone gripped tight, I made myself think.
The novel draft was backed up to the cloud.
I could log into the platform from any secure computer, and the desktop at the office would do.
I checked the time. Only an hour since I left, so the launch party was probably still going strong in the event hall downstairs.
I put together a foolproof excuse in my head, flagged down a passing taxi, and headed straight back to work.
When I got to the Beckett Media building, the lobby still swarmed with partygoers, flushed faces from departments I rarely crossed paths with.
A few of them looked at me with vague recognition, knowing me only through whatever twisted version of the CEO's assistant had made the rounds.
I kept my eyes straight ahead and slipped into the private elevator, riding it all the way up.
The executive suite was pitch black. Simon was either downstairs at the celebration or already home. I crossed the still floor by memory, dropped my bags at my desk, and sank into my chair.
I booted up the office desktop and opened the platform.
The Sandra chapter loaded on the screen.
I read through it once, made three quick fixes, and scheduled the upload.
Then I opened a blank document for the next chapter and kept writing, dragging the scene forward line by grueling line until Sandra landed somewhere new and the chapter had the shape it needed.
I hammered out the chapter after that, then started on the one after, typing until the glowing words began to blur and my head kept dipping forward and snapping back up.
Blinking, I checked the time in the corner of the monitor. Well past midnight.
I pushed back from the desk with a sigh. The floor lay dark and still around me, and every bone in my body was begging to be horizontal.
I glanced over my shoulder at the corner office behind me. The main light was off, the heavy oak door slightly ajar. Tucked inside, against the far left wall, was the plush dark leather sofa I'd stared at a hundred times from the doorway.
Running on fumes, I got up, pushed the heavy door open, and stumbled inside.
The leather couch was cool under me as I collapsed onto it, the smooth material against my cheek.
City light bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the room, throwing long pale shapes across the carpet.
I was still in my pleated work dress. I still had my shoes on.
I hadn't planned to cry. The tears showed up on their own, welling after a day that had run too long and too strange.
The breaking point, after getting locked out of an apartment I couldn't get back into, forcing me to hole up in a borrowed office inside a building I didn't own.
I was just so tired. The hot tears tracked sideways across my nose, soaking into the expensive leather, and I was too worn out to even try to stop them.
I'd been carrying so much for so long. The demanding job, the secret writing, the negligent landlord, the judgmental family, and the forbidden feelings I wasn't allowed to have for the man whose office I was crying in. The white-knuckled grip I'd kept on all of it finally gave out.
I lay there and cried until my chest was empty. Then I let my heavy eyes slide shut.
I fell asleep.
At some blurry point in the night, the dark around me shifted.
I heard the click of the office door. The change in air pressure tugged me up through the thick layers of sleep without waking me all the way, some small shift in the room my exhausted brain caught before it understood.
And then warmth pressed close, certain of where it was going.
Two strong hands slid under my body, one bracing my back, the other sweeping beneath my knees, and I was lifted into the air without effort.
I fluttered my eyes open.
The hallway ceiling moved past above me.
I was being carried. I turned my head, still half asleep, and found a crisp white shirt at eye level, a solid arm cradling my back, a broad chest warm and steady against my side.
I tipped my head up and traced the sharp line of his jaw from below, set tight with concentration.
I turned my head the other way. Through the open doorway of the office, I could see the leather couch silvered by the light from the windows. Right there, on the cushion where my face had been resting, were two dark, smeared marks where my mascara had melted off while I slept.
Simon stopped walking and looked down at me, his gray eyes dark in the shadows.
"You're coming home with me," he said.