Chapter 3
Pauline
Every thought in my head dissolved like sugar in hot water.
The door swung open and a leg emerged, then another, and then Jack Specter unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, rising to his full height like some kind of parking-lot deity. I had to tilt my head back to look at him properly. God, he was tall.
Had he always been this tall?
Six-two, six-three—something absurd and entirely unnecessary. White t-shirt stretching across shoulders that had no business being that broad, gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, hair mussed like he’d just rolled out of bed.
As if he hadn’t even bothered to check a mirror before leaving the house, because why would he—the world rearranged itself for men like him.
He looked down at me. I looked up at him. My stomach dropped straight through the pavement.
“You hit my car,” he said.
I forced my shoulders back. “You parked like a person who’s never been told no.”
His eyebrows rose and one corner of his mouth twitched. “The parking was fine.”
“The parking was diagonal.”
“It was well within the lines.”
“It was so far outside the lines...”
He laughed—a short laugh. The sound burrowed under my skin and settled somewhere warm, and I hated it. I remembered that laugh, and would die before admitting that some part of me had been straining to hear it again without my permission.
“You know,” he said, and there it was, that slow knowing smile I used to love, “I could’ve sworn I taught you how to drive.”
Memories surfaced without warning with those words.
It happened during freshman year.
His old Mustang. My hands shaking on the wheel while he sat in the passenger seat, calm as anything, talking me through every turn.
“Ease off the brake. That’s it. You’re doing great.
” The crunch of metal when I’d scraped against a mailbox backing out of a parking spot.
The horror on my face, the way he’d looked at the dent and then looked at me and just laughed, like it was nothing, like I was more important than any car could ever be.
“It’s fine, Pauline. It’s just metal. You can dent it anytime you want.”
I’d felt so guilty I couldn’t sleep, and he’d stayed up with me all night watching true crime documentaries on his laptop, his arm around my shoulders, my head against his chest. Somewhere around three in the morning he’d kissed me, slow and soft, and we hadn’t watched anything after that.
The memory burned through me—sharp and sweet and awful all at once.
“I don’t remember,” I lied through my teeth.
His smile flickered, I ignored it, crossing my arms. “This is your fault.”
“My fault.” He repeated it slowly, like he was tasting the words. “You reversed into me, and it’s my fault.”
“If you’d parked like a normal human being instead of someone who thinks traffic laws are suggestions—”
“I parked fine.”
“You parked like you own the zip code.”
“I might.”
“Of course you might.”
We stood there in that parking lot with the California sun beating down on us, the sounds of shopping carts and car doors and distant traffic filling the silence between us.
He was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read—intent, curious, like I was something interesting that had wandered into his path and he hadn’t decided what to do about it yet .
I became aware, suddenly and painfully, that I was wearing old jeans and a sweater with a coffee stain on the sleeve.
That my hair was doing whatever it wanted because I hadn’t expected to see anyone who mattered.
He looked like he’d walked off the cover of a magazine and I looked like I’d stumbled out of a laundromat at closing time.
Not that it mattered. Not that I cared what Jack Specter thought of how I looked.
“So.” His voice changed, softer now, the sharp edges smoothed away. “How have you been?”
How have I been?
Like we were old friends catching up. He was looking at me with those blue eyes that I used to think could see straight through me.
“Fine,” I said. The word came out clipped and cold.
“Pauline.” He stepped closer. “I know we haven’t talked in a while, but—”
“A while?” The laugh that escaped me was sharp enough to draw blood. “That’s exactly how I want it.”
“I just meant—”
“Send me the estimate.” I dug into my purse, found my business card, and thrust it toward him. “I’ll pay for the damage.”
He didn’t take it.
He stepped forward instead—one step, then another—and I stepped back without thinking. My spine hit the side of my car.
He didn’t stop. He kept coming until he was right there. His hand came up and braced against the roof of my Honda, caging me in without quite touching me. I could feel the heat of him, the sheer size of him, and my heart slammed against my ribs so hard I was sure he could hear it.
“You don’t have to pay for anything,” he said, low and quiet, his eyes searching my face like he was looking for something. “The car doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?”
Because I don’t want to owe you anything. I spent seven years trying to forget you, and you’re standing here smelling like expensive mistakes and I can’t think straight.
“Because I pay my debts,” I gritted, seizing those unwanted thoughts.
Something flickered across his face as I held up the business card between us like a flimsy barrier, paper-thin and useless.
He looked at it, then at me, and his jaw tightened.
For one long, suspended moment, neither of us moved. The air between us felt electric, charged, like a storm about to break.
Then he reached for the card.
His fingers brushed mine—half a second of contact, electricity shooting up my arm—and I yanked my hand back like I’d touched a flame.
“This isn’t necessary,” he said quietly. “The car, the money—it doesn’t—”
“It is necessary.” I met his eyes and held them. “Send the estimate.”
He stepped back, and the space between us opened up. I could breathe again. Barely.
I turned and walked to my car door with my hands trembling and my heart slamming against my ribs in a rhythm that felt like panic. I climbed into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut, and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles ached.
I did not look at him. I did not look in the rearview mirror as I drove away.
I didn’t breathe properly until I was three blocks away.
Tuesday morning, Gerald’s voice split the newsroom like the Red Sea.
“Wells! My office. Now.”
I looked up from my computer, where I’d been staring at the same email for fifteen minutes without absorbing a single word.
Across the room, Alice Pearson’s head lifted with the alertness of a shark scenting blood in the water.
The intern by the coffee machine took a physical step backward, like whatever I had might be contagious.
Gerald stood in his office doorway with his face the color of an overripe tomato, finger pointed at me like I’d personally offended him by existing.
Wonderful. This is exactly what today needed.
I walked across the newsroom with my head high and my stomach somewhere around my ankles.
His office was small and cluttered and smelled like stale coffee and broken dreams. Papers covered every surface, and a sad plant wilted on the windowsill, clearly having surrendered to the void some time ago. I understood how it felt. We were kindred spirits, that plant and me.
“Close the door,” Gerald said.
I closed it.
He dropped into his chair, which screamed in protest like a wounded animal, and fixed me with a stare that was probably meant to be intimidating but mostly made him look like he was struggling with digestion.
“You’ve been here almost a month,” he said, leaning forward with his belly straining against his shirt buttons. “What have you produced?”
I stood in front of his desk with my hands clasped behind my back to hide the fact that they wanted to form fists. “I’ve been working on several—”
“What stories have you broken?” He cut me off like my words were irrelevant—which, to him, they probably were. “What leads have you developed? What exactly am I paying you for?”
What I wanted to say was; ‘You’re paying me to fetch your oat milk lattes and transcribe interviews about municipal infrastructure while your favorites hoard every decent story. You’re paying me to do Alice Pearson’s research so she can swoop in and take credit.
What I actually said was; “I’m developing a lead on—”
“Developing.” He said it like the word tasted bad, like I’d insulted his mother. “I don’t need development. I need results. I need stories—something on my desk that justifies keeping you on payroll.”
My jaw tightened, and the words slipped out before I could stop them, low and muttered under my breath: “Maybe if you gave me actual stories instead of Alice’s table scraps—”
Gerald’s eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
I looked up at him and smiled, sweet as honey, innocent as a lamb who had never once fantasized about pushing her boss down a flight of stairs. “I said you’re the best boss in the world and I’m so grateful for this opportunity.”
He stared at me for a long moment, trying to decide if I was mocking him. I kept smiling until my cheeks hurt.
“End of the week, Wells.” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “Bring me something worth printing, or we’re having a different conversation.”
I walked out of his office with my jaw aching from how hard I’d been clenching it.
Ethan appeared at my side before I made it back to my desk, falling into step beside me with a quiet, steady presence.
“You okay?”
“Fantastic. Never better. I’m considering a career in professional screaming.”
“I hear there’s good money in that.”
“I’ll look into it.”
He steered me toward the break room with a gentle hand on my elbow. “Coffee. You need coffee.”
“I need a new job.”
“Coffee first. Life decisions after caffeine.”
The break room was mercifully empty. Ethan made me a cup from the good stash someone had hidden in the back cabinet and handed it over with exaggerated ceremony.
“Gerald’s under pressure from above,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Budget stuff. He’s taking it out on everyone.”
“He’s taking it out on me specifically.”
“You’re new. New people are easy targets.” He shrugged. “Give it time. Once you land something big, he’ll forget he ever doubted you.”
“What if I don’t land something big?”
“You will.” He said it with such confidence that I almost believed him. “I’ve read your work from Newark. You’re good, Pauline. Really good.”
I wrapped my hands around the mug and let the warmth seep into my cold fingers. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” He paused. “Bad weekend?”
I thought about the parking lot, about blue eyes and white t-shirts and the way my name had sounded in his mouth. About being pinned against my own car and forgetting how to breathe.
“You could say that.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not even a little bit.”
He nodded, accepting this without pushing. That was the thing about Ethan—he knew when to press and when to let things lie.
“Well,” he said, “if you change your mind, I’m an excellent listener. I took a class.”
“There are classes for that?”
“Community center. Wednesday nights. Very informative.”
I almost smiled.
That afternoon, Alice Pearson descended upon my desk like a blonde, impeccably dressed plague.
She dropped a folder on my keyboard without preamble. “Gang investigation. I need background research—the grunt work.”
I looked at the folder, then at her. She smiled at me with perfect teeth and perfect lipstick and absolutely no warmth whatsoever.
“You want me to do your research,” I said.
“I want you to learn from a senior reporter.” Her smile widened sweetly. “Consider it professional development.”
She walked away before I could respond, heels clicking against the floor like a victory march.
I opened the folder and stared at pages of notes that would take me days to sort through. Days I didn’t have. Days I should have been spending on my own work.
Across the newsroom, Ethan caught my eye and mimed hanging himself with an invisible rope.
I got to work.
The email arrived at nine forty-three that night.
I was on my couch in pajamas with my laptop open to a show I wasn’t watching, nursing a cup of coffee that had gone lukewarm. The apartment was quiet except for the radiator’s death rattle and the faint sound of Candy’s TV through the wall.
My phone buzzed.
I picked it up expecting nothing—a newsletter, spam, another polite rejection from Simon Tucker’s PR team telling me that Mr. Tucker was not accepting interview requests at this time.
The sender’s name made my stomach clench.
J. Specter.
Subject line: Repair Estimate.
I opened it, downloaded the attachment, and took a casual sip of coffee while the file loaded.
The number appeared on my screen.
Coffee went down the wrong pipe. I choked, coughed, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and hot liquid seared the back of my throat.
I doubled over hacking and sputtering with tears streaming down my face, and my phone tumbled to the floor with a clatter.
When I could finally breathe again, when my lungs remembered their basic function, I picked up the phone with watering eyes and looked at the number again.
It hadn’t changed.
I counted the zeros. One, two, three, four. That couldn’t be right. I counted again. Four zeros. Four.
That was more zeros than I had ever seen attached to a repair bill, or anything that wasn’t a mortgage or a ransom demand.
That was “sell a kidney on the black market” money.
With that money I could escape California and start over with a new identity in a place where no one had ever heard the name Jack Specter.
For a scratch. A tiny dent that probably wasn’t even visible unless you got down on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass and a personal vendetta.
I started laughing, and the sound came out slightly unhinged, bouncing off the walls of my small apartment like the cackle of someone who had officially lost her grip on reality. This was absurd. Genuinely, spectacularly, magnificently absurd.
Jack Specter, billionaire, heir to a fortune that could fund small nations, had sent me an itemized invoice for an amount that would require me to auction off organs I was currently using.
Sure I had given him my business card, but I hadn’t expected it to be this expensive.
He was pettier than I’d expected. Spectacularly, gloriously, almost impressively petty.
He’d told me I could dent his car anytime I wanted, once. A lifetime ago. Apparently that offer had expired.
I set the phone down on the coffee table and pressed my hands to my face. My throat still burned from the coffee, my eyes still watered, and my dignity was somewhere on the floor, whimpering softly.
I forced myself not to think about freshman Pauline and scratched bumpers and a boy who’d laughed and said, “It’s just metal.”
That boy was gone. If he’d ever really existed at all.