Chapter 8 Pauline
Pauline
Alice Pearson had been insufferable all week, and I finally understood why.
The whispers had started three days ago, right after Jack Specter walked across the newsroom floor and set a cup of coffee on my desk.
I hadn’t wanted him to bring me anything, let alone doing it while everyone watched and wondered.
“The new boss’s favorite.”
I’d heard that phrase a few times, that’s what they were calling me. I’d heard it in the break room, caught the sideways glances, noticed the way conversations stopped when I walked past.
Pauline Wells, who had been nobody a month ago, was suddenly somebody—and not because of anything she’d actually done.
Because Jack Specter brought her coffee.
I did my work and pretended not to notice Alice’s hatred sharpening into something personal.
“I need the progress report by five,” she said Thursday morning, dropping a folder on my desk without slowing down. “Formatted correctly this time. I don’t have time to fix your mistakes.”
“There weren’t any mistakes in the last one.”
“There were formatting errors.”
“The margins were off by a quarter inch.”
“That’s an error.” She smiled, all teeth and no warmth. “Five o’clock, Wells. Don’t be late.”
She walked away before I could respond, heels clicking against the floor like a countdown to something I couldn’t see.
I stared at the folder and counted to ten. Then twenty. Then fifty, because apparently ten wasn’t enough to stop me from wanting to throw my stapler at the back of her perfectly coiffed head.
At least Gerald had calmed down. Now that the CEO was actually present, monitoring things, breathing down everyone’s necks with his expensive suits and his unsettling habit of appearing in doorways without warning, Gerald had stopped barking orders like a dog who’d gotten into the espresso.
Small mercies. He actually did his own work now, which was a development none of us had expected to see in our lifetimes.
The gang investigation had become my lifeline.
What Alice had handed me as grunt work, meant to keep me occupied and out of her way, had turned into something real.
Something explosive. The thread Ethan had found led to more threads, which led to connections, which led to a story that was going to blow up the moment I published it.
Alice knew. She could see it developing, and she was furious. Not because I was doing good work—because I was doing good work without her.
I gritted my teeth and opened the folder.
Ethan appeared at my desk around eleven, two cups of coffee in hand, that easy smile on his face that I was starting to recognize as his default setting.
“Peace offering,” he said, setting one in front of me. “You looked like you were about to commit a felony.”
“I was considering it.” I took the coffee gratefully. “Alice wants everything formatted in a font that doesn’t exist.”
“She’s threatened by you.”
“She’s threatened by everyone.”
“Not like this.” He leaned against the edge of my desk, “She sees what you’re building with the gang story. She knows it’s going to be big.”
I didn’t respond to that. Just sipped my coffee but I could feel Ethan’s gaze. He looked as if he was contemplating.
“Can I ask you something?” He asked finally.
“What?”
“Do you know Specter? From before, I mean.” He was watching my face with an attention that felt suddenly heavy.
I took another sip of coffee to buy myself time.
“We attended the same college,” I said finally.
“And?”
“And nothing.” I met his eyes, kept my voice steady. “We’re not close. We were never close.”
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but Ethan seemed to accept it. He nodded, straightened up, gave me that easy smile again.
“Just curious,” he said. “Let me know if you need help with the formatting. I’ve cracked Alice’s code—it’s all about the tab stops.”
He walked away, and I stared at my coffee and tried to convince myself that I hadn’t just told the biggest lie of my life.
Lunch arrived at noon.
For everyone. Again.
The entire newsroom floor descended into chaos as delivery people streamed in carrying bags and boxes, enough food to feed an army. Jack Specter, apparently, had decided to be generous again.
‘Boosting morale,’ I thought sourly. ‘Being a good boss.
People were gathering in clusters, opening containers, exclaiming over the quality of the food. It was good—I could smell it from my desk, something savory and rich that made my stomach growl despite my determination to ignore it.
I wasn’t going to eat it. I wasn’t going to accept anything from him, not even something as simple as lunch.
But then Alice walked past my desk with her container, shooting me a look that clearly said ‘too good to eat with the rest of us?’
Ethan was already halfway through his meal, and everyone else was eating and laughing and I was sitting there like the weird one, the difficult one who couldn’t just accept a free lunch without making it a whole thing.
Fine.
I grabbed a container labeled “Pauline Wells” I raised a brow, craning my neck to see if the others also got their names written on theirs.
It was just mine.
I opened the lid and my heart skipped.
Grilled chicken salad. Extra avocado. No tomatoes. Dressing on the side. A small container of those honey-roasted almonds I used to be obsessed with, tucked into the corner like an afterthought.
This wasn’t the same meal everyone else had gotten.
This was my meal.
The one Jack used to order for me in college, when he’d show up and drag me away from whatever paper I was writing because I forgot to eat again.
My throat tightened. My eyes burned as I blinked back memories I didn’t ask for.
Don’t, I told myself. Don’t you dare.
But the memory was already surfacing, warm and unwanted.
“You’re going to make me gain weight,” I complained, even as I reached for another piece of the grilled chicken he’d brought over.
Jack looked at me with a soft smile. “That’s a good thing.”
“A good thing?”
“You skip meals constantly. You forget to eat when you’re working.” He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers brushing my cheek. “I want you healthy, Pauline. That’s all.”
“That’s very presumptuous of you. Assuming I need taking care of.”
“Everyone needs taking care of sometimes.” His thumb traced my jaw, gentle and slow. “Let me. It makes me happy.”
“Fine,” I whispered. “But only because the chicken is really good.”
He laughed, soft and warm, and pulled me against his side. “I’ll take it.”
I blinked, and the memory dissolved.
The newsroom came back into focus—the hum of computers, the sound of colleagues chatting and laughing over their free lunch. I was sitting at my desk with a container of food that shouldn’t exist, that proved Jack Specter still remembered what I liked to eat after seven years.
Movement caught my eye. The elevator doors opening. Jack stepping out with his assistant trailing behind him, heading toward his office on the far side of the floor.
He looked up.
Our eyes met.
Everything faded. There was only him, standing there in his stupid perfect suit, looking at me like he was waiting for something.
I held his gaze for one second. Two. Three.
Then I looked away.
I picked up my fork and stabbed a piece of chicken with more force than necessary.
“Pathetic,” I told my heart. “You’re so cheap. So easily impressed. He buys you lunch and suddenly you’re ready to forget everything?”
My heart didn’t answer. It was too busy doing something very inconvenient in my chest.
I ate the salad. Every bite. And it tasted good.
By the time I finished the progress report and formatted it to Alice’s exacting specifications, the office had emptied around me. The sun had set. The city outside the windows had transformed into a glittering sprawl of lights and shadows.
I gathered my things and headed for the elevator, already running through my plans for the evening. My source had finally agreed to meet. An address scribbled on a napkin, a time, a promise of information that would crack the story wide open.
It was probably a bad idea. My grandmother would call it a terrible idea. But terrible ideas were sometimes the only ones that paid off.
The elevator doors opened.
Jack was inside.
His eyes found mine immediately—like he’d been waiting for me, like he’d known I would appear at this exact moment.
“Pauline.” He said gently. His tone soft in a way that made a traitorous part of me respond to the sound of it in his mouth.
I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. “Specter.”
“It’s late.”
“I can see it.”
“You were here before I arrived this morning and you’re leaving after me. That’s a long day.”
“Some of us have to work for a living.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Just watched me with those blue eyes that dismantled something inside me. “Let me drive you home.”
“No.”
“It’s late,” he repeated. “The parking garage isn’t well lit. It’s not safe for you to be walking alone.”
“I’ve been walking alone for twenty-nine years. I’ll survive.”
“Pauline.”
“I have somewhere to be.” The words came out sharp and defiant. I didn’t soften them. “Thank you for the concern, but I’m fine.”
The elevator reached the lobby. The doors slid open. I walked out without looking back, feeling his eyes on me the whole way—burning between my shoulder blades like a brand.
I shouldn’t still feel like this. I shouldn’t still react to him like I was that stupid younger version of myself, the girl who thought his attention meant something, who believed that being seen by Jack Specter was the same as being valued.
I knew better now. I had learned.
So why did my heart still race when he said my name?
I parked my Honda on a street with more potholes than pavement. The building in front of me was abandoned, or pretending to be—windows boarded up, graffiti covering the walls, the kind of place where things happened that never made it into official reports.
I got out of the car.