Chapter 10 #2
At some point I'm standing near the far end of the bar and she appears beside me, signaling for another drink. She doesn't acknowledge my presence immediately. She waits for the bartender, orders, and then turns to look at me with the even expression she's been wearing all week.
"Good turnout," she says.
"It was good for the team," I agree.
The bartender sets her drink down. She picks it up. We stand there for a moment in the noise of the room with a great deal unsaid between us.
"You should know," she says, her eyes forward, "that I have no expectation of anything. From you. About what happened." She takes a sip.
"I'm not going to make your office uncomfortable. That's not who I am."
"I know that," I say.
"I just wanted to say it directly."
"I appreciate it." I look at her profile.
"There are complications you may not be aware of."
She turns to look at me. "Such as?"
"You're with my brother."
Something moves across her face — not surprise exactly. Something more complicated than that.
"I'm not," she says.
I look at her.
"Caleb and I ended things,” she says as she holds my gaze.
"A couple of weeks ago."
The bar moves around us. Someone laughs at the other end of the room.
A glass clinks. The city does what the city does outside the windows.
I pause and sit with what she just said.
The stone that has been in my chest since I woke up the morning after — the one I've been carrying and calling guilt and using like a leash — shifts.
It doesn't disappear entirely. But it shifts into something different than what it was.
"You didn't say anything," I say.
"It wasn't relevant." Her voice is steady.
"Professionally."
We look at each other for a moment.
"All right," I say.
She nods. She turns back to the room and picks up a conversation with the woman beside her. I stand at the bar a moment longer. I set my drink down.
I think about Paul saying “make sure you know what you're doing’. I think about what she just told me and what it means. I go home with all of it and don't sleep well for an entirely different reason than the night before.
***
The next evening at the office, the floor clears by 8:00pm. I know she's still at her desk — I can hear the quiet movements of someone finishing something they intend to complete before they leave. I'm at my desk with my jacket on, going through tomorrow's calendar. I could leave. I should leave.
I hear her footsteps cross the corridor, and then—a knock at my open door.
She's holding a folder — the board prep summary I asked for earlier in the week, completed a day ahead of schedule.
She steps inside and sets it on the desk in front of me.
When she straightens she finds me already looking at her, which is not something I manage to conceal in time.
"Board summary," she says.
"Ahead of your Friday deadline."
"I see that." I take the folder. I don't open it.
"Close the door."
Something moves across her face. She turns and closes the door.
When she faces me again her chin is slightly lifted — watchful, composed, giving me nothing for free.
I stand up come around the desk and stop a few feet from her.
The office is quiet around us. Whatever gets said next gets said in here.
"I owe you something," I say.
She waits.
"An apology." The word doesn't come naturally and she can probably hear that.
"For how things happened. Last week." I hold her gaze.
"That's not — it shouldn't have happened the way it did."
She looks at me for a moment.
"I don't expect an apology."
"I know you don't. That's not why I'm giving it."
A beat. "Then why are you?"
"Because you deserved better than that." I pause.
"Better than me losing my grip in my own office and not giving you the choice of—"
"I had a choice," she says. Her voice is level but there's something underneath it.
"I made it."
The room shifts slightly.
"Did you," I say.
"Yes." She holds her ground.
"Don't rewrite it into something that happened to me. It didn't."
I look at her. She looks back. The folder in my hand is irrelevant.
The desk behind me is irrelevant. There is only the six feet of office between us and the thing neither of us has said out loud and the fact that Paul's voice is somewhere in the back of my head saying make sure you know what you're doing.
"You told me something at the bar," I say.
"About Caleb."
Her jaw tightens slightly. "I did."
"That changes things."
"Does it."
"You know it does."
She's quiet for a moment. Not retreating — thinking. Deciding. I watch her do it and I don't push because I don't need to. She already knows what I'm asking and she's deciding whether to answer.
"I've been doing my job," she says finally.
"Every day this week and last week, I have come in here and done my job and not made it complicated. That's all I know how to do."
"I know," I say. "I've been watching you do it."
Something flickers in her eyes.
"Logan—"
“—I'm not asking you to make it complicated," I say. I take one step toward her.
"I'm asking you something simpler than that."
She looks up at me. Her lips part slightly. She doesn't move back.
"What are you asking?" she says quietly.
I don't answer her with words at first. I close the distance in one step. My hand finds her jaw — not gentle, not tentative as I tilt her face up to mine and I watch her eyes go dark before I've even touched her mouth.
"You already know," I say.
And I pull her in.