Tess #2
“I’ll let you know if I need you,” I said, my voice tight. “Now, please, if you’ll excuse me.” I’d stay the night, but I wasn’t staying at this fucking party.
This time he let me step around him.
Only to be stopped by Kendra. Thankfully, she was no longer with Scott.
“Please don’t be mad at me for not telling you,” she pleaded.
Honestly, with as little as she told me about her personal life these days, I wasn’t all that surprised to discover she was getting married when I didn’t even know she’d been seriously dating. In any other circumstances, I would have probably rolled my eyes and said that figures.
But she was engaged to Scott. And though it wasn’t her fault for his betrayal, I was mad at her all the same.
And there were plenty of other reasons to be mad at her, like for sending me on one ridiculous task to another at her whim and treating me like I was less than her.
Besides, being angry gave me something to barter with tomorrow when she discovered she had just as much (if not more) reason to be angry at me.
“This isn’t the best time to talk about it, K.” Like I had with Henry, I moved to step around her.
And like Henry, she blocked my path. “Tess, please, please, please. I can’t do this if you’re mad.”
“You can’t do what? Be social? Be engaged?” My voice had crept louder than I’d meant it to. I pulled it down when I went on. “I think you’re doing just fine on your own.”
I started around her, then changed my mind, suddenly needing to say more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Huh, maybe I was more hurt about being left out than I’d initially thought.
“It just happened!”
“It just happened. Like today you woke up and decided ‘I’m getting married, and oh yeah, I even have an engagement ring hidden in one of my designer purses.’”
She made a sound of exasperation. “Okay, part of it happened a few months ago, but today was the day I decided to say yes. I didn’t know if I wanted to. That’s why I had to go away. To figure it all out.”
That didn’t help. Because even if Scott hadn’t been officially engaged when he was with me, he certainly couldn’t have forgotten he’d proposed to a woman not that long ago. A woman who he knew very well was my boss.
“You could have talked to me about it,” I said, trying to stay focused on what her secrets said about my relationship with her rather than my relationship with Scott.
“I could have helped. You said you can’t do anything without me.
If you really relied on me like you pretend, you would have explained what was going on. ”
Nope. None of this was helping. I was just getting more mad.
Actually, it was helping me feel less guilty about my deceit. More vindicated in going behind her back because fuck her.
And fuck Scott Sebastian.
This time when I stepped around her, she grabbed my arm. “Where are you going? Are you leaving? Please don’t leave!”
At least she was aware enough to consider that was an option.
I almost changed my mind again and told her that I was.
But the DRF. But Tey.
“I’m leaving this conversation, and I’m leaving this party. I’m going upstairs to take a bath and a handful of Advil. Anything more you want to say can be said tomorrow.”
She seemed buoyed by the fact that I wasn’t leaving her house. “We can talk tonight! I’ll come by your room after everyone’s gone.”
There was no way I had energy for this tonight.
“No way. Not tonight. I’m tired. I’ve had a long week. After my bath, I’m going to bed.” Where I’d likely cry myself to sleep.
Her face fell, but she conceded. “Tomorrow then. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
I pulled away and beelined for the stairs, her final apology ringing in my ears.
I believed her too.
But it wasn’t nearly enough to make me feel any less shattered. Tears pricked at the corner of my eyes. Soon. I could let them fall soon. Just had to get to…
A firm hand wrapped around my arm and dragged me into the butler’s pantry. “We need to talk,” Scott said.
I was hurt. I was heartbroken. But my primary emotion at the sight of him was rage. “You’re fucking engaged!” Despite the shot of warmth that seared through my body at his touch, I pushed him off of me like he had a disease.
“You’re her assistant,” he said with equal venom.
“Don’t even pretend like that’s the same level of deceit.
” I recalled all the times he’d specifically lied and saw now how he’d managed to step around the truth at every turn.
I am not currently obligated to anyone in any way, he’d said the first night we were together.
Has she ever mentioned me? he’d asked when I’d asked how close he was to Kendra.
There you go, he’d said when I’d told him she barely spoke about him at all.
God, I was an idiot. Such a big fucking idiot.
“Some people would very much say it is the same level of deceit,” he said, digging his heels in on the You Lied More claim. “They might even say lying to get the support of a billion-dollar company is worse.”
When he put it that way, my lie was bad.
But for it to be worse, it meant that corporations came before people, and I didn’t agree with that at all. “If you’re one of those people, you are not who I thought you were.”
It hadn’t really bore saying. I obviously didn’t know him at all.
Or maybe it had borne saying because it made him clamp his mouth shut and take on a guilty frown.
With his anger reined in, mine didn’t exactly dissipate, but it spread out and thinned so that I could better feel what was underneath it—humiliation, heartbreak, guilt.
“My lie is helping people.” I didn’t know if I was justifying to him or myself.
“It’s helpful to sneak around behind your boss’s back?
Kendra had no idea we’d met, Tess. Why wouldn’t she know that you’re working with us?
And she said you never pitched.” His eyes flashed as he thought of something.
“Wait. If she doesn’t know about your pitch—Jesus, Tess, do not tell me this isn’t a legit deal. ”
If he was only considering this now, it had to mean he was feeling thrown too.
“It is legit! Of course it is. Your company is the one drawing up the contracts. Anyone could be a liaison between you and the DRF. I could have said I was from anywhere, and the deal would still be good. I only said I was with Conscience Connect because it gave me credibility. Well, and because I do actually work for CC, just not in that capacity.”
Now that I’d started, it all rushed out.
“But I’ve been ready to pitch for a long time, and no one knows the DRF like I do; at least, Kendra doesn’t.
I knew you would be a perfect fit with them, and I suggested she pitch to you, but she didn’t want us to go to you for it.
She wouldn’t even let me suggest it without jumping all over me. ”
“Because of me,” he said quietly, sinking back against the counter behind him.
I sank against the counter opposite him.
“Then she left town, and I met Brett, and he told me you were looking for an organization to promote, and I wasn’t looking for it, but I saw the opportunity to show what I could do and to help the DRF.
And if she kills it all…” I could explain everything to her, and it might not help.
She could decide she doesn’t care about keeping face with the DRF.
Now that I understood her relationship with SIC, there was no way she was going to damage her relationship with them.
Especially not if she could pin all the wasted time and energy on an employee gone rogue. “I really didn’t think this through.”
“I’ll take care of it.” It was the same voice he’d used in the conference room when he’d assured me his dad would sign the contracts.
I’d been as dubious that he had the authority then as I was now. “You can’t—”
He cut me off. “I can, and I will. The contracts will be signed. Kendra’s business savvy enough not to fight it, and my father will get behind it. You don’t need to worry. Whatever happens, I’ll make sure he does.”
I was still trying to make sense of his emphatic reassurance when he went on. “It makes sense more than ever that I support it now.”
My heart sank with the reminder of why it made sense. “You’re engaged.”
“Tess—” My name sounded as pained as I felt. Like he’d been shot with an arrow in the chest, and it was the sound he made as he went down.
Before he could go on, a woman I only recognized from my earlier internet stalking poked her head into the pantry. “There you are. The photographer wants to get a shot of you and Kendra together.”
Scott’s mother eyed me with a look that said she suspected we’d been fooling around. “Really, Scott? Tonight?”
She almost made it sound like any other night she caught him cheating on his new fiancée would have been fine. It might have been humorous if the mood wasn’t so dire.
He straightened, then looked at his mother as if to say give me another minute. When she didn’t leave, he sighed and looked at me. “This isn’t over, Tess.”
I waited a beat after he left. Not because I cared if anyone saw us coming out of the pantry together because really, I couldn’t give a fuck. I waited because the rage had left when he had, and now I was crippled with the impulse to fall to the ground and weep.
Somehow I managed to stay standing.
Somehow I managed to slip out and make my way to the stairs.
Somehow I managed to make it to my room where I shut my door, put my back against it, sank to the floor, and sobbed.