Chapter 4
Chapter Four
No.
I’m so far from satisfied standing in his presence that I stop breathing. Full stop. Just no more breathing.
Then that one teeny tiny little word he spoke catches up to me. Satisfied?
I’m not going to lie, next time I get off, I’m going to play him saying that on repeat in my head.
Also how the fuck did he even know?
These thoughts rapid-fire through me making it feel like I’m staring at him for far longer than I actually am. Or maybe it really is just me staring at my boss in an empty hallway with my jaw on the floor.
The possibilities are endless.
Then he raises a little brow in challenge. He knows exactly what I did in there…
Did I wash my hands? Yes.
So is he smelling me? Unlikely, no one can smell someone’s arousal. That’s ridiculous.
I blow out a breath. Raise my chin. I have done this before. I have not done this before, but I have done something before and the body remembers how.
“Hardly,” I mutter, walking past him with a scarlet face. I don’t know why he is in this hallway, but he is. And we both need to get back.
I have a speech. He has a toast to make. The clock on the wall says ten minutes, and said clock doesn’t care that he just called out my naughty public behavior.
“Hadley,” Leif says my name like a prayer. Like we aren’t here in a hallway at the Penn Museum at half past seven and more like two in the morning and I just came on his tongue.
Gods what is wrong with me tonight.
Two years. Two years and three months. My body picked tonight. My body picked him. My body is a traitor and a liar, and I owe my body an apology because my body has been telling me about him for twenty-four months and I have not listened once.
“Mr. Dagon.” I inhale slowly because I don’t want to smell this man any more than I have to. “Walk with me?”
I don’t wait. I don’t stop. That is in fact the last thing I want or need to do.
“I’m not entirely sure how to start this conversation.” That earns him a glance. But not a full one, I don’t want him to get too many ideas. Just a slight turn of my head, more eye than turn.
“I find it best if you just rip off the Band-Aid.” Back through Africa.
His hand finds my bicep before he steps in front of me. The grip is careful. Bracketed. Like he’s holding something he doesn’t want to bruise but doesn’t trust himself to let go of either.
His eyes catch the hall light. Crystals or shards or something pulse in the iris. I swear they swirl.
Eyes don’t do that. His do.
“So odd.” I lean into him before I think better of it. “Your eyes are just…” I can’t find the words for what they look like, so I shake my head and step back. “What did you need, sir? There won’t be any more event crashers. The doors are locked and no one can get in.”
His eyes flicker between mine, his pouty lips opening and closing.
“That’s not what you want to talk about?” He’s still holding my bicep and if he were anyone else, I’d have Callie take him out.
Callie’s still silent in my ear. Callie is never silent. Callie is comm-static, and dick jokes and judgment, and right now she is none of those things. My hand drifts toward the comm. Except halfway there, I let it fall back to my side.
But he notices. Leif always notices.
“No.” He breathes the words.
If I were a betting kind of girl, I’d bet the topic of conversation has nothing to do with earlier, or my bathroom activities. There is absolutely something on his mind he is struggling to say.
“Callie is busy right now, Ms. Astaroth.”
“Is she?” I tilt my head because he might smell damn good but he’s pissing me off now. “Your doing?” I ask after a moment when he doesn’t respond.
“Yes.” Well, at least he didn’t lie.
But it sends a spike of adrenaline through me.
I hum because he’s still holding my arm and I’ve worked with this man for the last two years.
Two fucking years. And now he’s acting shady. Guess the saying is right. You really don’t know someone.
“Is that all?” I draw the word out.
He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “When was your last cycle?”
I slap him with the arm he isn’t holding onto.
My palm rings. My whole arm rings. I did not know I was going to do that. The Hadley who curates donor lists by political standing doesn’t slap men in hallways. That Hadley is gone or she’s not driving and I don’t know which is worse.
“I deserved that.” He rubs his jaw.
“You did.” My voice is somebody else’s voice. “Now tell me how you knew to ask the same question that man asked me.” I get in his face. “Or how you know what I was doing in that bathroom.” I am far too dignified to say masturbation.
“Yes.” He exhales. “Do you have a birthmark?”
“I’m not discussing my body parts in an empty hallway, Mr. Dagon.”
“Then yes or no.”
“Mr. Dagon, please.” What is with these men and my period?
“Leif,” he corrects.
“Mr. Dagon,” I repeat because I need to remember where that professional line exists.
“This is hardly professional. And if you aren’t aware, in approximately twenty minutes I need to walk into that grand room and give a speech about how wonderful Angela was because she was a literal angel.
And you standing in Africa with me asking about my period and a birthmark is far from professional. ”
“And masturbating in a public restroom before the event?”
“Sex magic.”
“Sex magic?”
“I was manifesting a successful speech.” I grind my teeth. “It’s called the O-method.”
“Why did you phrase it as a question?”
“Because I’m still trying to figure out how you know.” We’re standing now eye to eye. He’s taller than me. But if I stand on my tippy toes, we are almost nose to nose. I love heels, when they’re not trying to kill me.
His lips tick up at the corner like a muscle twitch. Like he doesn’t want to smile but he just can’t help himself.
“Because, Hadley.” He steps closer, his head tilting toward me, and oh, his exhale ghosts across my neck. “I can smell you.”
That should not do the things it is in fact doing to me right now.
I turn my head toward his body. To anyone looking at us it would look like two lovers in that in-between of almost and just about.
We aren’t lovers and I’m far more confused about this moment than any other in my life. I have been confused like this exactly once before, and I walked. I am not walking right now.
This entire night has me feeling sideways.
And he’s so close that for a moment I close my eyes and picture we are two lovers in a hallway. Stealing a moment away because we can’t keep ourselves from each other.
Then he leans in, hovering behind my ear, where he inhales again before pulling his head back. The scruff of his cheek scratches mine before he pauses.
I can’t breathe. Wanting a man in your life is completely different than having him.
I lick my lips. The satin is failing me. The dress is having a bad humid night.
Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.
Move, you idiot.
Don’t move.
“Come find me after your speech,” he says, but he doesn’t move. Almost as though he’s trapped in the moment with me too. Two opposing forces suddenly in each other’s orbit.
Neither of us wants to move.
“Why?” I turn far enough to see his eyes, to watch those specks of light blue shimmer in the darkened ring. Our lips are millimeters apart and the need to kiss him builds inside me.
My body isn’t just aware of him. My body is leaning. I am holding my body back the way I would hold back a dog at a crosswalk. Both hands. Full weight. All while the leash is on fire.
He tilts his head toward me, impossibly close and yet so damn far away. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
“Because, Hadley, there are things about yourself you’re going to learn tonight.” He pauses, letting his words land in my brain. They do. Barely. “And I for one hope you come to me for answers.”
He steps back, exhaling a long breath against my neck as he does so.
I hum, allowing my composure to settle in once more.
“Well, Mr. Dagon.” I take another step away.
Then one more for good measure. “Don’t allow your ego to get too far ahead.
” I fix his tie because fuck it if he can touch me then I can fix his pristine tie that doesn’t need fixed.
I just want to touch him. “You haven’t asked. ”
I walk away, my mouth literally drooling for this man and my chest doing what it has not done in two years and three months.
My boss is off-limits.
I repeat it. My boss is off-limits.
Except this doesn’t feel like off limits anymore. It feels like full steam ahead. Off-limits. I try it in my own voice and in my mother’s voice and in Callie’s voice and none of the voices make it true.
The hallway smells like him for another twenty feet.
I can’t shake the feeling I’m wrong somehow. That I’m missing something. And he doesn’t say a word. Just stays quiet. Stoic almost.
Turning a corner, I release the tense breath I’d held through the entire conversation. And I didn’t once look back.
No mantra needed. Go me.
Breathing becomes easier the further I get from him and then the static in my ear buzzes. Touching the comm, I whisper, “Callie.”
No answer.
The clock ahead reads ten to eight.
“Callie.” I pause before the grand doors. Enzo is at the end of the hall. Maybe I should have looked back. I wonder how long he’d stood there. Watching, listening.
And oh no, what if he can smell me too?
Something in me says Callie is fine. Something in me says talk to them. Something in me has been saying things all night and I have not once listened to it. Intuition? Maybe.
“Callie,” I hiss under my breath as I pace before the doors.
No answer.
Shit, I’m going to have to abandon everything and go find her. She never falls asleep on the job. Never.
Speech or Callie.
No-brainer. Callie. Every day all day.
I turn to leave and instead of an empty hallway I run right into Leif and Enzo.
“What did you do with Callie?” I seethe under my breath because I don’t want anyone to hear but I also want him to know if anything happens to Callie, I will hurt him.
Slowly.
And it had to be these two. They’ve been circling me like sharks. Who else here knows she’s my best friend? No one.
“She’s fine. Resting,” Leif assures me.
I don’t feel assured.
“Get her. Now.”
“You’ve got a speech, Ms. Astaroth,” Enzo says, and the smile doesn’t reach anything.
“So give it.”
I don’t like that smile. I don’t like it at all.
“I’ll walk you up.” He steps close.
“Don’t you dare.” So much for staying calm. I’m no longer calm. Instead I want to stab him with the pin in my hair.
Through the eye.
“She’s on the couch in my office. Pulse strong. Twenty minutes and she’s up,” Leif says, but again, his eyes sparkle. Well, not sparkle like glitter but they catch the light just so. The hallway is colder than it was a minute ago. Or I am.
“I don’t believe you.”
Instead of answering me, he looks at Enzo.
“Your speech, Ms. Astaroth.” Enzo steps closer and leans down. “Callie is fine. Out cold but fine. Give your speech and I’ll take you straight to her.”
“What did you two do with her?” And what do I do? Right now in this moment.
If these two are what, murderers? Then what am I supposed to do? Stay? They have Callie.
“Give your speech, Hadley.” Leif puts on a mask and fixes his cuffs. Not a real mask. Just fixes his face into unreadable mode. Corporate mode.
Callie would call it billionaire arrogance mask.
But it’s not that. It’s something deeper. My first thought is sinister. Except that isn’t quite right either. My intuition is telling me Callie really is okay and that I should talk to them. My intuition has been telling me a lot of things tonight and I have been calling it nerves.
“Then what?” I look at both of them. “What is this?”
“Come on.” Enzo tries again but I pull away.
“You have to give me something or I’m going to freak out.” Mostly true. I’m already freaking out.
Again Enzo and Leif share a look.
“It’s about your blood,” Leif finally says.
“And now if you would, welcome to the stage Hadley Astaroth. Without her none of this would have been possible tonight.” I hear my name called, and it feels like someone else is calling my name, from a different body. A different time even.
“We will take you to Callie after your speech,” Leif says, softer this time.
“Don’t lie to me about Callie.” My mouth opens before I tell it to. But I can’t stop she’s the only good thing I have left in this world. “Anything else, fine. But not her.” I look over my shoulder at the crowd clapping and waiting for me, and when I look back at Leif— “I’m adopted.”
It comes out flat. It comes out like I’m trying to prove they have the wrong person. It comes out like the thing I have spent thirty-two years not putting on the table because the table never asked.
“We know,” Enzo says.
And there is the table asking.
Somewhere behind me a man with a microphone is still saying my name. I can hear the donors clapping. I can hear my own pulse in the satin at my collarbone. I can hear, also, my body, which is the loudest of the three and which knows something my mind doesn’t.
Telling me that the man on my left is the realest thing that has ever happened to me, and the man on my right is the consequence, and the door I walked through tonight closed behind me a long time ago.
So I do the only thing I can in that moment, I walk to the stage wearing guilt as a cape because I’m not running after Callie.