Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Integration
Aiden
The table is small, round, and the linen is pressed to molecular precision.
I chose this place three weeks ago because of the floor plan the ma?tre d’ emailed me.
We are centered in the room, equidistant from the kitchen noise and the bar, close enough to the window that the light would be good.
I told myself it was logistics but I have known Marcus Foster for fifteen years and I have never once introduced him to anyone.
Across from me, Marcus pours himself another glass of Bordeaux.
He’s built like a defensive tackle and has the easy, predatory calm of someone who’s watched too many people try to fake their way through a handshake.
He wears a navy sport coat, open at the throat, and his hair is threaded with more silver than I remember, but the eyes are the same.
Dark, sharp, and at this moment, aimed at me over the rim of his glass.
Cat sits to my left. In this context she’s distilled to the purest version of herself, which is the problem.
Body angled toward the action, smile always loaded, every line an invitation or a joke.
She hasn’t looked at the menu once. Instead she’s volleying stories with Marcus, laughing at his barbs, finishing my sentences when I stall out, and I can’t tell if I want to pull her closer or get the check.
She’s in a black dress with a neckline engineered to walk the knife edge between professional and profane, but I can’t stop staring at her mouth.
Her lipstick is a deep, damson shade that matches nothing in the room except maybe the bruised color of her wine.
Marcus raises his glass. “To old friends and new blood,” he says, voice pitched so only our table can hear. “And to Aiden, who finally decided to let a woman with a functioning sense of humor into his life.”
I clink my glass to his, then to Cat’s. She winks at me over the rim and downs half the pour in a single, practiced tilt.
Marcus sets his glass down with a thunk, then leans back, draping an arm over the back of the empty chair beside him. “So, Cat. Tell me, what’s it like corralling this one? I tried for years. He’s an unbreakable horse.”
She feigns contemplation, twirling her wine glass between two fingers.
“It’s not so hard. I just remind him every morning that the company will run fine even if he takes two hours for lunch.
” She winks at me and I am immediately reminded of the indecorously obscene things that happen on those two-hour lunch breaks.
Marcus throws his head back and laughs, a real, booming sound that snaps my mind back into place. “She’s good. She’s very good.”
I allow myself a small smile. “She keeps me honest.”
“Impossible,” Cat corrects, poking me in the side. “You just hide the truth in words with too many syllables.”
I want to throttle them both, but I’m laughing, actually laughing, which is not a thing I do often or well. Cat notices and softens, just for a second, reaching over to squeeze my hand.
Dinner is a blur of stories and competition, each of them one-upping the other.
Marcus tells the story of how we met (freshman comp sci seminar, mutual loathing, accidental tequila bender), Cat counters with her own tales of chaos from her undergrad days.
It’s like a tennis match, but the rackets are sarcasm and the ball is whatever piece of me they can volley back and forth.
I keep pace, but mostly I watch her. She’s not performing, not like in the office or on stage at the club.
She’s just…here. Laughing, teasing, occasionally tilting her head to see if I’m following the thread of conversation.
Sometimes I’m not, but she loops me in with a glance or a nudge under the table.
Marcus nods, sobering. “No, in all seriousness, I’ve known this guy since the first day of undergrad. Freshman year he had a single room and still put a schedule on the door. Color-coded. Laminated.” He shakes his head. “No one, and I mean no one, has ever gotten him to loosen up like this.”
Cat’s eyes flick to me, something warm and private in them, before she turns back to Marcus. “Maybe he just needed someone who wasn’t intimidated by the calendar.”
“Truly, Catalina, thank you for whatever magic you worked on this uptight bastard, I haven’t seen him this human in years.”
I want to say something sharp in return, but all I can manage is, “You can both shut up anytime.”
Cat grins, finishes her wine, and leans into me. “He’s cute when he’s grumpy.”
They circle through more stories, some about college, some about the hellscape that is modern business, some about nothing in particular.
The wine goes faster than I planned, but not in a bad way.
I find myself talking more than usual, laughing at Marcus’s old stories, even correcting his facts when he tries to make himself look cooler than he was.
Cat gets in on the action, teasing Marcus for his lack of Instagram presence—“Do you even exist if you’re not on social?
”—and when he tries to roast her back, she torches him so thoroughly I almost feel bad.
Almost.
Eventually, I realize my hand is at the small of Cat’s back, thumb brushing circles over the fabric of her dress. When her glass gets low, I refill it without thinking. She does the same for me, and neither of us says a word about it.
At one point, Cat is describing the world’s most ill-advised tequila night, and Marcus slaps the table hard enough to threaten the glassware. “How have you kept her hidden? I would have assumed you’d show her off on every red carpet in the city.”
Marcus sets his glass down and looks at me the way he used to before a negotiation, patient, waiting, reading the room. He wants to know if she’s a one-off, a stunt, a midlife experiment. He wants to know if I’m serious.
I pause, reaching for my wine. “Listen, I’ve shown my girlfriend off more than you think.”
There’s a half-beat where the word ‘girlfriend’ hangs between us, bigger than it ought to be. I didn’t plan to say it. I feel the muscles in my jaw go rigid as the sentence lands. Cat blinks, then covers her smile by sipping her wine, her other hand gently crawling up my thigh.
Marcus sets his glass down, eyes wide, then lets out a single, impressed whistle. “Well, shit. I honestly never thought I’d hear you say that word.”
Cat grins. “Oh, he’s full of surprises.”
Marcus laughs again, but there’s something else now.
A curiosity, maybe, or a kind of cautious pride.
He looks at me, really looks, the way only someone with fifteen years of history can peer straight into your fucking soul.
“Aiden St. James with a girlfriend. Hell must be freezing over as we speak.”
I shrug, but the gesture feels unnatural, like a borrowed movement. “You get older, things change.”
He watches me, then turns to Cat. “You know, he’s never kept a girlfriend. Not since…” He stops, then gives me a quick, apologetic glance. “Well, never. Not a single one made it past a week. Not that he didn’t try, but…the man is allergic to distraction.”
Cat doesn’t miss a beat. “Maybe I’m not a distraction. Maybe I’m just efficient.”
Marcus’s eyes crinkle with approval. “That must be it. The woman’s a logistics genius.”
She bows, mock formal, then excuses herself to the restroom. “Don’t talk too much shit about me while I’m gone,” she says, and lets her hand drag delicately across the back of my neck as she passes. Both of us watch her as she glides through the tables, disappearing into the dim corridor beyond.
The moment she’s out of sight, Marcus leans in, voice dropping. “All right, man. What’s the story? You actually into her, or is this just a phase?”
I know what he’s asking. He wants to know if this is another one of my engineered relationships, a calculated risk with a fixed endpoint, or if it’s something messier.
I look down at my plate, the remains of the duck cold and perfect on the edge of the dish. “She’s different.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Marcus says. “But how?”
I take a breath, steady and measured. “She gets under my skin. She doesn’t let me retreat into my own head. With her, I don’t feel like I have to be in control all the time.”
He digests this, swirling his wine. “She’s your assistant, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
He knows me better than I know myself sometimes and it’s scary.
He raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “And you don’t see how that could be problematic?”
“Of course it’s a problem,” I snap, then rein it in, raking my fingers through my hair.
“It’s literally every fucking kind of HR violation and probably some they haven’t even thought to include yet.
” I remove my glasses and set them on the table, before scrubbing my hand over my face.
“If anyone ever found out, it could nuke both our careers. The company. Everything I’ve worked my entire life for. ”
“So why do it?” he asks, and the tone isn’t judgmental. He really wants to know.
“Because I can’t not,” I say, barely above a whisper.
Marcus nods, satisfied. “Well, shit. I’ve never seen you this rattled.”
“She’s the only one who can do it,” I say, running my thumb along the edge of the espresso cup in front of me. “Every time I try to get myself coded back to normal, she finds a way to break it and rebuild it into something else.”
He smiles, genuine and broad. “You’re opposites, you know. She’s chaos. You’re architecture.”
I bristle, but he waves it off. “That’s not a dig.
It’s why you work.” He leans forward, grabbing my shoulder as I adjust my glasses.
“You don’t disappear into yourself around her, and she refuses to shrink to fit into your space.
It’s the first time I’ve seen you…not alone, even when there’s a third party. ”