Chapter 17 #2
Enough of his profile’s visible that I can see him trying to hold back whatever thoughts he's having. But after a beat, he does as I asked and slowly turns his face away from me. Out of an abundance of caution, I pivot too, so we’re back to back as I unhook my serviceable bra and let it slide down my shoulders.
The cold air on my nipples must shake something loose because I draw in a long breath, then exhale something I should have said a long time ago.
"I am sorry, you know. About the audit. And the alley. And all of it.”
I’m met with absolute stillness from the other side of the room, so I risk a glance over my shoulder, aware that my bare back is exposed to him. He still hasn’t turned around, but there’s a coiled wariness in him that wasn't there before.
“We don’t have to—“
“Wyatt.” I cut him off. “Just shut up and listen for once in your life.”
If anything, his shoulders tense even more, but he does what I ask.
“I need you to know what really happened. That night…” I blow out a breath.
“God, that night.” My laugh’s a weak, quavery thing as I grab my plunging push-up bra.
“I was so hurt and pissed and disappointed when I left the bar, and I knew what I was doing was awful, but I… I wanted to hurt you for seeming so perfect and then taking it all away." My voice breaks, and I risk a glance to see if he noticed, but I’m still met with his unyielding back. “So I added all the worst, most punishing recommendations I’d never even considered before then. I regretted it the instant I uploaded it to the work server.”
“I’m sure the guilt kept you up all night.”
I don’t hear any sarcasm in his voice, and for a beat, I wonder if he actually does believe me. The hope could kill me if I let it, so instead, I say quietly, “Please. Let me finish.”
He shuts up, and I turn back around. I’d like my tits covered for this part, so I slide the straps up my arms and start working on the hooks in back.
“After I deleted the bad audit, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with the information Howard sent me.
That’s when I really dug in and saw the way he’d manipulated the numbers.
Hidden data, cherry-picked results. And I’m guessing your division wasn’t actually too busy to meet with me, right?
That was Howard wanting to control the narrative? ”
I turn my head and catch his nod. “Correct,” he says in a clipped tone.
“I figured, especially when he insisted on using my nuclear audit and made sure I got fired so I couldn’t raise the many, many red flags I was about to discover.”
“That’s just like Howard,” he says in a disgusted voice. “He used you to try to get what he wanted, but he had no idea that you and I would meet while it was going on and…”
“And.” I laugh sadly. “That pretty much covers it. I spent the first month of my unemployment obsessively researching Sounder and your division, and that’s when I wrote that third audit confirming everything you told me that night.”
“CJ…”
Wyatt’s voice sounds closer, and I glance over my shoulder to see him start to turn around, then whip his head back to the wall, having apparently realized that I’m still in nothing but a bra and my too-short elf skirt.
Whatever. I’m as emotionally naked as it gets, so it doesn’t matter anymore. I turn so I’m facing him again, drinking in the hard lines of his body.
“I’m sorry I wrote the bad audit. I’m sorry you saw it. I’m sorry it made your life harder. And I’m sorry that Reese stole the good one and made my life harder.”
I unzip my elf skirt and slide it over my hips, letting it pool at my feet as Wyatt says, “So that’s why you shoved me into Lake Beaucoeur. It wasn’t that I had a girlfriend. It was that she’s the one who stole your work and made me think—”
He clamps down on whatever he was about to say, but the honesty keeps pouring out of me.
“Oh, it was also that you had a girlfriend.” I swallow hard.
“You told me it’d never been that way with anyone else, but a year later, you’re all smug about being in love?
It felt like I’d been r-replaced.” I choke out that last word and shake my head in embarrassment.
“Like it hadn’t been special, what we had.
And that was after I’d spent a full year convincing myself that it hadn’t been special.
I was pissed at you, pissed at her. Pissed at myself. ”
He spins around, and whatever he’s about to say dies on his lips.
His hot, brown eyes drop from my face to my breasts, encased in my prettiest bra—all satin and lace and the best hoisting, lifting, push-up technology known to womankind.
Then that intense gaze slides lower and snags on the matching lace at the apex of my thighs.
I should feel horribly exposed, with all of my body on display. I should be squirming under his gaze and rushing to pull on my party dress. Instead, I feel like I’ve shed more than my clothes. I’m peeling away the layers of miscommunication and half-truths that have clung to us for years.
Then Wyatt blinks and gives a sharp shake of his head, like he’s pulling himself out of a trance.
“What was in the note?”
When his eyes meet mine, the vulnerability rushes in, and I snap, "Turn around.”
"Fucking tell me," he bites out.
“Only if you turn around.”
"Fine.” His jaw bunches, but he obeys.
I reach for the garment bag holding my red sequined dress and pull it off the hanger, hastily stepping into it and sliding it up my hips. I really should be wearing shapewear, but fuck it.
“I told you all of that. That I was sorry.
That I was trying to make it right.“ I pull the front of the dress up and slide my arms into the long sleeves.
“I told you I was still furious that you refused to listen to me that night or let me share my side of things, but that I still wanted the chance to explain. You can turn around.”
He’s slow to respond to my last statement, and when he finally rotates to face me, his eyes are wild as they fall on my face, my lips, on the expanse of cleavage on display above the low, unfastened top of my dress.
“I told you that I f-fell in love with you that night and that I didn’t want to throw it all away.” I lift my chin. “I gave you my number and begged you to call me. Begged, Wyatt.”
His Adam’s apple bobs above his snowy white shirt collar.
“And I didn’t. I showed up the next year with a girlfriend.”
“The worst possible girlfriend.” I dip my head in acknowledgment.“And then last July, you said…”
Oh god, I can’t. It hurt so much to hear him deny what we were. I can’t do it again. And now he’s not saying anything. His silence fills the whole damn room as the blood drains from my cheeks, and now I’m the one spinning to face the wall.
“Zip me up, please,” I say in a strangled voice. “This is what I needed you for.”
There’s a pause before he moves forward, but he doesn’t reach for the zipper right away.
Instead, he stands so close that I can feel the heat radiating off him.
I’m breathing shallowly, trembling with the effort of keeping my emotions in check, and that’s before his finger ghosts down my spine, tracing the exposed line of my back.
I shiver, my nipples pulling tight inside my bra and my knees turning to water. Yet he still says nothing.
“Zip me up, Wyatt. I can’t—” I shake my head. “Just zip me up, and let’s get through tonight, and then we can go back to hating each other again.”
Instead of doing what I ask, he fits his hands into the dip of my waist—still exposed in the open back of my dress—and for a moment, I let myself relax into his touch.
I enjoy those strong fingers gripping me, his thumbs sliding back and forth across the skin of my lower back.
He’s holding me so firmly that I can almost believe he’ll never let me go.
But he will. He did then, and all these scraps of truth won’t change anything. Not our past, and not our future. He turns me into my worst self, and I bring out the worst in him too.
“Zip me up.” My voice is sharp, and I steel my spine along with it. “Then please go.”
My body is rigid as I hold myself perfectly still, trying not to spill another tear over this man.
I almost break when he makes a low noise in his throat, but he finally does what I ask.
His fingers move to that fucking zipper that sits too low for me to reach on my own.
That zipper’s the reason this all came pouring out, and I wish like hell I’d chosen literally anything else to wear.
If I’d been able to dress myself tonight, maybe my heart wouldn’t be breaking all over again at our unchangeable history.
Still killing with his silence, Wyatt finally slides the zipper up my back.
If I had a romantic notion left in my body, I’d think he was taking his time with it knowing it was his last chance to touch me.
But he finishes the job, and when he fastens the tiny hook at the top of the zipper, his fingers brush the nape of my neck in a featherlight touch.
Then he’s gone without a word, leaving me like a two-thousand-piece puzzle that’s been upended, with my hope and fear and frustration and love in a hopeless jumble on the floor.