Chapter 20 - Andrea
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Andrea
I was at my desk reviewing invoices when the elevator opened and Lorraine stepped out.
She hadn’t been on this floor since the day she walked in, smelled whatever she smelled, and left without a word.
That had been weeks ago. The silence since then had been unsettling but at least it was silence.
Now here she was, red hair sharp against a black dress, heels clicking across the tile, walking with purpose.
“Lorraine, he’s in the middle of something right now, you can’t just...”
She didn’t even look at me. Walked straight past my desk like I was furniture, crossed the floor, and went into his office without knocking. The door shut behind her.
I sat there with my hand still half-raised from trying to stop her, feeling stupid and dismissed and furious.
I picked up my phone to text him, let him know she’d barged in, that I’d tried to stop her, but through the glass I could see him looking up from his desk.
He saw her. He didn’t send her out. He didn’t buzz me to come get her.
He just leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and let her talk.
I told myself I wasn’t going to watch through the glass.
I watched through the glass.
She was standing in front of his desk, gesturing, animated.
He was behind the desk with his arms crossed, jaw set, stiff shoulders that told me whatever she was saying, he wasn’t enjoying it.
But he wasn’t ending the conversation either.
Ten minutes passed. I processed an invoice, or tried to, the numbers swimming on the screen.
Twenty minutes. She was still in there. I pulled up another invoice and stared at it without reading a single line.
Thirty minutes. She was still talking, still gesturing with those manicured hands like she had every right to take up half his afternoon without an appointment while I sat out here pretending I didn’t care.
She leaned across his desk at some point, one palm flat on the surface, her body angled toward him.
She laughed at something and touched his arm.
Left her hand there. My pen creaked under my grip.
I wanted to walk in there and remove that hand myself but I sat at my desk like a professional because that’s what I was, his professional goddamn assistant who wasn’t supposed to care who touched his arm or how long they touched it.
At forty-five minutes the thoughts started creeping in.
The ugly ones. What if they were together the whole time?
What if the engagement rumors were true and I was the idiot who believed him when he said it was nothing?
She told me to my face that he was taken.
What if she was right? What if I was the other woman in this story and didn’t even fucking know it?
I shoved those thoughts down because they were poison and I knew they were poison.
He told me there was nothing between them.
He told me she was a family friend. But he was in there, behind that glass, letting her touch his arm for an hour while I sat out here going insane, so what the fuck was I supposed to think?
Then the office door opened.
She came out and she was different. The sharp composure from when she walked in had been replaced by something softer, warmer, a performance so polished I could practically see the stage lights.
She looped her arm through his, pressed against his side, laughed loud enough that I could hear it from across the floor.
She said something against his shoulder that I couldn’t make out, her voice pitched low enough to be intimate, high enough to carry.
He looked at me. I saw it, guilt flashing across his face, quick, before his expression closed back up. He saw me watching. He knew I was watching. He knew exactly what this looked like.
I waited for him to pull away. To step to the side, shake her arm off, do anything that acknowledged me sitting ten feet away at my desk. I waited for him to set a boundary, any boundary, even a small one.
He kept walking.
Her on his arm, pressed against him, laughing and touching, and they walked past my desk close enough that her perfume trailed behind them.
I could see the red hair, the manicured hand curled around his bicep, the smile she aimed in my direction as she passed.
The message couldn’t have been clearer if she’d written it on a billboard.
The elevator doors opened, they stepped in, the doors closed.
I sat at my desk with my pen bent sideways in my fist, face hot, eyes stinging. I would not cry at this desk. Crying would mean she won, and I didn’t let people like her win. I pressed my fingers into the edge of the desk until the pain grounded me and I could breathe without my chest shaking.
I asked him. On my porch, on his couch, in his bed. I asked if he’d tell me if something was wrong and he said yes. Promised me. And he just strolled by with another woman on his arm, guilt on his face, without a single goddamn word.
He came back alone twenty minutes later, crossing the floor toward my desk with his jaw set and his shoulders braced. I could see it on his face that he knew what was coming.
“Andrea...”
I looked up and gave him the sweetest, brightest, most poisonous smile I had. “Yes, Mr. Kingsley?”
It landed. I watched it land, his whole face tightening like I’d slapped him. I hadn’t called him that since the week after the reveal, and pulling it out now told him exactly how far he’d just fallen.
“Can we talk?”
“Actually, I have an emergency I need to handle. Personal matter. Do you mind if I take the rest of the afternoon?”
“Andrea, please, just let me...”
“Is that a yes or a no on the afternoon, Mr. Kingsley?”
He stared at me. I held the smile until my cheeks ached from it. He told me I could go. I thanked him brightly, picked up my bag, my jacket, my phone, and walked to the elevator without looking back.
“We’re going to talk, Andrea,” he said behind me.
“Have a good afternoon, sir.”
The doors closed between us.
I went straight to Bonalisa. Mary took one look at my face and put down the intake forms.
“What happened?”
I told her everything I could without mentioning wolves. The weeks of silence from Lorraine, the sudden return, the hour-long office visit, the arm, the performance. Him looking at me with guilt and then walking past without a word.
Mary listened and her face went hard. “That son of a bitch.”
“Excuse me?” Peter called from the back.
“Not you, baby, you’re an angel. I’m talking about the other one.”
“The worst part is I can’t even be mad at her,” I said.
“She did exactly what she always does. The person who was supposed to stop it was him and he didn’t.
” I looked around the shelter. “You got anything that needs cleaning? I need to do something with my hands before I break something that matters.”
“Are you sure? You could just sit and vent. I’ve got wine in the back.”
“Give me a scrub brush and point me at the dirtiest kennel you’ve got.”
Mary raised her eyebrows but handed me the brush. “Kennel four. Haven’t gotten to it today.”
“Perfect.”
I was in the back scrubbing that kennel with more force than necessary, the tile squeaking under the brush, Buddy watching me from the pen across the hall with his head tilted like he was trying to figure out why I was attacking a floor, when the shelter door chimed. I looked up.
He was standing in the entrance with his jacket off, sleeves rolled, a look on his face that said he’d driven here too fast.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I told you we were going to talk.”
“And I told you I had an emergency.”
“Your emergency is scrubbing a kennel.”
“It’s a very urgent kennel.”
He took a step toward me and I held up the scrub brush between us like a weapon. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it right now.”
Mary appeared beside me. She looked him up and down with the expression of a woman who’d already decided his fate, then handed him a pair of rubber gloves and a litter scoop.
“If you’re going to stand around in my shelter looking miserable, you might as well make yourself useful.
Cat boxes in room three haven’t been done today. ”
He took the gloves and the scoop and went to room three without a word. I stared after him because I did not expect the CEO of a major company to accept litter duty without argument. Mary caught my look and shrugged. “What? He’s here. He might as well work.”
Peter came out a few minutes later, on some signal from Mary that I didn’t catch, and he stood beside me, casually draping his arm over my shoulder while we talked about the new intake forms. He had never done that before in the entire time I’d known him.
I glanced at Mary, who winked from across the room.
From room three I could hear the sound of litter being scooped with extreme aggression.
Every few minutes he appeared in the doorway, looked at Peter’s arm around my shoulder with an expression that cycled through several stages of barely contained murder, and disappeared back inside.
Peter dropped the arm eventually because the stare had reached a level of intensity that suggested actual bodily harm was being considered, but the point was made.
I ignored him for two more hours. He scooped litter, refilled water bowls, mopped a floor with the energy of a man channeling every emotion he had into janitorial work.
At one point I walked past room three. He was on his hands and knees scrubbing a stain off the tile, suit pants ruined, hair falling in his face.
And I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Then I remembered the way he looked at me with guilt and kept walking, and the almost disappeared.
I had never seen anyone look so murderous while holding a mop.
When I was finally ready to leave, he was right behind me, sweaty and unkempt with litter dust on his rolled-up sleeves and a smear I didn’t want to identify on his forearm.
“Let me drive you home.”