10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Abby
My hands shook as I jammed my thumb into the ‘up’ button on the elevator. I pressed it twice more, needing somewhere to channel my nerves.
I was going to lose my job today. I was going to lose my job, and I had nowhere to go. No one to rely on. I was homeless. For the last few months, I managed to convince myself otherwise. This was a choice. A new beginning. An adventure.
Except I wasn’t some college kid living in a camper van and partying at Burning Man. I was a twenty-seven-year-old divorcee with a credit score in the negative and no savings. No job prospects. No friends or family. Getting to Seattle and preparing myself for this job took the last of my cash. My credit cards—the ones I didn’t know I had thanks to my ex—were closed out. I could barely buy cans of beef stew and bottled water if I wanted to have any left over for a security deposit plus furnishings. Even if I managed to get a waitressing job, I couldn’t afford to live in Seattle. Not unless I took on six roommates in a two-bedroom apartment with no windows.
The elevator dinged open, and I steeled myself. Worse things had happened to me. I was smart. I was educated. I would get myself out of this mess, even without this job.
I can make this better. Everything is fine.
I didn’t really believe myself.
I’d barely removed my coat when Gage snapped my name from his office. This was it. Goodbye Silver Bullet Security. Goodbye, new life in Seattle. Levi was the boss boss here at Silver Bullet, but he’d made it clear that Gage had just as much power, at least when it came to delegating. I was pretty sure that also meant he had the power to fire me.
I tiptoed into Gage’s office, eyes downcast. I wanted to have some kind of boss bitch confidence and walk in there like his decision didn’t bother me. That wasn’t me, though. If there was any confidence left in me, it was shriveled and dead. Life decided to beat me down this year and I was tapping out. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Good morning,” I whispered, stopping to stand in front of his desk.
“My eyes are still watering.”
I smiled despite my gloomy mood, glancing up to see his eyes were as bloodshot as mine. “Mine too. I really am sorry.” My voice broke, and I swallowed, trying to hide my despair. Being caught sleeping out of my car was humiliating enough. I wasn’t going to make it worse by crying in front of him.
“I startled you,” he admitted. Startled was one word for getting a hug from a wolf.
“What were you doing, anyway?”
“Letting my wolf run. You’re camping in a shifter recreation area.”
“You’re the only shifter that’s tried to eat me, so far.”
Gage cleared his throat, sounding uncomfortable when he said, “I wasn’t trying to eat you. You just smelled…familiar.”
“Are you—sorry, that’s not my business.”
“Ask.”
“Are you aware of what you’re doing when you shift?”
“Aware? Yes. In control? Not entirely. I like to think I have more autonomy than the wolf does. He likes to think he does too.” His tone was warm, like he was talking about his dearest friend. What was it like to have another consciousness inside you?
“But shifting can have an odd effect, especially if it isn’t done frequently. It’s…inebriating. If I seemed…” He cleared his throat again. “I don’t always remember what I do and say after a shift.”
I glanced at my feet to hide my smile, remembering that he told me I smelled delicious. “You didn’t say anything embarrassing, if it makes you feel better,” I lied.
“Good.”
A hard silence pressed between us. I broke it with a weighty exhale. “You should get it over with. I can handle it.”
No, I can’t handle it. This is rock bottom, and I can’t find a hand hold to climb my way back up.
He scowled. “Get what over with?”
My lip wobbled, and I bit down on it, forcing myself to sound calm when I answered, “Firing me.”
“I’m not firing you,” he scoffed. “But you can’t live out of your car if you’re going to do this job.”
“It’s not my long-term plan.” I rubbed my thumb and pointer finger together nervously. “I only need another month, and I’ll have an apartment. My living situation won’t be reflected in my work, I promise.”
“Remind me why you’re living out of your car.”
I mulled it over, trying to decide how honest to be. If I was lucky, he didn’t remember any of my word vomit from last night. “I don’t have somewhere to live yet.”
“Why?” He demanded.
“I’m broke,” I blurted. “My husband divorced me out of the blue this year. It was messy. He took our home and our savings and left me with a mountain of debt.” I chewed my lip harder, looking everywhere but at him. “Please, I really need this job. I really want this job. I’m working on the apartment.”
Gage exhaled. His eyes were doing that shifter glow-y thing. Not a good sign. “You are aware it’s going to be raining and cold for the rest of the year, right? You can’t live out there in November. You’ll freeze.”
“What else do you expect me to do?” I wanted to scream. Instead, I quietly said, “I understand.”
“And you were going to do it, regardless?”
“Yes.”
“You’re committed. I’ll give you that.”
I did my best not to fidget as he opened one of his desk drawers and rifled through it. I wasn’t fired but I also couldn’t do my job while living out of my car. So, what was happening? Gage snagged a pen from the cup sitting on the surface of his desk. He scratched a few quick words onto the pad in front of him and ripped the paper off, handing it to me.
“Levi forgot to give you this during your orientation.” I stared at his outstretched hand, dumbfounded.
“I don’t understand.”
“Take it. That’s your relocation assistance.”
The check trembled in my hands as I held it up, reading the dollar amount without comprehending it. Any chance of keeping my composure in front of him vanished as the first tear rolled down my cheek. Another one made an escape before I was wiping at them with my sleeve, sniffling and apologizing profusely. Crying seemed like one of those human things that would probably offend Gage.
“I—I’m sorry,” I rubbed my eyes again. “Thank you. This is—I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. It’s not a favor. It’s part of your job. If you quit in the next three months, you can pay it back.” He straightened in his chair, flipping open his laptop and dismissing me with a wave. “I have work to do and so do you.”
I nodded numbly, wandering back to my desk, and dropping into my seat. I held the check out in front of me, still not believing what I was seeing.
Ten thousand dollars. Gage handed me a check for ten thousand dollars like it was nothing. Sure, it was company money, but still. Ten thousand.
This was enough for first month, last month, a deposit, and if I found one on sale, a mattress to sleep on. I was going to have a bed! Fresh tears wavered in my vision, and I blinked them back.
Right, I had a job to do. This wasn’t a favor. This was business.
This was bullshit.
There was no relocation assistance. Levi wouldn’t forget a detail like that. Especially not if he intended to give me this much money. It was more than I made in two months with probationary pay. My gaze flitted over the check again, noticing the name in the top left corner.
Gage Griffin . This was a personal check. I twisted to look at the now closed office door behind me. I did not understand that man, and as much as I appreciated his kindness, I couldn’t accept this. Not from one of my bosses. It wasn’t right. Was it even legal?
He was trying to be nice. Not trying . He was nice, even if his words and demeanor didn’t always reflect it. My boss, the secret cinnamon roll.
With a sigh I tucked the check into the top drawer of my desk. I would return it, even if I really, really needed the money.
The awkwardness from our earlier interaction had barely faded when Gage called me back into his office to bring coffee and take notes. Taking notes for the resident cyber security genius was one of the main reasons my job existed—beyond organizing, digitizing, and filing the mountain of paperwork they somehow accrued—and I still hadn’t figured out why. Gage wasn’t the most organized man, but he was bright, and perfectly capable of recording notes for later transcription. It seemed my time would be better spent answering phone calls, preparing tax documents with the firm’s accountant, or doing literally anything other than sitting across the desk from him and typing out all his barely coherent mutterings.
Apparently, those mutterings were very valuable, and Gage couldn’t find it in himself to keep track of them.
Silver Bullet Security wasn’t only responsible for keeping their clientele safe. One of the bigger sources of income was private investigation, and that was all Gage. It made sense to me. He had an inborn hunting instinct, and this was just hunting through a keyboard.
Most cases were boring, involving business fraud. Occasionally, there was a missing person where the family decided law enforcement wasn’t doing the job well enough and wanted to dig deeper, and I felt a little like I was on one of those detective shows. Except I was just sitting there and aimlessly twiddling my thumbs until Gage grumbled something about a specific Facebook post, credit card expense, or a suspicious social media location check-in.
Note to self: delete all social media immediately. People did not realize how much information they were giving away in a seven second video.
Less than ten minutes elapsed before Gage yanked his hands from the keyboard and rubbed his face with a disgruntled sigh. Eyes rolled to the ceiling, he said, “I’m going to need you to move.”
I looked at where I was perched on the edge of a vinyl chair on the opposite side of the desk and frowned. “Am I taking up too much desk space? I can sit over—”
I started to point to the leather couch in the corner of the room, but he shook his head and stood, gesturing to the spot directly beside his chair. “I need you here. You’re distracting me over there.”
My frown deepened as I tried to judge if he was serious. This was another weird shifter thing, I just knew it. “O-kay, sure.”
I slid my tablet across the desk and circled it, plopping my chair a few feet from him and trying to cram my legs between the drawers. This was ridiculous. The desk was definitely not made for this.
Gage dropped back into his rolling chair, measuring the distance between him and me with his eyes, and letting out a growling breath. “That’s…still not right.” The resentful words were at odds with his request.
“If you speak up, I can still hear you from the cou—” I squealed as his hand gripped my thigh and tugged until the arms of my chair crashed into his. My legs were stuffed under the desk, tangling with his long ones as he rearranged himself. Hand still resting on my thigh, he let out a relieved sigh. The tension bled from his shoulders, and I could almost see the lines around his mouth softening.
Sparks crackled where the heat of his palm burned through my skirt. Shifters didn’t have the same personal space boundaries as humans but even a shifter had to know that this was the kind of touch that got people reported to HR.
But I was HR, and I wasn’t about to write him up.
I couldn’t remember the last time someone touched me intimately, and I suddenly realized I was starved for it. Desperate in a way that had me inhaling a bit too sharply, gazing up at Gage with smitten eyes and blushing cheeks. When he met my gaze, stern but somehow unguarded, I felt the blush creep down my chest and tingle all the way down to my hands and feet.
Ping .
The weird thump in my chest went off like a bell, and my heart rate increased tenfold. This had to be a health condition.
Reality snapped back to me the moment his hand returned to the keyboard. I cleared my throat, fixing my eyes so hard on the tablet screen that my vision blurred. This innocent infatuation was becoming not-so-innocent, and it was time to put a stop to it. That would have been easy enough yesterday, when he was my grumpy boss with bad people skills who also snuck up on me in wolf form and made me mace myself. The boss I was sure would fire me.
Today, he was the grumpy boss with bad people skills and no concept of personal space who also gave me a check for an apartment and lied about it being a company expense to preserve my pride. Maybe I had some kind of rescue complex, and I felt like he was saving me.
This wasn’t attraction, just desperation. I was no psychologist, but it was probably normal to barnacle onto the first safe person you encountered after heartbreak and betrayal. Though, if I was going to pick someone as “safe” here at Silver Bullet, Gage should be the last on the list. Levi was protective, Mason and Ezra were both kind, and Kai went out of his way to make me laugh.
I swallowed my confusion and forced every thought out of my head, focusing only on the gentle murmur of Gage’s voice.
The workday had come and gone, and I was quickly losing my opportunity. Gage was always the first to leave the office and now I understood why. He was headed for the hills, just the same as me, and wanted to make the most of the evening before sunset. I’d spent most of the morning and a working lunch sitting in his office. By the time we finished our sandwiches it became obvious to me that Gage no longer needed my help. He was deep into the background of Joseph Cargill and hadn’t spoken more than a word in ten minutes.
I wasn’t keen on interrupting his research trance, but I could also feel the clock ticking away at the paperwork Levi wanted finished by the end of the week. Currently I was being paid hourly and Levi made it clear I could work overtime if that was what it took to get the work done. He’d even offered up one of the guys as a sacrifice to stay at the office and walk me to my car when I was finished. That would have been the golden ticket I needed, if only I didn’t live in my car. Working late and driving through the woods in the dark wasn’t an option.
When he paused to take a sip of his now very cold coffee, I saw my opportunity and seized it. “Do you still need me? Levi has me working on some time sensitive paperwork…”
Gage blinked blearily at me. He looked like he’d forgotten I was there. Odd, considering I was practically in his lap.
Without a word he nodded, pointing jerkily with his chin, and turning his attention back to his laptop. I stood, gathering my things, and freezing when an angry growl filled the air.
Gage coughed, pounding his chest, and giving me a sheepish half smile.
“Shifter thing,” I said reassuringly, hurrying to leave before the situation could get any weirder.
“Right, yeah.” He nodded again, blinking back to his screen. I could tell by the unfocused way he stared at it that he was watching me peripherally as I scurried away, making me feel like prey.
That was hours ago and now I was bouncing my leg in my office chair, trying to decide if I should wait for him to leave his office or not. The benefit to being in his office was privacy—I had no idea if Gage wanted the others to know he was giving me money—but his door was currently closed and that was as good as a big “do not disturb” sign. I stood from my desk in a flurry, tapping at his door, and immediately feeling the urge to run away.
The worst of my divorce wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so terrible at confrontation. Clearly, I hadn’t improved any in the months since. I couldn’t even tell someone off when they cut in line! How was I supposed to return a very hefty check to the boss that, until today, appeared to hate me?
Gage grumbled incoherently through the door, and I decided to interpret it as an invitation to enter. It was a misinterpretation because he looked pissed when the door swung open. Then he realized it was me and not whoever he thought was here to bother him and his face brightened—meaning he went from death glare to normal unfriendly scowl.
“What do you want?” I approached his desk, biting the side of my cheek and forcing myself to look at him.
“Thank you very much, but I can’t accept this.” I held the check out for him.
His eyes narrowed at it, staring for so long my fingers began to quiver. “Yes, you can.”
I retracted my hand, running my thumb over the corner of the paper. “There is no relocation assistance. This is a personal check.”
Was he…blushing? “So? It’s a personal investment. I can’t have my PA living out of her car. It’s distracting.”
Distracting was the word of the day. I was starting to feel like I was back in middle school, being blamed for the boy who couldn’t concentrate on his classwork because I had the gall to wear shorts during the hottest day in May.
“But that’s the thing. I’m not your PA. I work for the firm.” I wasn’t even clear if he was actually my boss or just bossy. “Thank you again. Really.” I carefully placed the check in the middle of his desk and turned to make a hasty retreat.
“Just take the fucking money, Abigail!” Gage was standing, fists planted on his desk.
“I can’t!” I whisper-shouted back, urging him to understand.
It wasn’t pride that was keeping me from accepting it, nor was it guilt, though both stung at the idea that I needed someone else’s money.
Fear was the real reason I had to return it. I’d been burned by the last man that I relied on. Badly. I couldn’t risk that again.
Ultimately, Gage was a stranger. I had no idea what accepting that money might mean. No idea what kind of trouble being indebted to him would spell for me. Life was really stupid hard right now, and I hated how vulnerable I was. How far I’d fallen in a few short months.
I had to be the one to pick myself back up. I had to be the one to claw my way out of this rock bottom place.
Even if it meant living out of my car. Even if it meant forgoing all the luxuries of everyday life that most people took for granted. Even if it meant pissing off the shifter whose eyes were now glowing bright blue.
I wasn’t the Abby that walked tearfully out of that courtroom months ago. I couldn’t be. She wouldn’t survive another bump in the road. I had to be stronger for me.
And that meant I couldn’t let Gage save me. I couldn’t let anyone save me.
I had to save myself.