Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Josh is a fucking piece of shit.
I’m back in the office after our New York trip, and something is off.
There’s a weird, charged energy in every room I enter.
People avoid my gaze. Conversations die when I get too close.
Jessica from Client Relations points at me and whispers to the woman beside her like we’re in fucking high school.
Louie from Architecture walks so slowly toward the elevator that it’s painfully obvious he’s hoping the doors will close before he gets there, so he won’t have to ride with me.
And Tate from IT just straight-up glares at me in the hallway.
I spend the first few hours of the day wondering what the ever-loving fuck is going on. Then, while I’m sitting alone in the cafeteria, watching people very pointedly avoid my table, it hits me.
Josh.
This has to be Josh’s doing.
I see Megan walk in and call her name. Loudly. She freezes for half a second, and I can see the exact moment she considers pretending not to hear me. Unfortunately for her, I am not above making this everyone’s problem.
“Megan!”
A few heads turn.
Good.
I wave one hand in the air like a complete idiot until she finally walks over to my table. She doesn’t sit down.
“Carly, hi,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “How was New York?”
“Terrific. Now tell me why everyone is avoiding me.” I lean forward. “Did Josh say something?”
She shifts.
“Megan.”
She bites her lip, glances around at all the people pretending not to listen, then sits across from me. “Okay, but please don’t tell anyone I told you.”
I give her a tight nod.
She lowers her voice. “Josh has been saying things.”
“What things?”
Megan winces.
And then she tells me.
Apparently, Josh has been telling people that I cheated on him with Andrew. He’s gone into gross, humiliating detail about how we were supposedly fucking in Andrew’s office and how the New York trip was just a cover for some kind of sex bender.
Oh, and get this: he’s also been telling people I’m actually kind of shit at my job. That other people have to pick up my slack all the time. That Andrew only keeps me around because we’re sleeping together.
And apparently, the only reason I got to help with the press briefings is because I begged Andrew for the chance, and he agreed because, you guessed it, we’re fucking.
I’m going to kill him.
I’m going to strangle that little rat of a man with my own two hands until his throat is nothing but a chewed-up pool noodle.
“That’s not true,” I say, my voice sharp. “You know that’s not true, right?”
Megan nods too quickly. “Of course.”
But she doesn’t look convinced. Not fully.
And that’s the worst part. The damage has already been done. Even if I explain everything, there’s still going to be a tiny part of her wondering whether there might be some truth to it.
So yeah, Josh is a fucking piece of shit.
I take the stairs, too angry to stand still in an elevator. I make sure to stomp, hearing each step echo off the nondescript walls, and, like a crazy person, I mutter to myself the whole way up.
That fucking bitch-ass little dickweed. He is going to regret ever learning how to speak.
When I reach the floor of the IT department, I burst through the doors and head straight for Josh’s office. Heads turn as I storm down the corridor.
Good.
Let them look.
Apparently, everyone already has plenty to say about me anyway.
His door is slightly ajar, and I shove it open hard enough for it to smack against the wall.
Josh startles so violently he drops his headset onto his desk. “Jesus Christ, Carly.”
“What the fuck have you done?”
He blinks at me. Once. Twice. Then his gaze flicks past me, toward the corridor, where people are surely pretending not to listen.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, but there’s no conviction in it.
“Yes, you fucking do.” I step into his dumb office with its dumb neckbeard decor and shut the dumb door behind me. “You’ve been making shit up about me. Telling everyone I cheated on you? That I only have this job because I’m fucking Andrew?”
His mouth opens, then closes again. “I didn’t say it like that.”
A hot, ugly laugh bursts out of me. “Oh, good. Then please tell me exactly how you said it.”
He looks down at his keyboard, jaw working. “People were asking questions.”
“No, they weren’t.”
“They were,” he says, too quickly. “You were gone with him in New York, and then everyone knew we weren’t together anymore, and people started putting things together.”
“People?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Or you?”
His ears go red.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Josh? Who are you?”
“I didn’t lie.” His tone sharpens. “You broke up with me while you were alone with him in New York. You can see how that looks.”
“So you decided to ruin my reputation because of what? A hunch?”
His face tightens, but he still won’t quite look at me. “Come on, Carly. I know what RHV is. I know what you have to do with him.”
“You don’t know anything,” I say.
“I know enough.”
“No, you don’t.” My words shake. I’m trying very, very hard not to launch myself over his desk. I’m suddenly starting to understand why people throw things. And punch holes through walls.
“So you’re saying none of it is true?”
I open my mouth to say that it isn’t, but then yesterday morning flashes through my mind. Andrew’s hand in my hair. His wrecked voice. The way he looked at me afterward.
Josh sees it.
“That’s what I thought.”
My restraint snaps.
“You know what, Josh? Keep talking.” I step closer to his desk. “Keep spreading rumors about me at work. Keep telling people I’m bad at my job. Keep using what you know about my medical situation to justify humiliating me. Please.”
His expression falters.
“Carly—”
“No. Please do it.” My voice drops. “Because if you say one more thing about me, I’ll go to HR.”
He swallows. “For what?”
“For harassment.” I tilt my head. “And retaliation. And whatever they call it when a man starts a smear campaign because a woman doesn’t want him.”
His face goes red.
Maybe I can’t actually go to HR. Maybe walking into that office would be like opening a grenade with my teeth. Maybe the second anyone starts asking questions about me and Andrew, this whole thing explodes in my face.
But Josh doesn’t need to know that.
I lean in, just enough to make him go still.
“Say my name again,” I say, quieter now. “I fucking dare you.”
“That was a long lunch,” Andrew says as I sit down in his visitor’s chair.
I open my laptop and pull up the notes from the trip. “I had some business to attend to.” Then I start cleaning up the notes. Aggressively.
Too aggressively, apparently, because after a while he says, “Carly.”
“What?” I don’t look up.
“I’m honestly worried you’re going to ruin your laptop typing like that.” His voice is calm, and it reminds me of how he spoke to me in his apartment. “What’s going on?”
For a second, I imagine what would happen if I told him.
Would he be angry? Yeah, most likely. Would he fire Josh? Possibly. And there is a dark, ugly part of me that would relish that. I would love for Andrew to be angry on my behalf. I would absolutely revel in watching Josh escorted out of the building.
But then what?
It would only make everyone dead sure the rumors were true and that Andrew was protecting me because we’re sleeping together. It would make everything a million times worse for both of us. So I keep my eyes on the screen and say, “Nothing. I’m just stressed, that’s all.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can feel him watching me. “If this is about yesterday—”
“It’s not,” I say before he can finish.
I can’t think about New York right now.
Because then he’ll see it. He’ll see my cheeks turn pink, see me shift in my chair, see the way I’m actively trying to avoid looking at his hands, his mouth, the place where his shirt collar meets his throat.
And if he notices, I’m scared he’ll start thinking about it too.
And if I see even the slightest hint of heat on his face, I’m scared I’ll do something clinically insane, like climb over this very expensive desk and ruin both our lives.
And if he lets me, I’m scared I’ll mistake the want for something more.
I cannot go down that road.
We need to go back to Mr. Bennett and Miss Michaels. Asshole boss and overworked assistant. Nothing more, nothing less.
I straighten in my chair and turn the laptop slightly toward him. “I’ve organized the notes by meeting. The investor comments are under the first heading, and I’ve separated the action points from the general discussion to make them easier to follow.”
Andrew looks at the screen, then reaches for the pen beside his hand. He turns it until the clip lines up with the edge of his notepad.
“Okay,” he says.
I click into the next document. “I also cleaned up the site visit notes. There were a few things that needed follow-up from Legal, so I flagged them in yellow. The timeline questions are marked in blue.”
Andrew leans back slightly in his chair, nodding.
I keep my face neutral and scroll to the next section.
“There’s also the revised schedule for the week.
I moved your Thursday call with Larkin to Friday morning because it conflicted with the legal review.
You still have the board prep at three, but I shortened the internal meeting before it to twenty minutes. ”
He doesn’t respond right away. When I finally glance up, he’s no longer looking at the laptop. He’s looking at me.
“What?” I ask.
Andrew’s jaw moves once. “Nothing.”
“Okay.”
Then I look back down.
The office grows quiet, save for the soft tap of my keys and the distant murmur of voices outside his door. After a while, Andrew says, “Miss Michaels.”
Regret twists through me.
“Yes?”
He looks at me for another moment, unreadable. Then he nods toward the laptop. “Send me the final version when you’re done.”
“Of course.” I go back to typing, a little more careful this time.
Across the desk, Andrew picks up one of the printed reports and starts reading.
He doesn’t ask again. Instead, he gives me exactly what I wanted.
Cold professionalism.
And I fucking hate it.
My keys clatter as I toss them into the bowl by the door. Yes, it’s a burglar’s wet dream, and no, I don’t care.
Annie is splayed across our couch, watching a rerun of some nineties sitcom.
“Hey,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.
I walk up to the couch and stare down at her as the laugh track rolls in the background. I stand there for a full minute before she finally notices me.
“Good God, Carly.” She jerks, pressing a hand to her chest. “You scared me half to death.” Her eyes narrow. “Why are you standing there like that? Are you possessed? Do I need to call Father Karras?”
“I’m the office harlot.”
“Okay? Tell me something I don’t know.”
I grab one of the throw pillows and make it live up to its name. It hits her directly in the face.
“What the hell?” She grabs the pillow, hair mussed and eyes wide. “What was that for?”
“I sucked my boss’s peen in New York.”
Annie freezes. The sitcom audience laughs at something in the background as her eyes widen. “Shut the fuck up.”
“And now Josh is spreading rumors about me at work.”
She sits up so fast that she almost knocks over the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. “Oh, we are going to need wine for this.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“It’s an emergency.” She starts slapping the cushion beside her. “Sit. Start from the beginning. And do not skip the peen.”
So I sit.
And I talk.
I tell her about New York. About Josh calling even though we had agreed to talk after the trip.
About ending things with him over the phone while sitting in a hotel room, waiting for Andrew to knock on my door.
I tell her about the late night, about Andrew falling asleep in my bed, about waking up wrapped around him.
And then I tell her about the morning. Not in detail, despite her protests, because I am still a woman of dignity and grace.
Mostly.
Annie listens with her wine glass halfway to her mouth, her eyes growing wider and wider.
When I get to the “life-altering” part, she lowers the glass and looks me straight in the eyes. “You asked him that? You actually asked him, post-orgasm, if he found it life-altering?”
I ignore her and continue my tale.
I tell her about how people acted when I returned to the office and about the rumors Josh is spreading about me and Andrew. By the time I’m done, Annie isn’t smiling anymore.
“Josh is a disgusting little gremlin who deserves nothing in this world,” she says.
I snort. “Yeah.”
Annie studies me for a moment, then her expression softens. “Josh isn’t the only thing freaking you out, is he?”
I look down at my glass. The sitcom keeps playing in the background, loud and cheerful and completely wrong for the moment.
“You’re catching feelings,” she guesses.
“I don’t know,” I say, even though it sounds weak even to me. “But it doesn’t matter. What happened in New York was a one-off, and it won’t happen again. I’m putting a stop to it.”
Annie doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.
Then she nods. “Okay.”
I look at her. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“No speech?”
She takes a sip of wine. “This situation is so medically, professionally, sexually, and emotionally fucked that I don’t think I should be giving orders.”
Despite everything, a laugh slips out of me.
“I mean it,” she says, softer now. “Josh is trash. That part is easy. But Optimus Prime?” She gestures vaguely. “That’s complicated. I’m not telling you what to do.”
I look down at my glass.
She nudges my knee with hers, smiling. “But for the record, I’m glad you finally got to polish C-3PO’s knob. Even if it was just a one-off.”
I roll my eyes and laugh, sinking lower into the couch.
Tomorrow, I’ll have to go back to whatever hell my life has become recently. But tonight, at least, I have Annie.
And Annie, thankfully, has wine.