Chapter 33 Margot
Margot
My new office is perfect. I put my box of desktop tchotchkes on the table and look out the window. Denver hums below, all crisp autumn air and changing leaves. A bird hops onto a branch and sends a few leaves fluttering down.
It’s still only the second-best view I’ve ever had.
My old office was just a desk in an alcove, but all I had to do was turn my head slightly to see Ethan through the big glass wall. It was a perk I didn’t take full advantage of when I should have.
I was too busy planning out a life with Jeremy that never came to be. Budgeting for a future that didn’t fit, imagining a wedding I didn’t really want, picturing the house and kids I would’ve had to take care of by myself if Jeremy and I ended up together.
That feels like it’s so far in the past that the details are hazy.
Realistically though, it was only a few short months before my breakup with Ethan, and I remember everything about him. About us. About the future I told myself not to consider with him but dreamed of anyway.
I still want it.
I still want him.
I feel it every time we’re together, that connection between us that’s only grown stronger, even in his absence.
Taking this job means spending more time together, and I think that’s what we need.
To find our footing again. To become friends again before we can become something more. To rebuild the trust that was broken.
I’ve heard the whole story about Ethan and Rachel.
Emma told me everything, and I thought about it for weeks, turning over the details, trying to make sense of the situation and empathize with Ethan’s actions.
And I do empathize. I get why he never mentioned it, even if I don’t agree with his choice.
But most importantly, I forgive him. Ethan has given me the time I need to heal.
He’s done exactly what I asked. All that’s left now is to see where this leads us.
The sharp rap of knuckles on my wide-open office door makes me spin around. Ethan is standing there, smiling and looking as tempting as ever in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms and gray slacks.
“Just wanted to stop and see how you like your new office,” he says.
“It’s amazing.”
He takes a few steps into the room, joining me near the side of the desk. Pulling a hand out of his pocket, he holds his closed fist out to me. “I brought you an office-warming gift.”
I quirk a curious eyebrow at him. “What is it?”
He opens his hand to reveal a small orange rectangle—a gum eraser, just like the one I had when we first met.
“Is that-?” I ask.
Ethan nods, and we both start laughing. It was an eraser just like this that started it all—our first laugh, our first inside joke, our joint aversion to the word cheese. I reach out and take the eraser from his hand, savoring the tiny jolt of electricity that shoots through me when we touch.
“You know this is a choking hazard, right?” I say, mostly to ease the tension.
He laughs again, quieter this time. “Only for Tim, and he’s long gone.”
The look we exchange is playful and easy. But deep in my chest, comfort tangles with a low, insistent ache. A longing that’s becoming harder to ignore every day.
Ethan’s smile lingers, his eyes dipping to my mouth. He feels it too. My pulse kicks. Suddenly, the office feels far too small and the door far too open for the way we’re staring at each other.
I clear my throat and rock back on my heels, breaking the spell.
Ethan runs a hand through his hair and takes a step backwards. “Well, after you’re settled in, come to my office and we’ll figure out where to go from here.”
Professionally, he means. As part of my new role with True North.
I have to remind myself of this as a very clear image of Ethan closing the door and bending me over this desk forms in my brain. It’s half memory, half fantasy, and entirely overwhelming. My skin flushes, a fact that Ethan surely notices but doesn’t mention out loud.
He pauses for a second, eyes flicking over my face then roaming slightly lower.
“Sure, give me twenty,” I say, my voice flaring a little too high.
Ethan nods then turns to leave.
Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting in Ethan’s office.
It’s the first of many days, and many nights, that we spend together in there.
This type of acquisition is a lot of work.
It’s new to both of us, so we’re both stumbling our way through, forging a new path for True North in an unknown market.
Before long, we’re laughing and joking around like we used to.
And on more than one occasion, we nearly lose ourselves to the moment with a familiar touch or a lingering look.
Near-kisses become the norm during late-night sessions.
Off-hour texts become commonplace. It doesn’t take long for those to become personal, and that’s a slippery slope.
One minute we’re texting about budgets and reports and international law.
The next, we’re swapping shared memories and inside jokes via text on a Saturday morning over coffee in our respective kitchens.
And late at night, with my bedroom lit only by the glow of my phone, Ethan and I say all the things that we can’t within the confines of the office.
His most recent late-night confession: I know I’m supposed to be giving you time and space, but I also need you to know that I miss you so fucking much that I can barely function some nights.
I lie awake considering my reply for a long time then finally type: I’m ready.
***
The next day at work… nothing.
Ethan arrives a tad later than usual and summons me to his office, where we talk strictly about work. Nothing else. Not even a hint of anything else. Just spreadsheets and corporate jargon.
Around two o’clock, my patience finally snaps. “Did you get my text last night?” I ask, unable to mask the tinge of irritation in my voice.
Ethan looks up, meeting my eyes. “I did.”
I wait.
And wait.
Any second now, he’ll elaborate. He’ll say something. A syllable. A grunt. I’d even take a meaningful eyebrow twitch. Literally anything at all.
Instead, he clears his throat and launches right back into talking about how tariffs might impact our risk analysis.
Infuriating.
I don’t know what I expected. It’s not like Ethan would ravage me right here on his desk. But there has to be some middle ground between desktop ravaging and talking these work reports to death, right?
Ever since we ended things, Ethan has made it perfectly clear that he wanted to fix it. He’d do whatever it takes. Wait however long I needed. And now that I’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m ready, he won’t even acknowledge the words.
Eventually, I retreat to my office to stew in private.
At six o’clock, my phone rings. It’s Ethan.
He tells me he printed some sensitive documents, and they must’ve gone to the wrong printer.
We need to split up and track them down.
I’m assigned floors one through five; he’ll take six through ten.
I sigh and agree, because apparently I’m not doing anything else today.
Five fruitless floors later, I pop into Ethan’s office and find it empty. He must still be trying to hunt down the paperwork, so I head back to my office.
When I walk through the doorway, I stop dead in my tracks.
A massive bouquet of flowers sits on my desk, filling the office with a sweet, delicate scent.
I take a few steps closer, eyes catching on the book that definitely wasn’t there before.
It has a soft black leather cover and gold letters across the front: Our Story.
My chest tightens and soars at the same time.
The small card laying on top makes my throat ache as I read it:
Margot,
Our story has always been my favorite. I can’t wait to write the next chapters with you.
Love,
Ethan
Beyond that, the pages are filled with his handwriting.
The paper crinkles slightly as I run my finger over the works, feeling the tiny divots that the pen left behind.
They’re letters, dozens of them, but they aren’t full of sappy professions of love or wistful, melodramatic pining.
They’re our story. I sink into my office chair and begin to read.
The first one makes me smile through the mist of tears already fogging my vision. He writes about when we first met. He was the CFO at the time, and I was hired as his assistant.
I thought you hated me at first. You were so reserved and aloof those first couple of weeks.
Truthfully, I was sort of intimidated by you.
It was obvious that you were smart, and I’d seen just enough of your sarcasm shine through to know that you wouldn’t tolerate idiots.
For the first time in my life, I had to wonder if I was, in fact, an idiot.
Cue the cheese incident.
You’d been in my office taking notes during a virtual staff meeting. After you left, a guy from our team named Tim wandered into my office, going on about something that he didn’t agree with during the meeting.
Then he glanced down, paused, and said, “Oh, cheese.”
Without warning or even an inkling of self-awareness, he reached down and popped this little orange cube that had been sitting on the corner of my desk into his mouth.
I had no idea what it was. I’d never seen it before in my life.
All I knew was that there was absolutely no reason there would be a small cube of cheese on my desk.
Even if there were, only the least self-aware human on earth would waltz into my office and randomly eat it without permission or warning.
Tim’s face turned sour a second later. He coughed, sputtered, and demanded to know what it was, having now realized that it is most definitely not cheese.
That’s when you walked in and asked, “Did I leave my eraser in here?”
“I think Tim just ate it, actually.”
I’ll never forget the look on your face or the tone of your voice when you looked over at him and simply asked, “Why?”
Tim cupped his hand under his mouth and spit out a gob of the eraser. “I thought it was cheese!”
Fuming, he deposited the chewed up eraser, along with a generous pool of his own saliva, onto my desk and stormed out of the room.
At that point, I knew that you might think I’m a bit of an idiot, but at least I wasn’t the guy who ate your eraser.
You looked at the wet, chewed-up eraser then up at me, and we both started laughing so hard we could barely breathe. Your laugh was so bright and unguarded that it caught me by surprise. And after that, it became a daily challenge for me, trying to make you laugh.
There was nothing romantic about it at the time.
I knew you had a serious boyfriend. I just liked being the reason you laughed.
Every smile and every laugh felt well-earned, like you didn’t hand them out lightly.
And before long, I realized that it wasn’t all that hard because the same things that made me laugh, made you laugh.
The cheese incident may have been our first inside joke, but it was far from our last.
Pressing my fingertips to my lips, I laugh through the tears.
I flip through page after page of similar stories: the first time we went to lunch together, the first time we travelled together for business, the night Jeremy and I broke up, the dates—both real and fake—that followed, and eventually, the night we broke up.
All the snapshots of us told through his eyes and forever preserved in this book.
By the time I reach the end, my cheeks are wet, and my heart feels both cracked open and stitched back together.
I know exactly what I want and where I need to be.
The building is quiet and dark as I walk down the hall, clutching the journal to my chest. The glow of his office illuminates our little corner of the tenth floor.
When I step inside, Ethan looks up from his desk. He doesn’t say anything right away, just studies me with those hazel eyes. There’s a hint of nervousness in his expression, a tightness in his jaw.
“You read it?” His voice is careful.
“All of it,” My throat is still raw, but the words are steady.
He studies my face. My tear-streaked cheeks and red eyes say all the things that I can’t right now for fear of bursting out into tears. I don’t want that. I just want to enjoy this beautiful, perfect moment that he’s given me.
Ethan leans back in his chair. “Come sit. Have a drink with me.”
Bending to open the bottom drawer, he sets a familiar bottle of scotch on the desk between us. The bottle that started it all. I take a seat across from him, and he pours two paper cups worth. Our fingers brush when he passes one to me, sending a spark straight through me.
“To the next chapter,” Ethan says softly.
I meet his eyes and lift my cup. “The next chapter.”
The scotch burns a familiar trail down my throat and lingers on my tongue. We sip from our small cups in comfortable silence, both savoring this moment and anticipating what comes next.
When our tiny paper cups are empty, Ethan stands. He rounds the desk and holds out his hand. “Come home with me.”
“Yes,” I respond a little too eagerly.
As we leave the office, his hand finds mine, and just before the elevator doors close, he bends to kiss me. It’s unhurried and certain, sealing us back together.
When we break apart, Ethan rests his forehead against mine. His voice is low, teasing. “So, does this new chapter involve loincloths?”
I laugh, the sound amplified by the small quarters of the elevator. “It definitely does.”
He hums his approval against my mouth, brushing another kiss to my lips.
“I love you, Ethan.”
“I love you too, Margot.”
The elevator doors slide open, and together, we step forward.