For a few moments, I stared down at the innocent little scrap of aluminum. Was I seriously considering this? Yes. Was I seriously going to do this? Yes.
With a sigh, I carefully unbent the clip and started my amateur attempts at unlocking the door. I slid the long end of the clip with the tiny hook I’d fashioned into the hole on the doorknob. After a little fishing around, I thought I felt the groove I was looking for. When I turned it, I felt the lock slide open.
A cold thrill ran through me. I knew how to unlock doors like that only because the bathroom in my house sometimes locked itself and had the same kind of lock. Picking the lock to a door I wasn’t supposed to open was an entirely different experience.
It would be fine, though. I was just trying to do my job, and my boss happened to not be in the office to give me the documents I needed.
I walked behind his desk and couldn’t help feeling the sense of foreboding wash over me. I had to be imagining it, but I thought I could smell the faint scent of his cologne behind his desk, like some kind of stupid, sexy ghost lurking over my shoulder.
I convinced myself that I didn’t need to feel guilty for snooping through Nick’s desk. I doubted he had even bothered to move anything personal inside yet. I was basically snooping through Dan Snyder’s desk. Besides, I was pretty sure if I looked up the definition of snooping, there would be some specific language about trying to find personal items. I was just looking for some boring old financial papers. If I saw anything weird, I’d . . .
I frowned at what appeared to be a massive stash of some kind of trading cards in his desk. I flipped a few over and saw pictures of fantasy creatures with a bunch of statistics on how much damage they would do and how many “mana” they cost to summon. I grinned. I wondered if they were Nick’s or Dan’s.
I had to blindly reach toward the back corner of his drawer because of the awkward angle. I felt around and was about to give up when my fingers touched a small folded piece of paper. When I pulled it out, I couldn’t help feeling the strangest pang of familiarity. It looked old and well worn, like it had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases were as soft as cloth.
When I opened it, my breath caught. I recognized every word. It was a poem. A sappy, embarrassing, loaded-with-clichés poem written by the hand of a teenage girl. Even as full of cringe as it was, I couldn’t help feeling a deep sadness as I read through it. The vocabulary was definitely from a young girl, but there was no denying the emotion practically bleeding from the page.
At some point, the paper had apparently gotten soaked by something—maybe a drink spill in his locker or any number of things that could’ve happened afterward. But the part that made me frown was when I noticed the bottom of the page. The combination of spilled liquid and the paper being folded over had left a ghostlike imprint of random letters at the bottom, almost like a signature.
I’d written the note anonymously, but when I squinted down at the fuzzy, water-smeared letters, they seemed to say ira. When I folded the paper a few times, I realized it had come from part of a sentence: “I ran from my feelings for long enough.”
My frown deepened when everything clicked together. I’d known Nick was smart enough to figure out who had written him the note from context. But I hadn’t planned for what would happen if he thought somebody had signed it.
I was so absorbed in the note that I didn’t even realize he’d been standing in the doorway.
“This is a surprise,” Nick said. “Not exactly what I was thinking when we set the boundaries, though.”
In a moment of rare hand-eye coordination, I discreetly tucked the note into my palm and turned my wrist to conceal it. I knew I’d need to find a way to replace it soon, or he’d likely put two and two together, but I could worry about that later. “Oh God. This looks so much worse than it is. Seriously, I can explain.”
He walked into the room and planted his palms on the desk. He leaned forward, eyes boring into me. God. I’d never known a man with eyes that carried so much weight. I thought Nick could’ve likely carried a conversation without ever uttering a single word. All he’d need were the various stages of his glares.
“I was just looking for some documents I thought Dan would have in his desk.”
“Yeah? Well, this isn’t Dan’s desk anymore.”
“I realize that. I just thought you might not have had time to move his things out yet, and—”
“And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask me in the morning. So you broke into my office instead?”
I opened my mouth to object, but he held up his palm, silencing me.
“Miranda. If I can’t trust my vice president, then she’s useless to me. What would you do if you were in my position? Give you a slap on the wrist?”
I had to resist the urge to let my head hang. Getting lectured by Nick like this was mortifying, but I couldn’t let that show. I knew I’d cry if I admitted how this made me feel, and crying in front of Nick was not going to happen.
“I would,” I said, then I had to stop to swallow hard. Get it together, Miranda. “I would give my vice president a chance to show me what she thought was important enough to break into my office for. And then I’d decide what to do with her.”
“What to do with her,” Nick mused. His voice sounded deeper than usual, darker.
Chills raced across my skin. Why was it so hard to focus? My job was on the line, yet my stupid brain was trying to twist his words into some pathetic fantasy. “Yes,” I said. “What to do with her.”
“All right.” He stood up and crossed his arms. “What documents did you need?”
“The internal financial reports. The ones that came straight to the accountants before they filed their reports.”
Nick walked calmly to a cabinet on the wall, pulled it open, and scooped out a folder. “This is last year’s report. Good enough?”
“Yes,” I said shakily.
He handed me the folder. “You have twenty-four hours. Show me something important, and we’ll forget about this. Fail to do that, and we’ll have a conversation.”
A day. Why did people always think it was more intimidating to set ominous deadlines by the hour? I nodded. “Can I go?”
He stuck his arm toward the door and dipped his chin, never taking his eyes from mine.
I wish I could say I walked from his office in a calm, controlled way—that I showed my spirit by holding my head high and keeping it together. But it took everything I had to hold back tears. I walked out of there as fast as I could and shut the door to my office as soon as I was inside. I sank down on the ground and buried my head in my hands.
I was an idiot to think I could work for Nick and pretend it was a normal job. Even as driven as I was, I’d never have been so desperate to prove myself that I would’ve broken into my boss’s office to do it. I’d also never take a little scolding so personally. My past with him was clouding my judgment. And now . . .
My fingertips ran over the note in my hand. Now I didn’t even have a reason to hate the old Nick. After all this time, I’d been the idiot. I’d given him the note and waited for him to come talk to me about it. Instead, he’d avoided me for three days and eventually asked out Kira. The poem was full of references that he would’ve known had to be from me if he had half a brain, so I’d assumed the worst. I’d thought he was asking Kira out to shut me down in some cowardly, nonconfrontational way. Then I’d decided it was even more sinister than that. I’d thought he was laughing about the poem behind my back, and asking Kira out had been a calculated stab in the back.