Willow did the right thing—leaving.
She can’t make real connections here. Everyone eventually recognizes her as Loren Hale’s sister, and in London, she has a chance to fall under the radar.
My phone vibrates.
It’s now almost 3 a.m. Which means it’s almost 8 a.m. in London.
Excitement thrums my veins, thinking it’s her, but when I see the text, it’s worse than a balloon pop. It’s like someone shot a bullet at a blimp.
The person who texted me… It’s my boss.
Connor Cobalt: Meeting tomorrow. 11 a.m. My office.
He attached a screenshot of the drug test I took my first day on the job.
It came back positive.
Fuck.
3 PRESENT DAY – September
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
GARRISON ABBEY
Age 20
He shouldn’t have given me this job. It’s what I know as I face the twenty-nine-year-old business titan. Connor Cobalt is the CEO of Cobalt Inc., a company that has a hand in just about everything you can think of. Magnets. Paints. Diamonds. The list goes on and on. One big company owning smaller subsidiaries.
So the day Connor looked at me and said he wanted me to create something for him—I should have rejected the offer. There’s no way this is going any other direction than south. Fast.
I don’t even look like I should be working here.
He fixes the cuffs to his thousand-dollar Armani suit.
I’m wearing black jeans and a hoodie. Though, he did tell me on the first day that I could wear whatever the fuck I wanted. So that’s on him.
His blue eyes collide with mine as he reaches for his coffee. Intimidating is probably too delicate a word to describe this guy. He oozes I’m fucking better than you charisma. And don’t ask me how it’s charismatic. It should come across like he’s an asshole, but it actually doesn’t.
I don’t get it.
Supreme confidence. That has to be it.
He sips his coffee. Silence lingering, and his eyes focus on me even harder.
It feels hot in here all of a sudden. I push up the sleeves of my hoodie.
“Garrison,” Connor says after a tense beat. “I don’t want to waste your time. I don’t think you want to waste mine.” He sets down the coffee cup and slides a printed piece of paper across the table. I recognize it instantly as the attachment he sent last night.
My failed drug test.
Awesome.
I read the small details quickly. The chart has a spike for increased levels of THC. Marijuana. I smoked a blunt a couple days before Willow left for London. If I’d known there was going to be a drug test at Cobalt Inc., I wouldn’t have smoked—but this is my first corporate job.
The only other place I’ve worked is Superheroes & Scones, and the employees there were all nerds, geeks, or broken toys needing a home. No one even needs a reference to get hired at S&S.
“You’re firing me,” I assume.
Connor is a hard book to read. Face impassive. He could bluff his way out of any poker hand. It makes this interaction more uncomfortable. I shift in my seat.
“You really think I’d fire you over marijuana?” Connor asks, voice calm.
“I mean…maybe.” I glance around the glass walls and the cubicles outside his office. Women walk around in pantsuits and pencil skirts. Men take phone calls and sit in meetings in boardrooms. Every wall is glass.
Like they want you to see how fucking important they are. I can’t imagine any of his other employees smoking on their free time.
Connor leans back in his chair. “Garrison.” He draws my attention back to him. “I don’t care if you smoke, as long as it doesn’t hinder your performance here.”
My shoulders relax and I release a breath. “It won’t,” I say, almost hurried. It even surprises me. How much I want to keep this job. It’s the only thing I have right now. “I don’t usually smoke weed. I’m not a pot head or anything. It just helps me mellow out sometimes.”
Connor nods like he already assumed this about me. “Company policy is to have you take a confirmation test to make sure the first drug test wasn’t a false positive. But I’ll take this conversation as proof that it wasn’t.” He passes another paper to me. “Because you failed the first, you’re going to have to undergo random drug tests throughout your first year here.”
Sounds fair. Shit, I’m just happy I still have a job.
He glances at the clock on his wall, then back to me. “Make no mistake, Garrison. If I find you’re taking harder drugs like opiates or cocaine, you won’t have a job here. This isn’t Wolf of Wall Street. My employees are useless to me if their health is at risk.”
“Noted.” I don’t mention how I’ve tried most drugs. Most I couldn’t care less about. And I’m not around people who’d pressure me to do them anymore.
Connor puts his fingers to his temple. “Let’s talk about your project.”
I grimace. Honestly, I’d much rather talk about my failed drug test again. “It’s going splendidly.” My sarcasm is broken because it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to come out during a meeting with my boss.
“You don’t have an idea of what you’re creating yet.” Connor assumes correctly again.
“I mean, it’s kind of difficult when you said I could create anything,” I tell him. When it comes to tech development, that’s a wide fucking spectrum, and I want to choose the right thing. It’s just figuring out what it is.
“Take your time,” Connor says. “You don’t have a deadline.”
That scares me even more. Because Connor Cobalt is the kind of guy where you don’t want to waste his time. And he’s giving me infinite quantities of it.
I’m also really aware that not a lot of people get this kind of opportunity. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s married to a Calloway sister—therefore has ties to my girlfriend—maybe I wouldn’t be in this position right now. It feels like nepotism. But I’m not going to throw it away.
“What if I take years to even come up with an idea?” I ask. I can’t believe he’d ignore his bottom line just for me. He’s a business guy. They tend to give a shit about money, and I’m currently on an eighty-thousand dollar salary with benefits.
“Then you take years,” Connor says like it doesn’t bother him. “But I don’t think you will. And I’m always right.”
He’s always right.
A part of me wants to prove him wrong. And I don’t know what that says about me.
Later tonight in my studio apartment, I toss a frozen pizza in the oven, sink onto my couch and scroll through Willow’s videos she sent me. Re-watching them for the third time.
She’s lounging on her bed in a baggie Superheroes & Scones T-shirt that has to be at least three years old—I recognize the design from a line of shirts when we first started working at S&S.
X-Men posters are taped to the walls above her head. She rubs at her eyes, her glasses already off for the night. Watching her makes me miss her more, but maybe I’m some sort of masochist because I can’t stop. And I just want more.