He’s right. No one would fuck with him when I’m in the room.
Except me. I stand up, and he raises his hands when he sees the venom in my eyes. “Whoa. Jesus, man. What’s gotten into you?”
Weakness.
I’m affected…by her. The ice is cracking and I’m on top of a raging river, never feeling those torrents underneath. The ice that lets me sign big names without flinching, that lets me floor it on the track in my Hellcat when the needle creeps past 200mph and nothing matters but the moment.
Seeing her put a fine spiderweb of cracks in the ice. She’s already playing her games. Of course. She wants me to remember that awful night, so she sends in my cousin to remind me of my humiliation. “She sent you in here to laugh at me, right? Don’t you see you’re just her pawn?”
He looks at me like I’m talking gibberish. “Dude. You’re drunk as fuck. You need to sleep it off.”
In his hands he’s got the crumpled paper I traded my liver for.
“Get that fucking contract over to the lawyers.”
“Oh? Will you love me like you never thought you could if I do?”
I freeze. Those words. Those fucking words that get thrown back at me, that haunt my memory. The walls close in, or I’m drunk out of my mind. I grab the waste basket and throw up six-hundred bucks of Patrón. Six hundred bucks I turned into a contract that will make us a six figs.
“Whoaaa, buddy. Does me bringing up your lady love piss you off that bad? Why’d you hire her then?”
I wipe my face off. I’d hit him if I wasn’t so fucked up. “Are you stupid? She’s from a temp agency. You told me that. And if you bring up…if you bring up what happened again, I’m going to knock your teeth out. I don’t care if uncle Rod fires me. You understand?”
Kevin blinks. For a second, he’s not sure if I’m serious enough.
I lurch forward. Drunk, I’m faster than him. Better than him. Stronger than him. He’s not used to being intimidated at over six feet and with fifty pounds of fat extra over his body, but I’ve got a couple inches on him and his gut would just cushion my punches. I grab his throat, pushing him against the wall, and raise my arm.
“Luke! Fuck, man, I’m just playing! You need to see a shrink, cause that girl is in your head.”
I unclench my fist. What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?
I’m…feeling. Anger. Anger is an emotion. I don’t do emotion.
I push him aside. He’s big, but I move him easy and stalk through the front doors.
She’s sitting at her desk and her smell is still in my nostrils. She turns as I leave my office, her eyes full of questions. “Round one to you. Good fucking job.”
Ding ding ding. The bell rings. Round over, the punches thrown and tallied.
“What are you talking about?”
“You sent him into my office to gloat. You’re my secretary, right? So you’re the one who says who can come in or out. You sent him in there to laugh at me. You win this fucking round. But you’re not winning the fight.”
She’s confused on the surface—under that fake emotion is her cold, calculating self.
You don’t try to control me. I produce. I’ve brought seven figures into this firm and I’ll hit eight this year if they don’t leash me. Nepotism got me a position in the mail room and raw talent and endless drive took me up to a corner office.
I don’t know why the universe is playing a sick joke on me, but it’s got a name.
Nat. I call her Nat. Me. Only me.
She told Kevin to call her that to twist the knife deeper.
6
Nat
He’s unhinged. He must have been on a spiral since he rushed out of Greenshore, and he’s circling the drain. I’d worry about him if he wasn’t such a fucking asshole.
Okay—I humiliated him.
So what?
It was a lesson. He needed it, for every girl he pretended to love when he just wanted to fuck them. My first memory of Greenshore High, halfway through semester and wondering if I’d make friends, was hearing a girl sobbing in the bathroom. When I comforted her, I heard his name for the first time—Luke. The way she spat it out with hate was enough to tell me he was bad news.
“He just barged in!” I see Kevin over Luke’s shoulder, and he slinks away, not wanting to attract his older cousin’s attention. People in this office are intimidated by him, just like they were in high school. He’s always been taller than everyone else, but when you watch him pick someone apart in the ring and you know the devastating strength behind his hands, it’s more than just the size difference that’s scary. He’s fast, and he’s deadly.
His eyes go cold. Then he grins. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “A secretary is supposed to stop unwanted people from coming in, I bet. I’ll have a disciplinary note written in your file.”
Ice grips me. He wouldn’t.
“Luke, what are you talking about?” I hiss it. People are watching, and I’m realizing that’s not abnormal for him. Women in the office steal glances at him no matter what, and they just use his raised voice as an excuse. This is just like high school all over again and Luke hasn’t matured at all. If you didn’t get out of his way, he never stopped walking.
He’d go right through.
“Luke, this is my first day. You can’t just expect me to know what to do.”
He smiles. Cold. “I’m not going to lie to your company. I’m going to beat you playing fair, just like you beat me. I just didn’t know we were playing.”
That’s a lie.
That’s a fucking lie. If I didn’t think it was a lie, it would tear my heart out.
“You’ve been playing since I met you,” I snap back. I’ll play by the rules too. He doesn’t scare me.
Okay—he does, a little bit. He was never rough with me before. When he was in his office, boxing me in, invading my space, I felt so fucking vulnerable. He intimidates people naturally, but when he turns it on like you’re his opponent in the ring…
If I didn’t know his true self, I would have fallen in love with him. If I hadn’t been warned about his lies, he would have stolen my heart.
Didn’t I? For a moment, didn’t it feel real?
He’s a better actor than the celebs he represents.
“Strike one. Let’s see how many strikes I need for a…for a…” He’s still drunk, and he can’t quite figure out where his sentence is going.
“Dismissal with cause. So that’s your plan, is it?” I speak formally, contrasting myself with his drunkenness, wanting him to feel ashamed. As if he’s ever felt shame in his life.
“That’s right. And you’re staying late tonight. Until…seven.”
Seven. Fuck. That’s when my shift at Rosé starts. He doesn’t know it, but I’ve got to be at the bar seven till midnight. If I’m late, my boss will be pissed.
“You can’t do that.”
“I bet I can. You want to risk it? If you don’t…that’s strike two. What is it again? Let me ask Rodriguez, I think it’s three and you’re out.” He opens drawers at my desk, throwing them open almost at random, then he darts back into his office. I can hear things being thrown around. He comes out with an old binder, covered in dust. He plunks it down hard on my desk.