He’s here. He promised he’d be here.
A familiar mess of auburn hair the exact shade as Tabitha’s shimmered among the blondes and brunettes in the crowd. Angus raised his hand in greeting, a sad smile playing over his lips.
“Where is he?” Tabitha mouthed to her twin.
Angus glanced down to his feet before meeting his sister’s expectant stare. Why did those blue eyes look so sad? The shake of his head was subtle but screamed louder than the starting buzzer ricocheting through the gym.
Instinct fired off, and Tabitha spun around and flung herself at the wall. Leaping up by bounds of agility and strength as the crowd whipped into a frenzy. Screams, cheers, shouts, bellows, all sounds garbled in Tabitha’s ears and muted out. With each pull of her arms and push of her legs, his words, like a chant, played in time to her movements.
I love you, tabby cat.
I love you, tabby cat.
Spectators erupted in jubilation as Tabitha reached the top and slapped the buzzer. Releasing her grip, she allowed the auto belay to steadily lower her to the ground.
But when her feet touched the mat, she barely noticed her coach and the congratulatory words. The arms that wrapped around her. The hollers coming from the crowd.
Her victory.
None of it registered.
And after she shook off the embrace and marched toward the locker rooms, she allowed the familiar numbness to return.
Chapter two
Sixteen years later in August, Seattle: Tabitha
“Look,Handcock.I’mnotpussyfootin’ around today.”
Tabitha jumped as her boss plowed through the office door. The sturdy woman stocked around the large, cluttered desk and planted herself in the weathered ergonomic chair that had likely followed her through the bulk of her editorial career.
“It’s good to see you too, Claudia,” Tabitha softly teased in a dry tone and relaxed a little in one of the mismatched chairs opposite her superior. Waiting to have her performance ranked was always the worst part of the whole annual review process, and while she’d shown up on time, she’d been left waiting an entire hour in an office that wasn’t hers. Every moment sitting in the small, cluttered room while the muffled din of co-workers chattering away seeped through the walls felt agonizing. She should have been working from her home office (or even the satellite desk down the hall) and wondered why Claudia’s assistant hadn’t told her she was running late.
A gravelly laugh tumbled across the desk, mingling with the drag of the same desk's top drawer being tugged open. “Mind if I eat this while we talk? I was in a damned advertising meeting that went on longer than my son’s god-awful improv showcase last night.”
“Of course, go ahead,” Tabitha said with a nod, ready to get on with the review.
Claudia fiddled with the wrapper and crunched a big bite before setting the crumbly granola bar on one of the haphazard piles of papers in front of her. After flipping through a few files strewn out, she finally located the one she needed and slid it out from an impressively large stack. The motion reminded Tabitha of those jugglers or magicians who could pull an entire tablecloth out from under a bunch of dishes without so much as a wobble. Claudia flopped open the manilla folder and put on the pair of readers that had been dangling from a beaded chain around her neck. As she leaned forward, bits of oats and seed tumbled off the worn, Eddie Bauer puffer vest she always wore. Another crunch of the granola bar and a few hums later and she closed the folder, not bothering to brush away the fallen crumbs first.
“You asked for a raise.” Claudia eyed her employee over the top of her forest green frames.
“I did,” Tabitha stated, sitting up straight and prepared to launch into the impressively long list of reasons she deserved the pay bump. The top of that list being that she was closing in on her tenth year as a journalist withRock ‘n’ Ropesand had never once missed a deadline. She opened her mouth to continue but her boss’s raised hand stopped her.
“I’m going to be blunt. And it’s not good news.” Claudia leaned back in her chair and leveled a hard gaze across the desk. “The brass says budget cuts are coming and they’ve tasked me with deciding who stays and who goes.”
An unsettling heat rolled up Tabitha’s neck and prickled at her scalp. She could almost taste the beat of her heart as it thumped at the back of her throat. Forget the raise. Washer jobon the line? No. She’d given everything she had to the women’s climbing magazine over the past decade. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way she’d be the one to go.
“Have you made your decision?” she asked with zero emotion and practiced calm, a skill she’d learned at a very young age. Emotions meant trouble if they weren’t reigned in, especially in professional situations. Though she’d been fortunate enough to work for a magazine geared toward women, she wasn’t willing to let her trademark stoicism fade in the face of losing her job.
Stay tough, appear neutral.
Tabitha held her boss’s stare from across the peeling laminate desk and mountain of files and magazine copy. It was impossible not to catch the tired dullness in the older woman’s eyes.
“Not on all of them.”
It took every ounce of Tabitha’s willpower to redirect a wince into a head nod. “Am I on that list?”
Claudia sighed deeply before saying, “You’re a maybe.”
