Chapter 18: Corrine
Morning sunlight crawls across my bedroom ceiling. I’ve never lain in bed this late as an adult woman but I can’t bring myself to get up yet. If I get out of bed, make breakfast, and go to work, it will be like today is a normal day. But it’s not normal.
I roll over, my back to my bedroom window. I brush my fingertips over my lips. I can still taste him.
I’ve officially surpassed Richard in the hierarchy of inappropriate things Hill City executives do to their subordinates. I pull a pillow over my face, groaning aloud to my empty, cold room.
I kissed myintern.
I am a walking cliché. I might as well set him up with his own apartment and an account at Calvin Klein for men’s underwear. Getting out of bed and going about a normal day would be like...accepting it. Accepting my gross misconduct, accepting that I’ve put my career in the hands—the mouth—of another and that I haven’t ruinedeverythingI’ve worked so hard to build. Everything that he’s just creating the foundations for.
My future unfolds like a movie on the inside of my eyelids. I’ll go into work and Wesley will have already reported me to HR because I’ve used my power over him as his superior to seduce him. I’ll be fired, escorted out of the building. Most likely he will, too. Everyone will shake their heads and whisper in the office kitchen that they’d always known the rumors Sean had started were true.
I keep my head underneath my pillow and roll away from the windows again. I’m not ready to get out of bed yet. Because of the shame, yes, but more because despite everything, I still can’t bring myself to regret it.
I get to the office at half past nine. Wesley is here, his blazer slung over the back of his chair, a coffee cup on his desk, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I open my office door and there, sitting in the center of my desk, is another coffee cup. I walk over slowly, like maybe it’s booby-trapped and HR will jump out at any moment. But it’s not. It’s a normal coffee.Mynormal coffee. It’s even hot enough. He must have just delivered it. Something unclenches in my stomach.
Fifteen minutes later, Wesley knocks on my office door, poking his head in and asking, “Do you have a minute?”
“Yes. Come in,” I say, peering at him through my glasses where they’ve crept down my nose.
“These contracts need your signature.”
He strides over, bending down beside me at my desk, pointing out each place I need to sign.
“You don’t need to do this,” I say, under my breath but still loud enough for him to hear. “I can see the flags.” I flick at the sticky notes he’s attached to each page to make my point.
“You missed this one the last time,” he says quietly, pointing to the next spot.
My pen pauses over the signature block. “Oh.”
The silence thickens as I sign three more pages. Twice I take a deep breath, ready to apologize for what happened last night. But both times, the words escape me. I don’t know where to begin and the fact that he hasn’t thrown me, in my rightful place, under a proverbial bus has sent me off-kilter.
I can feel him staring at me and like an arsonist playing with matches, I tuck a piece of hair that has fallen loose from my bun behind my ear. I look up at him as I do it, watching him watch the strand of hair.
Somehow this quiet, close moment feels more intimate than that kiss. My heart pulverizes my insides. Wesley pushes his fist against the contract on my desk.
“Do you...” He concentrates on the file like it holds the secrets to the Sox winning the World Series. “Want to talk about it?”
I sit up a little straighter.
“I’m sorry,” we both say.
He scowls at my desk. “What do you have to be sorry for? What I did was... I never should have touched you. Let alone...”
“I’m your boss.” My voice catches on the last word. “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“But that’s what I’m saying, you didn’t let anything happen.”
I hold up a hand. “I think it’s safe to say that we’re both sorry for our inappropriate behavior. And that...”
Now it’s my turn to look away. “You did not feel taken advantage of...?”
He nods. “I really,reallydidn’t.”
The relief is more than a weight off my shoulders, it’s a world.
