Chapter 9
One MonthLater
Irolledover on the bed and pulled the covers over my head. My alarm would go off in ten minutes and I wasn’t ready for that yet. It had been a month since the day Adam told me he had been cheating on me. One month since I had met Natalie. One month since I had talked to Max. Well, we had talked, minimally, at work, but that small conversation two weeks ago was how I ended up heretoday.
“My lawyers already looked over it.”Max slammed the manila envelope down onto my desk. I opened it and stared at my divorce papers. I looked up at him while he waited for me, his hands planted on my desk and agitation forming on his face. “Just sign it,Alexa.”
“Why are you doing this?” My eyebrows had furrowed and I felt the tears gathering in my eyes. I wasn’t ready for this. Or was I? His fingers tapped on the desk as he grew impatient. “Why do you havethese?”
“I need you to sign them.” He came around the desk, took the pen that was beside me, and put it in my hand. “Now.”
“But why?” I was confused as to how Max had these papers and that I didn’t even know what they said, but he was wanting me to sign them. This was the last piece of me that was attached to Adam, and even though he broke me, I didn’t know how to exist in a world where I didn’t have him in it. But then again, I had been doing just that for a while now. “Can I look overit?”
“No.” He had a hand on the back of my chair now and was leaning closer to me. His lips came to my ear, and I shivered. “Please sign thepapers.”
The words came out as a whisper, but I felt them down to my core. I obeyed this man. I did exactly what he told me because for some unknown reason I trusted him. I trusted blindly in the fact that someone was telling me this was what Ineeded.
I signed my name over and over again. My hand shook, but the pen didn’t. It had a mind of its own, knowing that this was exactly what I needed to do. I handed the papers to Max once I was finished, and he snatched them from my hand. He was about to bolt out the door, before I stoppedhim.
“Will you at least tell me why you did this?” My voice was weak, still trying to recover from the mood that had filled the room. I felt so small when Max turned around with a sinister look on his face, but that smile, God, that smile was all Ineeded.
“I need to…” He paused, putting a finger to his lips, and I could see his brain working, like he almost didn’t know what to say. “… keep you safe,Alexa.”
He straightened himself and looked me dead in the eye, his stance neverwavering.
“And this is the only way I know how to right now.” He left me with just that and nothing else. I sat in my chair, a tear running down my cheek, and for once since Adam, I didn’t know if it was because I was sad or because I washappy.
That day,I signed away the life I once knew and put it into the hands of the man who wanted to be my future. It had been one week since I signed those papers, and every damn day seemed like adaydream.
I was staring at my ceiling as my alarm went off. All I wanted was just a few more minutes to think about all of this. Ten just didn’t seem like enough time; nothing seemed like enough time. I grabbed for my phone just as Lilly entered the room. We had talked about things when I came home the day after everything had happened with Adam and Max. We had created a plan to just ride it out until the divorce was final, and it was officially now. I hadn’t told my mother or Adam’s parents yet. I didn’t know how to, but if no one was calling me to find out, then I wasn’t going to spill the beans just yet. Lilly set a cup of tea down next to my bed and then sat on theedge.
“I got a text from Greg this morning.” Lilly twirled her spoon in her coffee. I sat up, now intrigued. “Chase and Max have a project foryou.”
“Oh.” My ears perked up at Max’s name, bringing me back to the fact that we hadn’t discussed anything that had happened betweenus.
“Greg mentioned to me the other day how impressed everyone is with you.” She took a sip, hiding her smile behind her giant mug. As much as I was shocked to hear Greg talking about me to Lilly, I was more surprised that Lilly was openly talking about him. Something was off, she wasn’t giving me the whole storyhere
“You’re stalling. What gives?” I knew this game with her. She loved holding backsecrets.
“Chase wants you to help with a major client.” Finally, a big break. Since I had helped Greg with his client, I had just been doing my regular job, but this was a chance to show them I could do more. Something seemed offthough.
“I feel like there’s a but coming soon…” She bared her teeth to me, and my stomachdropped.
“Max will be working with you as well.” I could tell she felt proud telling me this. I had told her and Erica about the night at Max’s apartment, from Adam to when Max told me I would fall in love with him. They also knew that we had barely spoken to each other since that night. I took a deep breath, drinking more of my tea. I could dothis.
“Okay.” I tried to make it so my voice didn’t shake, so she couldn’t see just how nervous I was about this. I was going to be working with Max. How close was I going to be to him? Would we be alone? I was staring down into my tea as Lilly laughed at me and left the room. If I couldn’t fool her, how could I make myself not look like a fool in front ofMax?
Everything seemed to happen in a whirlwind as we left the apartment. Erica greeted us outside the building, distractedly staring into the building. She watched Chase stand in the lobby, clearly waiting for someone. I waved to Chase and then said goodbye to the girls as he ushered us up the stairs to Max’s floor; I still didn’t understand why some of these people like taking the stairs, work was no place for working out. I was grateful it was just Chase right now though. I didn’t know if I was ready to see Max. My mind had been racing so fast that I hadn’t even realized we had made it to the fifthfloor.
I almost stumbled over my feet as we walked into the large room where Max was waiting with papers all over the table and a whiteboard with tons of scribbles on it. He looked disheveled, with his faded jeans and shirt, as he flipped through the pages in front of him like a crazy person. It put a smile on my face that even though Max seemed all put together sometimes, he truly was just like the rest of us in theworld.
“What’s all this?” My voice sounded so small in the big room. Max finally looked up, realizing that I was there. His expression turned from distracted to happy. The smile on his face was contagious, and I couldn’t lookaway.
“We have a big proposal coming to us in a week. The author wants to have the whole series published at once. There are four manuscripts.” Chase broke the spell between us, pointing to the board and the papers on the table. “These are all the notes she gave us on the characters and theplot.”
“What do you mean ‘notes’?” I tried to get into business mode, because by the looks of everything, this was a big one. I walked over to the board and saw that it was filled with multiple character outlines. “Has she never had anyone ever read itbefore?”
“She is one of our best returning clients but has never written a series before.” Max finally spoke up, and our eyes locked. I was trying to figure out what exactly they were asking. “We need you to read through the manuscripts and not just check for the typical, because you will technically be reading through this before anyone else in our publishing department does. So, we need you to belooking—”
