I shrug. “That’s when the project launches. After that, you can disappear forever with my blessing.”
I could swear she shudders for a second, like a chill passing through her. But then it’s gone and I’m not sure if it was ever even there in the first place.
She’s quiet for another long moment, and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head. Whatever’s going on with her—whatever’s driving this sudden need to escape—it’s bigger than a bruised ego over pastries.
“This is crazy,” she finally says.
“This is business.”
“This is blackmail.”
“This is an offer.” I look down at her. “A good one. A better one than you’ll get from anyone else. All you have to do is stay and do the job you’ve been doing for six years.”
She’s wavering. I can see it in her hands wringing, her breath hitching, her nose wrinkling. “Why is this so important to you?” she asks. “Really. Why can’t you just let me go?”
Because your hands on my chest last night woke something in me that I thought died the day Sage got hurt, and I’m not ready to let that go.
“Because I need you,” I say instead. “The project needs you.”
“Right. The project.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Always the project.”
“What else would it be?”
She looks hard at my face, like she’s hunting for something. “I don’t know. For a second there, I thought maybe—” She shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
Eliana’s eyes widen slightly, and I realize I’ve leaned forward without meaning to, closing the distance between us again.
“No, it doesn’t,” she says. “Nothing about me matters to you except how useful I am to your precious project.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not?” She cocks her head to the side. “Then tell me something about me that isn’t work-related.”
“What?”
“You claim I matter to you? Prove it. Tell me one thing about Eliana Hunter that has nothing to do with spreadsheets or presentations or project timelines.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Because the honest answer—that I know she takes her coffee with caramel syrup and drinks it from a ridiculous Garfield mug, that she kicks off her heels under her desk when she thinks no one’s looking, that she hums off-key when she’s concentrating, that she once spent her lunch break in the lobby comforting a crying child who couldn’t find her mother—would reveal how much I actually watch her, how much attention I pay to the small details of her life.
And I can’t say that. That would be crossing a line I didn’t even know existed until this moment.
“See?” She nods like I’ve just confirmed her worst suspicions. “You can’t, because you don’t. I’m not a person to you—I’m a resource. A very useful, very expendable resource. But guess what, Bastian? Iama person. And as a person, I have a life and feelings and dreams and good and bad days and… and limited time.”
There’s something in the way she says “limited time” that sends warning bells ringing in my head.
“Hunter… what’s really going on here?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Something’s wrong.”
She laughs, though it sounds more like a sob. “What could possibly be wrong? I have the job of my dreams working for the man of my nightmares, making barely enough to survive while watching him get richer and richer off my work. Living the American dream, right?”
