Safe. He felt safe to her. Like home.
With a little sigh, she pressed closer to him, burying her face in his neck as her head spun.
“Hey,” he said, nuzzling her.
She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Did you, uh, talk to your dad at all this week?” He looked hopeful. “About that opportunity?”
Dismay panged in her gut. She hated disappointing him, and this was a cyclical let-down between them. “I’m sorry, Logan.”
Her father was the CEO of Automata’s biggest rival, Optima. Like Automata, they were notoriously cut-throat and richer than God. Under her father’s guidance, Optima had devoured its competition—and more than its fair share of the world’s dwindling resources. With human rights violations in the countries from which they sourced their minerals and workers’ rights violations on their home soil, it was all just business to her father. Somehow, every time someone tried to blow the whistleon the company, it all got swept under the rug with brutal efficiency.
She didn’t want anything to do with the place. He’d offered her a job more than once, but… she couldn’t stomach it. Maybe she wasn’t going to save the world, but she didn’t want to help set it on fire, either.
Besides, it wasn’t like they were close enough for her to ask him for favors. They saw each other maybe twice a year, when his secretary called to summon her to a scheduled dinner.
Logan didn’t understand. In his eyes, her father had resources, and she was naïve not to take advantage of them. He was ambitious and stymied in his role at Automata, and he kept hoping that her father would be willing to take him on at some higher position in Optima. No matter how many times she tried to explain, he just couldn’t believe that she didn’t have the ability to pull that string for him.
His eyes hardened even as he smiled, waving away the awkwardness hanging in the air between them. Oddly, he found Brandon’s gaze across the table. They shared a heavy look, and Logan nodded.
“Logan?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
He smiled down at her again, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s fine, babe.”
She gave up on trying to mingle for the rest of the evening, content to be little more than ornamental beside Logan as he fulfilled his insatiable need to socialize.
By preference, she would have been curled up in her bed-like reading chair by the window, devouring the latest updates to her favorite romance serials with the neon lights of the city as ambiance. But this was important to Logan, and he was important to her, so she gamely went along as he went out every week to drink and debrief with his colleagues. Sometimes it wasas much as three nights a week. Those weeks were hard for her, but she powered through for him.
He put up with so much from her, after all. It was the least she could do.
It wasn’t until the lights came on in the club that they finally rose from the booth. She’d nodded off at some point, and the harsh white light startled her back to consciousness. Her head spun a little from the few drinks she’d had; she was a notorious lightweight, which she didn’t mind so much. It meant she was a cheap date and that she could easily take the edge off when the social pressure became too much.
She blinked at her reflection in the mirrored backdrop of the booth. Her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes, adding a smokiness that was her only real ‘edge.’ Dark gray eyes stared at her out of a pallid face now imprinted with the weave of Logan’s shirt. Her mousy hair was tangled at the side where she’d been slumped against him. Amid all the flair and fashion of the club scene, she was painfully ordinary.
Logan grabbed her around the hips and swung her down from the platform as she giggled. As they made their way toward the exit, her boots stuck to the floor with every step. She was eager to get home and stick them in the sanitizer.
Outside, their breath fogged in the early-morning winter air. The tips of her ears chilled as wind whipped over her. She wished she’d brought a scarf, but Logan had complained that her outfit was already absurdly modest. She looked down at the gauzy black blouse tucked into her knee-length leather skirt. The shirt was sheer, flashing the black bra she wore beneath. It had felt provocative to her, but she had to admit that she looked matronly next to the other women.
Laura bounced up and down on her toes, rubbing her bare arms briskly. Her pants were little more than a webbing ofnylon straps, her top a backless halter that showed off the toned muscles of her back.
“Ok, fuck this, it’s too cold. I’m out. Get home safe!” she called over her shoulder as she bounded down the sidewalk.
Tiffany seemed oddly immune to the cold, even in her micromini dress, pulling a vape out of her clutch and sucking deep on it. The strange mingled scent of cotton candy and weed filled the air as she blew a concentrated stream of vapor from the side of her glittering lips.
“Are you coming back with me?” she asked Brandon in a bored tone.
Ophelia had never quite figured out the relationship between those two. Some nights, Tiffany would be in his lap with his fingers up her skirt for all to see, and the next, she’d barely acknowledge him. Ophelia had innocently asked once if they were a couple. Tiffany’s mouth had flattened into a harsh line, and she’d barked a disparaging laugh.
Brandon stuck his hands in his pockets, glancing sidelong at Logan and briefly at Ophelia before turning back to Tiffany. He flicked his wild blue hair from his eyes, shaking his head. The metal implant that curved around his eye glinted in the streetlight. “Not tonight.”
For some reason, Tiffany’s gaze fell on Logan and took on a hard edge. She did that from time to time—glared pointedly at him in moments that didn’t make sense to Ophelia. Maybe it would have tugged at some point of suspicion within her if he’d ever seemed bothered by it, but he never even seemed to notice. Even now, he was blithely smiling down at Ophelia, oblivious to his coworker’s annoyance. At length, Tiffany shrugged, rolling her eyes.
“See you Monday, then.” Tiffany tossed a peace sign over her shoulder as she trailed off the same way Laura had gone.
Brandon’s eyes trailed back to Ophelia again, something strange glinting in them, and she pressed herself against Logan for comfort. When she looked up at him, his eyes were bright.
“I’m cold,” she said, just a bit louder than before. “Can we go?”
