I didn’t just lose my career today. I destroyed his too.And the worst part?His mattered.
30
Sloane
The elevator doors of my apartment building slide shut with quiet finality. My reflection stares back from the polished steel—hollow-eyed, pale, wearing a blazer that still carries the sharp scent of corporate humiliation and my own spectacular failure.
Seventeen missed calls. The number glows accusingly from my phone screen as I fumble with my keys. Seventeen desperate attempts from Garrett to reach me, to explain, to fix what he just destroyed with his grand fucking gesture.
I don't listen to the voicemails. Don't read the texts flooding in. Whatever words he's pouring into the digital void—apologies, justifications, promises—none of it matters now. The narrative has already been written, and I'm not the brilliant marketing director in this story.
I'm the puck bunny who cost the team a nine-figure sponsorship deal. Who got him suspended.
My apartment door swings open to reveal my sanctuary from this morning—coffee mug still on the counter with my lipstick stain, morning paper folded beside it, everything exactly as I left it when I thought I was walking into my moment of triumph. Now it feels like a crime scene. Evidence of the naive woman who believed she could have it all.
My eyes land on Steve.
The ridiculous blue sloth grins at me from my armchair, that dopey, permanent smile stretched across his fuzzy face. What felt like a monument to our impossible happiness now looks like a gravestone marking the death of my common sense.
How could I have been so catastrophically stupid? I kept a giant stuffed animal won by a hockey player in my living room like some lovesick teenager when I should have been protecting everything I'd worked for. While I was playing house with carnival prizes, the wolves were circling.
My phone buzzes again. Then again. Each sound is a sharp jab against my skull.
Steve keeps grinning at me, and suddenly I can't breathe past the rage tightening in my chest.
"You think this is funny?" My voice cracks as I stride toward the chair. "You think any of this is fucking funny?"
I grab Steve by his ridiculous blue throat and hurl him across the room. He hits the wall with a satisfying thud, his smile finally wiped away as he lands face-down on the hardwood.
But it's not enough. Nothing will ever be enough to contain the fury burning through my veins.
He took my moment.
The thought explodes through my brain, sudden and absolute. MY moment. The presentation I'd spent months perfecting, the deal I'd crafted from nothing, the victory that was supposed to prove I belonged in that boardroom—and he took it and made it about himself. About us. About his guilt and his need to play the fucking hero.
I storm to the kitchen where Garrett's coffee mug sits beside mine—the one with the little chip I never had theheart to return. The ceramic feels solid in my grip. Real. Something I can actually break.
"You ruined everything!" I scream at the empty apartment, my voice raw and feral. "It was MINE! It was supposed to be MINE!"
I hurl the mug at the wall with every ounce of rage in my body. It explodes in a shower of ceramic shards, coffee staining the white paint. The sound of destruction is beautiful.
But it's still not enough.
I whirl toward my work station where neat stacks of papers sit organized like the life I used to have. Quarterly projections. Marketing strategies. All worthless now. All evidence of the career that just died because the man I loved couldn't keep his mouth shut for five fucking minutes.
My hands shake as I sweep the first stack off the counter. Papers flutter through the air, useless and drifting. I grab another stack—my presentation notes, the backup materials—and send them flying too.
"Ten years!" I'm sobbing now, but I can't stop. "Ten years I worked for this! Ten years proving I was more than what they wanted to see!"
Books tumble from shelves. Picture frames shatter. My laptop crashes to the floor, the screen spiderwebbing with cracks.
And through it all, my phone won't stop buzzing.
The sound cuts through my rage, sharp and jarring. I stumble to the counter, grabbing the device with trembling fingers. The screen floods with notifications—missed calls, texts, voicemails. An avalanche of notifications—panic and desperate attempts to reach me.
Nineteen missed calls from Garrett.
Text after text: "Sloane, please answer." "I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry." "Let me fix this. I can fix this."
