I wipe my hands on my pants. I really don’t want to tell Damian that I can’t handle the workload, but after I nodded off this morning at our kitchen table, face-first into my laptop, I know that something has to give. His words halt me before I can broach the topic. “Is your thing… not work related?”
His heated gaze turns to concern as he studies my face. Concealer and foundation can only go so far to cover up the dark circles, and they do nothing to mask the redness in my eyes.
“Doesn’t matter. What’s wrong? Has someone been making you cry? Who?” His voice is hard and menacing, the protector in him rising up.
It sends a thrill through my tired body, waking me up.
“No. No one is making me cry. I’m just tired.” I pull in a deep breath, steeling my nerves. I know I’m competent. I know I could develop the marketing skills needed to be really good, given a little more time and training. I know I can do this, without any special treatment or exceptions. But I can’t do it all at once.
He leans forward and tips my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Talk to me, Brielle.”
My pulse beats wildly, thrumming through my body, oxygen pulled from the air around us.
“The Vitales,” I basically shout in his face, pulling myself away from his hold and getting to my feet. Being this close to him isn’t helping my nervous system. I’m already on edge, and when he looks at me with so much care in his gaze, I’m finding it hard to remember that he isn’t my confidant. He’s my boss. “I’d like your feedback on the campaign, if you have a minute.”
“Okay. Let’s see what you’ve done.”
I perch my laptop in my arms, trying to balance it as I navigate to the shared network folder where everything is stored. Damian’s warm hand covers mine, the touch of his fingers making my insides flutter, and he gently tugs the laptop out of my grasp and places it on the desk.
“Right,” I say, offering him a small smile. I click into the Cardinal West Outdoors folder where all of our other content is, but my file isn’t there. I click out and into another folder.Maybe I saved it in the wrong spot?But it isn’t there either. I try a few other folders before panic starts to set in.
My heart beats a crescendo, climbing into my throat with every pulse as I frantically pull my laptop to me, clicking through every file location.
“It’s here somewhere,” I tell him, my eyes wild and fraught. “It has to be. It has to be here somewhere.” Tears start to well, my hands shaking as I go back to the top and try all of the folders again.
“Brielle. Brielle. Take a breath. You’re shaking,” Damian says, concern lacing his voice, his eyes studying me.
“No. It has to be here. I stayed up all night. I haven’t slept. It can’t be gone. It can’t be.”
“What do you mean, you haven’t slept?”
My chin quivers with the emotional overload. “I couldn’t. There was no time. I needed to get this done by the end of the day. And I needed to get the accounting batches posted and processed for Rui.And there were more edits to be done for Trent. And I was already behind, even though I’ve been working extra late this whole week. I’m trying so hard to stay on top of everything, and I was. But now my work is gone, and I’ll have to start over, and there is no way I can redo it all before the end of the day. I can’t, Damian. I can’t do it.”
The tears that were threatening to fall break free, streaming down my face. I’m just too tired and overwhelmed to regulate my emotions, and what should be a normal conversation about work-life balance has become a massive breakdown in my boss’s office.
“Christ, don’t cry. You don’t have to do all of that yourself, Brielle. There is a staff of people here to get things done,” he says. He pulls me to him, wrapping one hand around the back of my head and one arm around my waist and holding me tight.
“I am the staff,” I cry into his shirt.
“Shhh. Take a breath, beautiful,” he whispers. “Breathe.”
I gather my wits, still plastered against his strong chest, the spicy scent of his cologne settling me. Slowly, my heart rate comes down, the tightness in my throat relaxing enough to swallow again.
“There you go. Good girl. I’m going to reassign some things for you. You don’t have to do all of that. Erica is more than capable enough to help Rui, and if Danielle and Trent need another hand to work on edits, we can pull Brittany in. I don’t need you working yourself to exhaustion, Brielle. We have teams here for a reason.”
“I need you to treat me like any other employee, Damian. I don’t want any special treatment just because we’ve… you know. It wouldn’t be fair, not to you, not to me, and not to everyone else who works here. Handle me like you would a regular employee.”
“I am. I know everyone thinks I’m the devil around here, but I don’t want any of my employees working through the night, killing themselves to meet my expectations,” he sighs. “I didn’t think abouthow much I was adding to your plate when I asked the marketing team to take you on for the Cardinal West campaign. That’s on me. I should have been more aware, Brielle. I’m sorry.”
“This is how you treat all your employees?” I ask, a spark of humor in my voice now that I’ve calmed down. I wipe the rest of my tears from my eyes.
“Yes, Brielle, this is the same thing I would tell to every one of them,” he says. I tilt my head back to gaze up at him, and his voice lowers. “And no, beautiful, I’ve never wrapped my arms around one of my employees, letting her dry her tears on my shirt. Not until you.”
Somehow, I knew that without ever being told. Over the past few months, I’ve gotten to know Damian well. He isn’t the type to take advantage of his power or status like that. Still, a sense of peace washes over me.
“Thank you. I still don’t know what happened to that design file though.” I pull back from Damian and glare at my computer like it personally deleted the file on purpose.
“Don’t recreate it. I’ll talk to IT about retrieving it.”
