His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”
I reached for his office door. “Keep drowning me in work that isn’t meant for me and you’ll see exactly how much I mean it.”
After this man tormenting me and teasing me for weeks, it felt good to watch him squirm. It felt good to finally have a leg-up on that son of a bitch because he sure as hell deserved it. I’d given him plenty of time to pull up his big boy britches. I had given him plenty of time to deal with whatever the hell he was still carrying around from high school.
But now, I wasn’t playing any longer.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have folders I need to get back on Bonnie’s desk,” I said as I turned the doorknob.
However, his hand came down against it, slamming it closed. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Oh, so you’re going to do the work? Is that what I’m hearing?”
He lowered his voice. “You have no idea why she’s taking off work. Quit making this about you and--.”
I stood on my tiptoes just to get in his face. “Then, understand this: you’re my boss and I’m not Maggie. Get that through your thick fucking head before H.R. does it for you.”
He gnashed his teeth at me. “You have no idea who you’re toying with. It never ends well when people toy with me.”
“Then, I suppose it’s good that I have nothing left in my life to lose.”
That seemed to trigger something within him, and his face softened just a tad. “What?”
I shook my head. “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. One second you’re my goddamn abuser, and the next second you seem genuinely worried about me. Can you pick one and stick with it? This whiplash alone will require worker’s compensation if you don’t cut it out.”
And that’s when he backed away from me. “Get out.”
I nodded. “Gladly.”
“And before you leave my office, know this: I don’t give a shit how you interpret my actions. I don’t care if you go to H.R. or not. Because at the end of the day, you are responsible for how you respond to me, and when you were underneath my desk I believe one hundred percent that you wanted to be there. And that’s exactly what I’ll tell a jury if you want to rake me through the mud. How do you think that’ll look for you?”
I grinned. “I don’t know. How do you think it’s going to look when they put Maggie on the stand to testify under sworn oath?”
“You wouldn’t.”
I peeked over my shoulder. “Choose the person you want to be and stick with it.”
He pointed. “Get the fuck out of my office.”
“I still believe you’re a good guy, JoJo. I really do. I just think that you can’t let go of whatever happened when we were younger.”
He charged me and pinned me against his office door. “I don’t give a shit what you do, but you will not stay in my fucking office a second longer. You can lower yourself to whatever level your sister dwells on, or you can get out. But I’ll never be your friend. I’ll never be your lover. I’ll never be whatever doting boyfriend you think you can score in this lifetime with those fat rolls. Whatever dreamscape you’ve come up with in your lonely little mind is just that, a dream. So stop trying to force your fucking abandonment issues and loneliness onto me, because I’m not the one trying to change someone just so I don’t feel bad when I fuck them.”
“Huh. Interesting.”
He wavered just a tad. “What’s interesting.”
He doesn’t trust anyone, not even himself.“Have a good day, Mr. Ryker.”
“Wait, what’s interesting?”
I opened his office door and slipped outside. “See you tomorrow morning.”
“What’s so damn interesting!?” he bellowed.
But I refused to answer him as I made my way down the hallway. Hearing him call after me in that tone of voice felt like the sweet success of victory. Finally, I had found a way to torture him in return, which meant I could give him a dose of his own medicine until he either fired me and I raked him through the coals in unemployment or he gave up his own torture tactics altogether.
Either way, I was in this for the long haul.
