Laney:Yes!!!! (those are excited to see you exclamation points)
Laney:Tell Petra hello for me.
“Okay, I’m good now.” I pocketed my phone, a grinstretching across my face. This date felt different from anything before. We’d seen movies together, but after living for a few days never knowing if I’d hold her hand again, this was big. She loved movie theater popcorn and black-and-white holiday movies. She’d laugh, cry, and curl up next to me and quote them the whole time.
I’d silence my phone the entire time. I had to.
I snorted as I stared at my assistant of almost ten years. “You look more disheveled than usual, by the way.”
Her expression flattened.
“You don’t say. My CEO disappeared for a weekend, we had a cyberattack, and you decided to work on your marriage the day it happens. Someone had to keep everything going, and it wasn’t you.”
“Are things falling apart? Or are we okay?” She had always functioned as more than an executive assistant.
“We’re okay, but I’m not. I can’t handle you ghosting me like this.” She pulled at her hair. “I have this feeling my ex is involved in this. He wants me to suffer, and he knows causing the company issues—causing you pain—would hurt me. It’s irrational, but I feel like he had something on Nate to get him to turn on us.”
I finally saw what Laney had noticed. Despite Petra and I never crossing a line, it was clear now how Laney assumed that we did. I knew Petra. She was like me—driven, focused, unforgiving, and desperate. I was desperate to prove to myself and my dad that I was cut out to be a CEO. She was desperate to make a name for herself and to help out her family.
But the possessive, almost unhealthy way she spoke about our relationship caused a rock to form in my chest.
“Petra, sit down for a second.”
She moved to the kitchen table and sat, her expression open. She was used to taking orders from me, navigating the cutthroat world at a fast pace. This would hurt her. I hated doing it, but if it meant choosing Laney or the company, I’d choose my wife.
“Repeat back what you just said and think about how it would sound to my wife.”
She frowned, her fingers tapping the table before she blushed.
“Connor, that’s… no, no.”
“I agree with you. We’ve been friends and colleagues for years. Nothing more. But I need to rethink our boundaries, what I depend on you for.”
“Connor.” She stood up, her blush long gone and replaced with a pale, worried look.
“She can’t possibly think…”
“She knows nothing happened. She likes you. We’re navigating what our marriage looks like now, what is savable, and it was clear to me that you weren’t aware of my priorities. I will pick her over this job. If she gave me the ultimatum, I would pick her.”
Petra blinked twice before nodding. “I’m sorry for telling you your marriage wasn’t worth saving. That was out of line. I am mortified right now.”
I snorted. “Your words woke me up. If you, my friend and colleague, thought I was a bad husband, what the hell would my wife think?”
“No.” She stood and scrubbed her face. “I was so focused on revenge, on making Blake pay, that I forgot the human part of living. Oh my God.”
“Petra, you’re fine.”
She paced the kitchen. “I’m not fine. I’m ashamed of myself. All I wanted to do was help my parents out, but my mom is gone, and my dad is living with my brother and nephews. They don’t need the money anymore. So why am I hustling so much? Why am I obsessed with proving myself to him?”
“I think that’s normal when you had a bad marriage.”
“I lost the whole point.” She sighed. “I think I quit.”
“Yeah, I can’t let you do that.” I almost laughed. “I think we need to sit down and figure out a way for both of us to be better at work, and in life.”
“Laney must hate me. It makes me sick to my stomach. Literally sick.” She glanced out the window, a dark expression on her face. “A few years ago, I made sure to check in on your personal life, make sure you had work-life balance. I covered for you when you needed a lunch with her. But I stopped. We had too much work to do to beat Blake. Blake is friends with a board member, and then your dad… It became about winning. Beating them. And I stopped caring about life outside work. I canceled a few of your lunch meetings with Laney, you know? I told myself it was for the business, but what if that is what caused her to… leave?”
I gritted my teeth, thinking about the story Laney shared about Petra turning her away. “I’m not thrilled about the choices you or I made, but my marriage is on me and me alone.”
