“It means you’ve been running from me for seven years, and I still don’t know why.” He moved around the desk, closing the distance between us. “It means you paid me back for a repair bill rather than pick up the phone and have an actual conversation. It means every time I try to talk to you, you act like I’m something you need to escape from.”
“Maybe that’s because you are.”
“Am I?” He stopped right in front of me, close enough that I could smell him, something familiar that made my chest ache. “What did I do, Pauline? What terrible thing did I do that made you disappear from my life?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It matters to me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s over.” I forced the words out through the tightness in my chest. “Whatever we were, whatever you thought we were—it’s done. It’s been done for seven years. You need to let it go.”
“And if I can’t?”
His eyes were searching my face, looking for something I couldn’t give him, and I felt the pull of it—the gravitational force of Jack Specter, the way he had always made me feel like the center of something even when I knew I wasn’t.
I took another step back. Put distance between us. Made myself breathe.
“That’s not my problem,” I said. “I’m here to work. That’s all. Stay away from me, Jack. I mean it.”
I turned and walked out before he could respond.
My heels clicked against the polished floor—too loud, too fast. I couldn’t slow down. If I stopped, I might turn around. If I turned around, I might say something I couldn’t take back.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside and pressed the button for my floor and watched my reflection in the polished metal. I looked pale. Shaken.
Jack Specter owned California Times. Jack Specter was my boss.
I went back to my desk and stared at my computer screen without seeing it. Ethan caught my eye from across the room, concern written all over his face. I shook my head slightly. “It’s fine,” I said, though nothing about me felt fine.
The files from the gang investigation sat in a neat pile where Ethan had organized them. The lead he’d found waited for me to follow it.
I pulled the first folder toward me and started reading.
If Jack Specter wanted to buy companies and play games, that was his problem.
But my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and the words on the page kept blurring, and somewhere in the back of my mind I could still hear his voice asking ‘what did I do’ like he genuinely didn’t know.
Like he had no idea he’d broken my heart.
I lasted approximately ten minutes before I cracked.
I couldn’t stop being restless, so I grabbed my phone and texted my traitorous best friend—the one who had apparently decided that sisterly loyalty now extended to feeding her brother classified information about my whereabouts like some kind of well-meaning double agent.
How could you? You promised!
The message delivered. The little checkmarks appeared. No response.
She wasn’t responding, which meant she had seen it, read it, and was currently hiding behind whatever plausible deniability she thought she had.
I buried my face in my palms.
How was I supposed to survive seeing Jack Specter every single day? How was I supposed to walk into this building and do my job and pretend my heart wasn’t trying to claw its way out of my chest every time I heard his name?
Claudette Specter-Ashford was going to owe me approximately one million apologies and a lifetime supply of wine.
