There’s no doubt in my mind. I’m on Millie’s side unquestioningly.
Her body tenses. “No.”
“How could we not? She doesn’t know what kind of person he is.”
She jumps from her seat and shakes her head. “I don’t want to interfere, and I don’t want you to either.”
I stand. “But Sharon would want to know. She doesn’t want someone like that working at the museum.”
Millie thrusts her hands into her hair and pulls at the roots. “I want to earn it, fair and square.”
“You will earn it. But don’t you think Sharon would want to factor this in?” I walk toward her, but she backs away.
“No. I won’t let you tell her.”
“I can’t let him trick and manipulate people into thinking he’s a good person.”
She waves this off, walking to the window overlooking the front of the museum. She touches her fingers to the glass and sighs. “If he gets the job, I’ll just quit.”
I run my hand over my face. “You don’t deserve that. I could tell her anonymously. I could leave a note under her door or something.”
She turns back to me and stands tall, face firm. “No. I want to be chosen because I’m the right person. I’m not going to run to Sharon and tattle. I have to earn my job the right way. Not because I slept my way to the top, and not because I told on someone else for demeaning me.”
God, I want to kiss her. I want to kiss this stubbornness right out of her, but I understand. I do. She needs to know that she is the right person for the job, and the knowledge that maybehewould’ve gotten it would sour everything.
A sad smile stretches across my face. “You’re incredibly strong, you know that?”
I step toward her, and she lets me get close enough to wrap my hand around hers. When she looks up at me, her eyes are glassy, and the pain in my chest is so tight I can’t breathe. “I want to prove I’m better than him.”
Stretching my hand across her jaw, I whisper, “You already are, even without the job.”
“I know you want to protect me, and I wish you could.” She leans into my palm, a tear slipping from her eye to hit my skin. “But I can do this. I just need you to trust me that I can do it.”
I pull her toward me until she’s pressed against me, our arms around each other and my cheek resting on her head. “Of course you can do this. There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
Her shoulders hitch up a few times and then finally settle. She breathes out a deep sigh, and we stay there, in my favorite hug, until her tears have dried.
“I can’t believe you called my dad for his soup recipe,” she whispers against my chest.
“I can’t believe you think I wouldn’t.”
Chapter 39
Millie
I’m going cross-eyed from looking at my computer screen for too long, attempting to type up some bullet points I want to mention in my interview. I need to focus, but I’m too busy trying not to think about Kyle doing his tour of the butterfly vivarium right now.
In college and in his last job, he focused on aquatic insects, so I’m not sure when his passion turned toward pollinators and museum education. But I suspect it started swinging that way when he was looking for a new way to control me.
The last two days of work have been miserable. They’ve done nothing but confirm that if Kyle gets the job, I’ll be looking for a new one. He has schmoozed and lied through his teeth in every interaction I’ve witnessed. I’ve run from the room any time he entered and feel no shame in it.
The memories of the way he treated me had dulled over time, but being around him this week has sharpened the edges. Now I can remember every detail of how he made me wilt under his words.
It has taken a concerted effort to remain upright this week. To keep breathing and moving and thinking instead of fading back into my past self.
Luckily, Micah has been a buffer. If I stick close to him, like right now, Kyle can’t act like a piece of shit. When Micah’s here, Kyle puts on his manipulator face. His lying-to-the-world face.
He’s not aware that Micah knows it’s all a ruse.
