She trusted me with her career. She let me catch her when she fell.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't run.
Chapter nineteen
Tom
The elevator doors close and Sam exhales.
"That went well," I say.
She glances at me, eyebrows raised. "Well?"
"Okay. That went really well."
"Better."
The lobby is marble and glass. Sam's heels click against the floor as we cross toward the exit. I'm half a step behind her, noticing her shoulders have finally dropped from where they've been living near her ears all week.
The Developer smiled. Not the polite corporate smile he gave us after the last presentation—the real thing. He called us a powerhouse. Twice.
Sam pushes through the revolving door and the cool air hits us. The street is crowded—end of the workday rush, people moving fast with their heads down. She stops on the sidewalk and turns to face me.
"We were in sync," she says.
"We were."
"You picked up the timeline question before I could even pull up the Gantt chart."
"You set it up. I just followed through."
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. "That's not what happened and you know it."
A bike messenger cuts between us and Sam steps closer to the building. I follow, and now we're standing in a pocket of space between the revolving door and the street, out of the flow.
"You want to grab dinner?" I ask. "Celebrate?"
The words come out easy. Like I haven't been waiting to ask her for the last fifteen minutes.
Sam's expression shifts. "Oh. I can't. I'm meeting the Boss Babes."
I stop. "The what?"
She pauses. Her hand goes to the strap of her bag, adjusting it even though it doesn't need adjusting. "The Boss Babes. It's—okay, don't laugh at the name."
"I'm already laughing."
"Tom."
"Sorry. What is a Boss Babe?"
She rolls her eyes, but the color in her cheeks deepens.
"There are four of us. All women."
"I sort of got that from the name," I say, my grin growing wider.
“We all work in male-dominated fields. We meet up periodically to vent, support each other, and keep each other honest. That's it."
