Jane.She’s been messaging me every day since Des moved my stuff out, and I’ve got no idea how to break it to her that I’m never going back to our old apartment. Losing Jane is like all my dreams just went up in smoke. I don’t know why I didn’t see the faultlines in our relationship.Something rock solid just shifted so suddenly under my feet, and I’ve no idea how to get back to the life I thought I had.I slide my phone back in my pocket and head back to my desk. A sea of project management spreadsheets dances across my screen, and I flick through them as something coils in my gut. I’m deep into the problems with Samsung deliverables when someone moves past where I’m sitting, and my head snaps up.Sadie.Regret swamps the odd coiling sensation. No doubt she picked up that I didn’t want her in the spare bedroom at Des’s place. I really like Sadie, but the idea of sharing a space with anyone, even somebody as lovely as Sadie, and subjecting them to how I am at the moment, seems like the worst idea in the world. I’m barely holding it together in the office; trying to do that in private, too, would be impossible.
Sadie turns slightly to move past a couple of desks, back straight, caramel-brown hair spilling over her shoulders like a curtain. I blink at the side of her face.
What the hell’s happened to her cheek?
It’s thick with makeup and it looks like … She turns away from me again, and I stare at the back of her head as she reaches her desk under the window. The pot plant between me and her blocks my view as she sits down. Her face looked … I grimace at the code on my screen.Bruised?Something hot burns through my chest.Fuck.I push myself out of my chair and pace over to where she’s sitting, twirling a pencil in my fingers.
“Hi, Sadie,” I say.
Her head is down, hair covering the side of her face closest to me. She doesn’t raise her head; her eyes are locked on her keyboard as her hands stop typing.
“Hi, James,” she says.
“How do you know it’s me if you don’t look at me?”
Behind the curtain of hair, her lips curl up reluctantly. Then she mutters, “Peripheral vision, woodsy aftershave, voice tone and content … I could go on.”
Woodsy aftershave?“Okay, smartass.”
Amused eyes flash up to mine, and that’s when I see it, the bruise across her cheekbone, heavily but clumsily concealed. My eyesight mists red. Ididn’t believe her when she said she didn’t have any trouble from that asshole who turned up at the office, and now she turns up with this?
“What happened to your face?”
A flush starts up on her neck. “Do you have the right to ask that?”
Oh shit, I probably don’t.But wow, Sadie’s the last person I’d expect a sharp comeback from. Her face flushes, and her eyes are glassy as they dart away from mine.
I glance around at where the desks are starting to fill, then I lean forward and tap my pencil on her desk. “Meet me in the conference room in five minutes, please,” I murmur. I walk back to gather up my laptop, and head to the glass cube. If she still lives with him, then no wonder she wants to move out of home. Sadie stands up and makes her way slowly into the meeting room, sliding into the seat opposite me, a sheet of tawny hair still covering her cheekbone.
When her eyes meet mine, hers are somewhat red.Oh shit.“Are you okay?”
She glances at the door, chewing her lip. “Do you want me to go?”
I frown. “Go? Go where?”
“Am I fired?”
“What? No, of course not!”
She slumps in on herself a little. Why would she think I was firing her? “I’m sorry if I was intrusive with my question, Sadie …” I start.
She shakes her head. “It isn’t the best idea coming into the office looking like this.”
“You look fine. You’re always perfectly put together.”
Her lips part as she stares at me. “In my big cardigans and cheap pants,” she mutters.
Wait, what? “Yes,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her. What is she talking about? She always looks great.
Her face flares red again as she turns away. Perhaps there’s more to Sadie than meets the eye.
“Obviously, you’re under no obligation to tell me, but something’s happened to your face and …” I gesture vaguely toward her head.
Her small teeth worry at her lower lip. “I’m fine, James, honestly,” she says.
“Was it your dad?” The questions keep spilling out before I can reel them in.
A few seconds tick past then she shakes her head. “You covered up for me when Jake showed up here …” she starts.
