“Sure, sure, sweetie pie. What I want to know is if you’re going to New York this year.”
I let out a breath. Every year since I met Alli, she has asked me if I’m going to attend CANVAS Con, the Creative Artists Network & Visual Arts Society annual conference in New York. It’s the best place to pitch my comic book ideas to potential agents and publishers.
Every year, Ialmostbuy my ticket. Every year, I chicken out.
“I don’t know,” I admit, fiddling with my coffee cup to avoid her gaze. “Things are working well at VSE. Asking for time off when I’ve only just started feels like…”
“Like what? Like pursuing your dreams might inconvenience someone?”
“It’s not that simple. Pierce needs someone he can rely on.”
“And you don’t think he can rely on you if you take a few days to focus on your art?” Alli’s voice is gentle but firm.
“I just don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Meatball,” Alli says softly, “what about disappointing yourself?”
The question hits harder than it should.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say finally. “About finding a publisher, about making this more than just a hobby. It’s all I think about when I’m not thinking about—” I catch myself before I prove her right and confess that I am struggling to separate the man I work for from the man I got down on my knees for all those months ago.
This is supposed to be my pet-therapy day, so before the conversation can get any heavier, I go do just that.
While Alli tends to new customers, I escape to the back room and set up a fence around the kitten cages. Then I open them and sit on the floor, waiting for my furry friends to attack me with all their itty-bitty furry love.
A tiny orange tabby is the first to pounce, followed by a gray ball of fluff with too much attitude for her size. Within minutes, I’m covered in kittens, their tiny claws pricking through my jeans as they climb and tumble over each other to reach me.
I lean against the wall, letting them do their worst, and my mind drifts to yesterday’s lunch with Pierce.
I’d convinced him to follow me out of the office, ignoring his protests about taking a lunch break. The look on his face when I led him up the service stairwell to the rooftop garden was worth every confused question he’d asked along the way.
“How did you even find this place?” he’d asked, staring atthe small oasis hidden above the city—raised flower beds, a couple of weathered benches, and a view that made the concrete jungle below feel miles away.
“Roberto showed me,” I’d admitted, setting our takeout containers on one of the benches. “He comes up here on his breaks. Said hardly anyone remembers it exists because everyone is always working.”
We’d sat side by side, the afternoon sun warming our faces, and for once, the professional mask had slipped just enough. He’d laughed—actually laughed—at something I said about the ant invasion. Up there, away from the glass walls and fluorescent lights, he’d seemed almost…relaxed. Human. Touchable.
The gray kitten bats at my finger, and I absently scratch behind her ears.
It’s getting harder. Every day, it’s getting harder to sit across from him and pretend I don’t remember how his hands felt on my skin. How his voice dropped low in that bathroom, rough and wanting. How he looked at me like I was the only person in the world.
Now he looks at me like I’m his assistant. Professional. Polite. Distant.
I’ve caught him watching me a few times—quick glances through the glass walls that he thinks I don’t notice. But he never lets the mask drop. Never gives me any indication that he thinks about what we did at the wedding. What we were before we became this.
And maybe that’s for the best. He’s my boss. There are rules. There are reasons.
But god, when he loosened his tie yesterday and started explaining how he likes his calendar organized, his voice all business while the breeze ruffled that silver-peppered hair, I had to physically grip the edge of the bench to stop myselffrom reaching for him. He was teaching me how to be a better assistant while I memorized the curve of his jaw.
A black kitten with white paws crawls into my lap and curls up, purring like a tiny motor.
“You don’t have these problems, do you?” I murmur, stroking its soft fur. “No complicated feelings about silver foxes in expensive suits.”
The kitten purrs louder, completely unbothered by my romantic disasters.
I pull out my phone and open my camera, snapping a picture of the kitten pile. Maybe I’ll sketch this later to balance out all the Pierce drawings filling my sketchbook.
10
