That finally got her attention. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossing over her chest, and gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. Cool. Controlled. Completely unfazed.
“Apology accepted,” she said.
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re not gonna make me grovel?”
“I don’t have time for groveling.” She stood, grabbed a stack of papers, and handed them to me. “I need help stapling programs.”
I stared at the stack. “You’re joking.”
She slid a stapler across the desk toward me. “Not even a little.”
For a second, I just stood there. No lecture, no smug satisfaction, no power trip—just a pile of papers and a stapler. She was completely unfazed by my attitude, and for some reason, that threw me more than if she’d chewed me out.
“You really don’t pull punches, do you?” I said finally, sitting down.
“Only when I have time,” she said without looking up.
I sighed, took the stapler, and started working. One in the corner, just like she’d said. Simple, mindless, mechanical. The kind of thing that should’ve annoyed me—and maybe it did—but it also kept me from saying something I’d regret.
The click of the stapler filled the silence between us. Naomi had slipped out a few minutes ago, leaving the two of us alone. The tension from yesterday was still there, but it felt different now—less like a live wire, more like static humming in the air.
“You really don’t like me much, do you?” I said after a minute.
She didn’t even look up. “I don’t know you well enough not to like you. But I know how to recognize someone who needs to prove something.”
That hit harder than it should’ve. I laughed under my breath, low and humorless. “And what am I trying to prove?”
“That’s not my job to figure out,” she said, finally glancing up. Her eyes were sharp, steady. “But it’s pretty obvious you’re trying.”
I didn’t have a comeback for that.
So I stapled another set of programs. Then another.
And somehow, sitting there across from her—her calm, her precision, her complete lack of interest in my reputation—was more disarming than any confrontation I’d ever had.
No one talked to me like that. Not coaches, not PR, not even teammates.
But Ellery James didn’t care who I was supposed to be.
She just handed me work, and somehow, that felt worse than a punishment.
Because for the first time in a long time, I actually wanted to earn something.
The next two hours were a blur of grunt work. Moving boxes from the storage closet to the main hall, folding banners that refused to line up straight, counting silent auction items one by one. None of it hard, exactly—just tedious. The kind of thing that gave your brain too much time to think.
I grumbled the whole time. She ignored me the whole time.
Ellery worked like she’d been born in motion—hair pulled into a loose bun, pen tucked between her teeth, flipping between spreadsheets and phone calls without missing a beat. I’d seen team managers fall apart with less on their plate, but she handled chaos like it was her native language.
Every few minutes, I caught myself watching her. Not in the creepy way—more like in the what planet are you from kind of way.
She didn’t bark orders. She didn’t micromanage. She just… moved. Efficient. Calm. Purposeful. Everyone around her—volunteers, kids, even Naomi—took their cues from that rhythm without her having to raise her voice.
She runs this whole place like a damn team, I thought, stacking another box. No wonder everyone listens when she talks.
