The last time we spoke, I was spouting nonsense.
“You, too,” I managed, fumbling for the right words as I added, “Hey, I’m sorry about that time you called and I…yelled.”
He shook his head. “It was nothing.”
“It was slightly more than nothing. I saida lotof things. Most of which I honestly don’t remember. There are some days where the headlines are destined to eclipse the fine print. Anyway.” I let out a big breath and tried to regain some of my dignity. “I saw you found the right buyer for InfoSynth.”
A few days after the Simon note card disaster, news broke that InfoSynth was acquired by Aerava—some eco-tech darling—for north of eleven figures. Simon and Harlan had lost out, along with several other bidders, but Beau got everything he wanted. Aerava would use his company to keep renewable energy gridsfrom collapsing. It was actual world-saving, planet-friendly, profit-churning brilliance. He rewarded the InfoSynth team with headline-grabbing bonuses, and now, Beau was rich. Buy-a-private-island-and-disappear-into-the-Aegean-Sea rich.
“Congratulations,” I said, trying to mean it.
It’s not Beau’s fault Simon blew the meeting, after all.
“Thanks.” His gaze fell to the floor for a second. “You waiting on someone?”
“Gemma.” I nodded. “She’s changing.”
“Mind if I keep you company?”
I didn’t mind. I didn’t want him to leave. That pull I always felt around him was a welcome distraction from the tangle of thoughts I’d been wrestling with for weeks.
He ordered a drink from the bartender who had stepped in around the time Gemma flitted off.
“So how does it feel to get everything you want?” I asked.
Beau laughed. “You know that feeling you get right after you beat a video game? When the final boss is vanquished and the kingdom’s unlocked? You can do anything you want, but you’re still bracing for the fight?”
That feeling is my whole life, actually. Only instead of phantom adrenaline, I keep trying to pinpoint exactly which choice squashed my career.
“That’s every day for me now.” The flicker of vulnerability I had seen on his face at Harlan’s party was cracked open again. “Sorry. I think I really needed to tell someone that.”
“Fair enough,” I said softly. But hearing I was someone he could trust with his confessions was a necessary antidote for the way I had been feeling since Simon fired me.
My phone lit up on the lacquered bar top with a text from Gemma, but I didn’t check it. I suddenly hoped she was taking her time.
“I used to be busy all the time. But now.” He made a poof motion with his hands, like the reveal of a magic trick. “I did the thing. Sold the company. Climbed the mountain. Now, I wake up and wonder if I’m supposed to take up woodworking or something.”
“I think you’re supposed to be building a bunker in Colorado.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “It’s a very obnoxious thing to confess—”
“No.” I stopped him. “I actually know exactly what you mean.” The anxiety built over weeks of obsessing about how I would tell people I had lost my job washed over me in a rush, and I decided to rip the Band-Aid off clean. “I don’t work for Simon anymore.”
Beau blinked. “Wait—really?”
“Yep.”
“No offense, but when I looked you up, I kind of got the impression you wouldn’t leave unless someone pried your laptop from your cold, dead hands.”
“That was the original plan. Then life as I knew it imploded.”
His face fell. “You want to talk about it?”
I liked the spark in his eyes that looked like a promise, an offering to keep my secret. But that didn’t mean I was ready to open up about Simon. Because opening up about Simon meant revisiting how hard I had worked for him, how much I had given up for Redwood, and the fact that Simon fired me out of the blue anyway.
Not to mention the mortifying detail that I was sleeping with him.
“I literallyneverwant to talk about it.”
