Saudade.
Sciamachy.
Thanatophobia.
Useless words.
Nothing could tamp my frustration.
“We need a centerpiece!” I waved a picture on my phone of a giant abstract monstrosity we had no budget for.
This had become my hill to die on.
Destined to perish from a wound in the shape of Chantilly’s indifference, and my tombstone had better be a damned centerpiece.
Ida Marie flicked her eyes between the two of us, lips pressed together. She swallowed her saliva every ten seconds.
She agreed with me. So did Cayden and Hannah… but they also agreed with Chantilly’s point—we didn’t have room in the budget.
“We’re done talking about this.” Chantilly shut the meeting books and shoved them inside Cayden’s desk.
I shot up from the couch. “It has to happen,” I said, wondering why I even bothered. We’d all die eventually, and none of this would matter.
You are dust. Small and solid, but destined to vanish.
“We don’t have it in the budget!” Chantilly tossed both hands in the air. “And even if we did, it’s not happening. It’s all useless. Mr. Prescott doesn’t care about this location. You’re supposedly chummy with him,” she spit the words out like she wasn’t sure whether to be confused or disgusted. “Can’t you see that?”
Would speaking slower help this seep into Chantilly’s skull?
I wondered whose side Nash would take if he were here. Chantilly’s, most likely. His priorities laid with the Singapore location. Even now, he’d left for the penthouse to go over offers with Delilah.
“He may not care, but I do.” I jabbed my chest with my pointer finger. It hurt, but so did everything.
“Why?”
She could send me to Guantanamo Bay, and I still wouldn’t tell her. Not when it meant revealing just how much I knew Nash and the Prescotts.
“Because,” I began, forming my lies as I spoke, “this location is my first job, will go on all of our design portfolios, and should matter regardless because it’s our damn jobs to care. Why am I the only one who cares?”
Security interrupted our argument with Chipotle catering trays. My eyes swung to the door, but I already knew Nash wouldn’t be there. I didn’t feel him in the room. No heavy air. No heat around my body. Nothing.
The giant servings of chicken, steak, and barbacoa consumed most of the tablecloth Chantilly laid out, so Cayden opened another one next to it. I helped the guards fan out the containers of tortillas, cheese, rice, beans, guac, and salsa, but I didn’t dare grab a plate.
It looked good.
It smelled better.
I hadn’t eaten all day, and if we continued through the night, the soup kitchen would be closed by the time I clocked out.
Logic told me to eat.
My body told me to eat.
Even Ida Marie turned to me and told me to eat.
My heart refused to.
That same dumb organ jostled inside my ribcage as soon as the elevator pinged in the hall. This is why ribs form a cage around the heart. It’s an untamed animal, and wild animals can’t be trusted.
If my coworkers thought I had a serious eating disorder, none of them bothered to suggest I seek help. They dug into the food, piling glutinous layers onto their paper plates. I envied the hell out of them.
Grateful I hadn’t succumbed to the temptation, I pulled out the sketchpad and continued with my shading, knowing this one-hundred percent would end up at the bottom of the trashcan.
“Are you sure this is from Nash?” Ida Marie frowned at the food, eyeing the beans like they might be poisoned. “It doesn’t seem like something he would do for anyone, except maybe…”
Her voice trailed off, but we all knew what she meant to say.
Anyone except Emery.
The divide deepened. I stood stranded on one side of a canyon while Cayden, Hannah, Ida Marie, and Chantilly stood on the other. Except Chantilly refused to see it like it was. She’d sprint over to my side on a tightrope if she could.
Her nose scrunched as she shook her head.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ida Marie. It’s definitely for us. I’ve been working late. Putting in so many extra hours.” She loaded extra meat onto her tortilla, and I. Was. So. Jealous. “I deserve it—and the fridge. Totally. Plus, I think he really likes me. I caught him staring at me this morning.”
“I can assure you, I do not like you. You remind me of a dog begging strangers to pet her, and as far as kinks go, bestiality isn’t mine.” Nash rested a hip against the door frame, staring me down without paying a lick of attention to Chantilly. “I was staring at Emery. You kept getting in the way.”
My heart hiccupped before chasing its normal pace. Cue the awkward silence as everyone and their mothers misconstrued Nash’s words. The stare-down had lasted five minutes over the extra white chocolate macadamia nut cookies he’d slipped into my Jana Sport when I wasn’t paying attention.
One—he was right. I loved them. Everyone who knew me knew I loved them. Not exactly a national secret.
Two—I couldn’t hand them back without drawing attention to Nash’s fixation on feeding me. They still sat at the bottom of my Jana Sport, taunting me each time I pulled out a different charcoal pencil to sketch with.
Three—I hoped he never found out that I’d eaten the ones in the Tupperware container he gave me days ago.
Ida Marie’s cheeks turned pink for me. She tapped my shoulder and held a paper plate in her outstretched hand. “Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Her wide eyes avoided Nash. “There’s so much food here. One of us will end up taking a feast home.”
Nash had approved our 3D rendering with minor changes, which meant flooring, cabinets, and finishes were already installed with furnishings ordered and arranged soon after. It also meant I would be here even later today. The soup kitchen might end up closing before I left.
Stop letting your pride eat at your sanity, Emery. Nash is right. It’s okay to accept help. It doesn’t make you any less of a person. Maggie lets you make coats for her and the kids. You allowed Reed to hook you up with a job. Getting food from the soup kitchen never deterred you. It’s starting to sound like you only have trouble accepting help from Nash.
Nope, the pep talk did nothing.
I’d sooner step in a bear trap than accept Nash’s help. Because I preferred him cruel. At least, I knew what to expect.
“I’m good.” I plucked my eraser from the Jana Sport. “I have dinner plans tonight.”
As in, the soup kitchen if I’m lucky.
Nash narrowed his eyes at my words. I had screwed myself when I agreed to civility for Ben’s sake, because each time I didn’t fight Nash, I got more and more comfortable justifying our proximity.
This did nothing for my lust. He still looked like womenkind’s answer to dry spells, and I still had the memory of his fingers inside me and my lips wrapped around his cock to keep me warm at night.
“Emery.” Nash lifted his chin toward the hallway. He had managed to turn my name into a demand. As soon as we reached the elevators, he fired at me in rapid succession, “Make no mistake—I’m not a nice person. I don’t do nice things. If I hold the door open for you, it’s to look at your ass. If I do you a favor, it’s because I expect one in return. If I feed you, it’s because I’d rather deal with your scrawny ass than Ma’s wrath. The sooner you get that, the better.”
But the words held no real bite to them. A toothless husky gnawing his favorite toy. He seemed so uncomfortable with the idea of feeding me, it almost made me laugh. Dip below that, and all he’d done was throw money at my problems with a hint of his signature tenacity.
The exact opposite of the younger Nash who used to give me lunch at the cost of his own, who didn’t speak as if he owned me, and never made me feel like accepting his generosity would come at the expense of my soul.
The slow shake of my head offered me time to summon an adequate response. “My refusal to accept your food has nothing to do with an aversion to niceties and everything to do with the fact that I don’t need your hundreds of dollars in catering, your fancy salmons, or forty-eight-ounce porterhouses that can feed ten families.” My Chuck-covered feet clambered closer to his Salvatore Ferragamo loafers. “Money doesn’t solve all problems, including mine. Sometimes, I don’t recognize you, Nash. Doesn’t that scare you?”
I’d struck him.
Lightning straight to the hollowed-out cavity where his heart should have been.
Old Nash used to go without food so the overprivileged Winthrop could eat lunch. He never asked for a thank you, never made me feel bad about my crappy mother, and never forced me to accept his charity.
He left me notes because my longing eyes would track Betty’s every time Reed flicked it into the trash after a cursory glance. Once, I even hijacked one from the trash, brought it home, and pretended Betty was my mom and she’d written the words for me.
Nash found me hiding it under the bench in the center of the maze, paranoid Virginia would find it and tear it in half. Leaning against his dad’s iron shovel, he eyed the guilt etched on my face and held out a gloved hand.
My shaky fingers dropped the note into his palm. I prayed he wouldn’t toss it. Instead, he offered me a look I didn’t understand and told me the gap beneath the Hera statue made a better hiding spot.
If that Nash walked up to me now with a brown paper sack and a handwritten note, I’d gobble the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a smile on my face and recite the note over and over until the words etched themselves in my soul.
This had everything to do with pride, but it also involved self-preservation.
I refused to taint my memory of Nash.
His phone rang, sparing us both. Otherwise, who knew the lengths he would go to in his quest of feeding me? He muttered something about Singapore and left me to sketch while the others ate. An hour later, he still hadn’t returned, but everyone had joined me in drawing portrait mockups.
“What did he say to you?” Ida Marie’s hands flew across her pad. She hounded me, for the eighth time, over one of my many arguments with Nash. Except, she didn’t know it had been an argument.
Plus, so much time had passed, and we hadn’t gotten in each other’s faces in a while. Come to think of it, the last time was the Soup Kitchen Incident. Or when I spat the sandwich at his foot if you counted that, which I didn’t on account of A—the distinct lack of witty comebacks on my part and B—my embarrassment over rummaging the sandwich from the trash and devouring it.
A secret I’d take to my grave.
My coffin had better come padlocked.
Who are you trying to fool? You fight him every time he tries to feed you.
“I already told you. He basically told me not to step out of line again,” I lied.
Sort of.
Was it a lie?
He had screamed it with his eyes the whole time, and I was almost certain he had said it, too. I didn’t even remember what the argument had been about. Just that he looked like he wanted to bend me over his knees and teach me a lesson, and my body hadn’t exactly been opposed to the prospect.
Ida Marie handed me a 4B charcoal pencil to fill the palm. I kept the pencil loose and slanted in my fingers as I shaded. Chantilly had us creating mockups for exclusive artwork to be placed in the upper-level suites.
None of us were well-known artists, but she had wasted a ridiculous amount of the budget on importing bamboo panels from China with a tariff that made me want to pull out her teeth and feed it to the gap-toothed Rottweiler that hung around Maggie’s tent city.
Mags, I corrected.
She loved me for slipping Stella my extra bread roll and our mutual obsession over murals. If she knew what I thought of Nash’s nickname for her, she would probably forgo the extra hours of sleep on the weekends and stop allowing me to babysit Stella and Harlan. Not that the tent city posed any dangers, but real mothers worried.
Virginia, on the other hand, never had.
I swapped the 4B for the 9B to color in the middle finger.
Ida Marie set down her sketch and scrunched her nose at it. “It’s awful.” She sighed, tore the sheet of paper from the sketchbook, crumpled it, and started again. Between us, a mountain of discarded sketches towered like a forgotten game of Jenga. “It’s just that Nash Prescott looks at you like—”
Chantilly walked up to us. “He looks at her like what?”
“Like he is disappointed in the entire design department,” Ida Marie lied. “You know, for going over budget on the furniture we ordered. Emery picked out the rugs.”
I bit my tongue before I blurted out the rugs had been on sale, and with the exception of me, everyone had exceeded the furnishing budget. We both knew Chantilly possessed the nose of a shark, and she sought news of me and Nash like a shark sought blood.
“Nash is right.” Chantilly straightened out Ida Marie’s balled up sketch, rolled her eyes, balled it up again, and tossed it into the trash before returning her attention to me. “Do not embarrass me. You may have Delilah Lowell’s protection, but as C.E.O., Mister Prescott outranks her.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” I mocked a salute. If she wanted to treat Nash’s company like it was the military, by all means, I would indulge her, but I would make her feel ridiculous about it.
“I mean it, Emery.” She stalked off after Cayden called her name.
“She hates you.” Ida Marie’s unhelpful remark hung between us. A knife with a dull blade. “Antagonizing her won’t help.”
“I know, but I lack the impulse control to stop. She hated me before I even spoke to her, and I don’t like bullies.”
“She only hates you because you know Delilah Lowell, and Chantilly has been trying to work her way up the food chain for three years now. How do you know Delilah, by the way?”
I ripped off my middle finger sketch, laid it proudly on the coffee table, and returned to another sketch I’d started earlier. “I don’t know her. I’ve seen her before, but I’ve actually never officially met her. She’s just a friend of a friend.”
“Hot friend?”
“Taken friend.”
I’d been ducking Reed’s texts and calls because I didn’t have any proposal ideas for him except to say, don’t do it. I never understood Reed and Basil. They shared nothing in common except the color of their hair.
Ida Marie peeked over at my sketchbook and let out an oooooh. “Definitely hot.”
I glanced down at my picture, afraid I’d accidentally drawn Reed or worse—Nash. Instead, an outline of another man’s face stared back at me. His card still burned in my pocket, the phrase “U.S. Security and Exchange Commission” close to hospitalizing me each time I looked at it.
I nearly choked on my spit when I realized where I’d recognized him from.
Brandon Vu came into my life the day it fell apart.
