by London Casey
Vince turned and let out a laughing Hey! as Jackson left his office.
“Everything okay?” Jackson’s voice asked.
“Perfect,” Vince said. He grabbed Jackson’s shoulder. “You just keep doing what you’re doing, nephew.”
Vince laughed and walked away.
Jackson approached my office. “What was that about?”
“Work stuff,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Are you calling me a liar, Jackson?”
“No. He just looks way too… happy…”
“Maybe he got laid last night,” I said.
“That’s something I never want to think about. Ever.”
“You brought it up.”
“You’re the one… never mind.” Jackson shook his head. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, why?”
He took a few steps. “I want to talk about yesterday, Callie.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Yes, there is. You’re pissed. You’re acting the way it used to be between us.”
“Is that wrong?” I asked.
Put on your winter coats, people, the ice bitch is here to stay.
Jackson slipped his hands into his pockets. “Wow. You really don’t like being called out, do you?”
“I have a lot of work to do,” I said. “I’ll be here really late tonight too.”
“So I can go home alone? You’re gently telling me to fuck off?”
“Glad you can take a hint,” I said.
Misha appeared to save the day.
I hurried to point to her. “Jackson, I have to talk to Misha. If you’ll excuse us. It’s work time now. Got it?”
Jackson’s face slightly began to twist, he was livid. Ready to explode. He didn’t like being cut off or told what to do, and he did not like me overpowering him. He also didn’t like that I was mad at him. He wanted me to be happy near him. He wanted me to be fake, bubbly… and naked.
Well, Jackson, guess what? You lose.
“Morning, Misha,” Jackson said.
“Jackson,” she said.
He walked out of the office.
“Shut the door and lock it,” I said to Misha.
She did as told.
“So… that was tense,” she said.
“What was?” I asked.
“Seriously? You and Jackson? It’s usually hot, sexual tension. That was rough. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Oh, okay. I get it. When you needed me as a friend, I was there. Now I’m just reduced back to your assistant?”
“Well, you woke up on the bitch side of the bed today, didn’t you?”
“Don’t mess with me, Callie.”
I took a deep breath. I sighed. “Fine. Things got a little weird. Okay? Jackson stepped into my personal life without asking. He did something I didn’t want - or need - him to do. I’m not looking to be loved or saved or anything.”
“And that’s what he was trying to do?”
“What else could it be?” I asked.
“Maybe he loves you,” Misha said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe he wanted to show you what it was like to be taken care of. You do realize nobody has ever taken care of you, right? Ever. For as long as I’ve known you, Callie, you’ve-”
“Jackson does not love me,” I said.
“Are you sure about that?” Misha asked.
I looked at his office and saw him standing at his window.
I shook my head.
“No way,” I whispered.
“Maybe at the end of this you can get your bonus, and have the real thing happen,” Misha said.
I kept shaking my head.
There was no way Jackson loved me.
Why?
Because if he loved me, then that meant I loved him.
Jackson said goodbye before leaving.
It was a quick knock and wave.
I nodded like he wasn’t even there.
I was such a cold bitch to him.
That was okay.
I was busy working.
The space company that Vince wanted to jump into bed with was… a mess.
There was so much money spent, so much needed, and so much that went into the company, it was impossible. I rarely felt that way about a project, but this one was going to lose a lot of money if we invested in it.
Vince wanted it because it was space.
He was like a kid turning a cardboard box into a spaceship, pretending to fly to Saturn to skateboard on the rings around the planet.
Except now this was real. This was real money. And this company wasn’t going to make it through the end of the year. If anything, they were better off shutting down operations and liquidating everything they could. And if any of their intellectual property was worth something, they could sell or maybe license it.
I wasn’t sure how that part of it would work.
That would be for lawyers to dissect.
As an investment… this was terrible.
The graphics that Frank worked on were stellar. They were bright, colorful, with the allure of space, stars, and the universe on each graphic. I had to keep them hidden on the side of my desk because if Vince saw them, this situation would get even worse.
Now I had to find a way to tell Vince this couldn’t happen.
I knew that all along.
I knew it from the moment I saw the company.
I knew it again from the second I sat behind my desk this morning.
So why was I still at the office? Long after everyone else was gone…
Jackson.
I didn’t want to go home.
I didn’t want to sneak down the hall to get into my apartment.
I didn’t want him to knock on the door and bother me and end up messing with my heart more than he had already done.
So I stayed at the office.
And I would stay as long as I needed to.
I had to get something in order to tame Vince.
What I needed was to find another company to invest in. So I could casually switch his attention to something better.
I wasn’t sure what was cooler than space…
“You’re still here?”
I looked up from my desk and Vince was in the doorway.
“Hey,” I said. “Uh, what are you doing here?”
“I own the place,” he said.
“True. I was just…”
“Sending me to space?”
“Vince…”
He waved his hands. “Don’t worry about that at the moment. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Sure.”
He walked to my desk, then sat on the side of it.
“How are things?” Vince asked.
“Great,” I said. “Why?”
“You haven’t killed him yet.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’d prefer the money over going to jail.”
Vince laughed. “You know, throughout this, you’ve really shown me who you are.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Not just that whole team player bullshit. But the ferocity to get what you want. I appreciate that. I see that. That’s what made this company what it is. Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“My brother… Big Jack… he didn’t have this vision, Callie. He was… I don’t know how to explain it. If a house was on fire, Jack was the kind of guy that would run into the house to risk his life to save some kid’s teddy bear. Right? Now me? I would look at the burning house and wonder how I could build a house that would never burn down…”
“Okay,” I said.
“See the difference?” Vince asked. “Jack could solve a singular problem. But I could solve the bigger issue. Yeah, you need to put the fire out. But why not find a way to make the fire never happen at all?”
“Vince, I don’t know if I really want to hear about Jackson’s father right now,” I said. “It feels… wrong.”
“Wh
y? Didn’t he tell you about him?”
“Not really. We aren’t…”
Vince moved off the desk and inched closer to me.
When his hand touched my shoulder, I froze.
“You’re the one, Callie,” Vince whispered. “You’re the one who deserves the promotion. You deserve to have the top spot around here. If I was going to drop dead right now, I’d want you to take my seat. Not Jackson.”
“Vince…”
“Then again, if I was going to drop dead, I would need to make my move fast, right?”
“What move?” I asked.
Vince moved again and hovered over me.
His hand touched my face.
I smelled his cologne and a hint of sweat.
I was in a bad position in my chair that I couldn’t really move.
Not to mention the shock that went through me.
I opened my mouth to tell him to back the fuck off…
And he kissed me.
His slimy mouth touching mine.
I threw my right hand up and smacked him in the chin.
He stepped back and smiled. “It’s okay, Callie. It can be just us now. Come on. Let’s do this together. Let’s ruin what’s left of Jackson.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked.
I had the space to stand up now, so I did.
“I had to keep Jackson around for the sake of my brother,” Vince said. “Jackson was never going to be anything. There’s some money put away for him that he doesn’t know about. It would pain me to part ways with it. But for you… I would. We destroy him, pay him off, and then it’s just us…”
Vince grabbed my hand and moved at me again.
His hands felt like they were everywhere on me.
I moved my hands to knock his hand away.
He kept smiling at me.
“Vince…”
“Callie, stop this,” he said. “You’ve always hated him. So have I. We have a chance to ruin him. It’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?”
I stood there frozen.
Of course I had wanted to ruin Jackson. I wanted the promotion. I wanted to watch him wither and suffer. That was the entire basis of our frenemy relationship.
Vince reached into his pocket for his checkbook.
“I’m writing the bonus to you,” he said. “Right now. And when I sign my name, that’s it. Then I get what I want. From you. Everything you ever did for my nephew, you’re going to do to me.”
He scribbled on a check and I swallowed hard.
Why the hell wasn’t I running out of the office?
Chapter Forty-One
Jackson
I couldn’t pace my own apartment anymore.
That meant I had to leave.
There were only two places I could go to clear my head.
The gym. Or the bar.
The gym was where I could punish myself. The bar was where I could torture myself.
Lift weights and get rid of my anger.
Or go to a bar and find a woman for a quick and cheap fuck to prove I didn’t want Callie in my life.
A third option came to me after I left my apartment.
I stopped at Callie’s to see if she was home.
She wasn’t.
I turned on the lights and took a deep breath.
The place smelled like her.
Callie had her own smell.
Not perfume or soap or anything like that.
It was just her smell.
The kind of smell that went up my nose and down to my heart.
It made my stomach bounce a little.
And, yeah, of course, it sent tingling pulses to my balls which made my dick throb, begging to fill up and find her body to enjoy.
Not even just to fuck her…
It was to love her.
To have her.
To feel her.
I looked at her couch and there was a bra draped over the back.
I hated that about her.
And then on the floor… right in the middle of the damn floor… a pair of black high heels.
I stepped over them and saw two cups on the coffee table, along with some kind of food wrapper.
Her bedroom door was open.
I went there next.
Of course her room was a mess.
The bed wasn’t made. The pillows were punched and twisted. The pillowcases themselves weren’t even centered.
“Oh, look, more clothes on the floor,” I said to myself as I shook my head.
There was no way this thing between Callie and I could have worked if we wanted it to.
In her bathroom, the toothpaste tube was on the edge of the sink, the cap completely missing, bright blue toothpaste leaking from the top. And even in the shower… the soap and shampoo and conditioner lids… they were all opened.
Was is that hard to close a fucking lid?
I exited the bathroom and had to step over two more pairs of shoes on the floor.
She had a hook on the wall near the door for keys and yet on the table against the wall, there were keys.
I was pissed.
Anger filling my heart.
Blocking my… my love for her…
I opened the fridge.
It was almost empty again.
A half-gallon of orange juice rested on its side with a small pool of orange juice around it.
The dishwasher was mostly full but not run.
It smelled like whatever the last meal that I cooked for her was.
I slapped my hands to the counter.
How did someone live like this? She couldn’t even take five minutes and clean up her clothes? Make the bed? She couldn’t even get groceries delivered to her apartment?
But, sure, she could find time to handle all of her mother’s personal financial issues, right? She could take care of her mother, yet she struggled to take care of herself.
Then she could show up to the office and act like nothing was ever wrong.
“Who does that?” I growled.
I pushed from the counter and looked up.
The kitchen ceiling brought back the memory of me and her on the kitchen floor.
The night I cooked the stir-fry and she started touching me… so I stripped her, tasted her and then fucked her on the counter. Then we fucked on the floor. And we stared at the ceiling…
“Fuck,” I said.
I swallowed hard.
I looked around the apartment again.
And that’s when it hit me.
I wasn’t mad about the bra, the high heels, the messy bed, the toothpaste missing the lid, or the dishwasher that was full and smelled like old food.
I was mad that I’d never get to complain about it again.
Everything that made me want to hate Callie was the same thing that made me love her.
I loved her.
I was so fucking wildly in love with her…
I groaned.
I ran to the apartment door and left.
I knew right where to find her.
And I knew what I had to do - and say.
When I got to the office, I paused at the main doors and considered what I was about to do.
This was really it for me.
It was all or nothing now with Callie.
The marriage. The bonus. Being frenemies. All of it was gone to me.
This was about the truth and being honest with ourselves.
It didn’t mean we were going to move in together and make the marriage real, then buy a house and have kids or anything crazy like that.
It was about feelings. It was about letting the rest of our walls down to one another.
I was sorry for snooping in on her mother’s business. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t about learning Callie’s secrets or figuring out who she was. I did that out of love. I saw a problem and for the first time in my life, I wanted to fix that problem even though it didn’t help me financially.
My entire life revolved around findi
ng the next deal - in business and in the bedroom.
With Callie, I just wanted to make her smile.
Shit, this is what love feels like?
I felt like I was going to be sick.
I opened the office door and started my charge to her office.
The office was dark and quiet.
Just a few hallway lights were on.
It felt almost ominous as I walked toward her office with speed.
That was okay.
I’d tell her I loved her. She’d confess the same to me.
Then my tongue would write the same message between her legs.
And then I’d-
I stopped when I smelled something familiar.
Vince’s cologne.
“I’m writing the bonus to you. Right now. And when I sign my name, that’s it. Then I get what I want. From you. Everything you ever did for my nephew, you’re going to do to me.”
I heard Vince’s voice.
I inched forward and made sure not to be seen.
Vince was in Callie’s office.
Standing at her desk.
“There,” he said. “The check is written. Now let’s finish what we started here, Callie. This is about us now. Not Jackson. It was never about Jackson.”
I watched in almost a state of horror as Vince touched Callie’s face.
She reached up and grabbed his hand.
There was a moment when they both froze.
Then he moved in for a kiss.
They were setting me up all along?
That was the plan?
To fuck me over?
Vince wanted to cut me out of the company my father started… and Callie would have done anything to get to me…
My lip started to lift into the air.
I had to look away from the scene but couldn’t.
Vince closed in on Callie’s lips and her eyes moved.
She looked right at me.
That’s when she stepped away from Vince.
Vince looked at me too.
The fucking penguin shaped prick winked at me.
I turned and walked away.
If I hadn’t…
I would have killed my own uncle right on the spot.
“Jackson! Wait!”
Callie’s voice called after me.
I wasn’t fucking waiting for a thing.
I hurried out of the office.
I took the stairs.
“Jackson, stop running away!”
There was nothing to say to Callie.