by Lucy Lambert
“Let me finish,” she said.
I held my hands up, then shoved them down between my back and the couch. I nodded at her.
She put her hands on my chest and then slid them up to my shoulders. She sighed once, then twice.
I smiled at her. “What is it?” What could possibly be so difficult for her to say?
Whatever it was, my heart started thumping. My smile started to falter, but I forced it back into place.
“This sort of thing is difficult for me to say. It’s that whole being protective of my feelings thing…” Quinn started. She straightened the collar of my shirt as though it were the most important task in the world. Then she looked me in the eye.
She continued. “It’s been more than a month now, like I said. And we’ve been spending a lot of time together. And since we started all this, I’ve learned a lot about myself. And…” her eyes fell down again.
“And, what?” I said. Pressure started in the small of my back. I realized that I had clenched all those muscles.
“And, I really do want to go with you tomorrow. Because I’m pretty sure that I’m falling for you.” She blinked a lot and bit her bottom lip. I knew that had been difficult for her to say.
She kept looking at me, waiting for me to respond. I knew that I should. I knew I needed to.
A cold and nervous feeling swam in the pit of my stomach. I pulled my hands out from behind me and let them spread out on the couch cushions.
“Vaughn?” she said, her fingers pushing against my chest.
I swallowed and found that I could look anywhere but at her. That damn countdown in my head finally revealed itself. It hadn’t disappeared like I thought it might have. And it had reached zero.
“You do know what I just told you, right?” Quinn said. Her body began going rigid. Her eyes searched my face with more and more desperation.
It tore me up inside, and I still couldn’t face it. “I know.”
“I’m glad you know. Do you feel the same way, maybe? When someone reveals that sort of thing, they’re usually hoping for a bit of reciprocation.”
“I… don’t know,” I said, the words ringing in my ears. I felt disconnected from myself. Like I was watching all this from somewhere just above our heads, screaming down to stop being such a fool.
Quinn climbed off my lap. She paced between the couch and the wingback chair. “How can you not know how you feel?” she asked, stopping in front of me, her hands held out, palms up.
Something about her attitude irritated me and I let that irritation seep into my voice. “I like you. You know that. I know that. Can’t we just leave it at that for now?”
She crossed her arms and her jaw started working. I wanted to take back what I said, but couldn’t.
“I can’t believe you. You know that things like that aren’t easy for me to say. I know you feel the same way about me, Vaughn. Can’t you just admit that?”
Just the thought of saying what she wanted me to say, letting myself feel what she wanted me to feel, twisted me up inside. My hands squeezed into fists against the cushions. I looked up at her and shook my head.
“This is all a part of that impostor stuff from before,” she continued. “I thought you’d moved past that. Can’t you see that you do deserve your success? That it all didn’t happen by accident? People aren’t going to suddenly realize you’re a fraud one day, because you aren’t.”
“Don’t you think if it was that easy I would have done it already?” I snapped, once more immediately regretting the tone in my voice. I could tell I was hurting her. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. “Things were going great the way they were. Let’s go back to that.”
Quinn turned away from me, one arm still clutched around her ribs, the other covering her mouth as though to try and keep any sobs from coming out. Her shoulders hunched.
“Quinn…” I said. I reached up and touched her elbow and she recoiled.
“Why do you push everyone away?” she said, her voice muffled by her hand.
I slumped back against the couch. “Because it’s easier that way.”
We stayed like that for a long time, her standing there facing away from me, me sitting on the couch, waiting for her to say something. I wished so desperately that I could rewind things. Go back just a few minutes.
I could feel inside that we’d crossed some invisible point where I couldn’t just take everything back.
Besides, even if there was a way to turn back the clock I would probably say the same things.
“Quinn,” I said again, unable to bear the waiting any longer.
“Stop talking. Just stop talking,” she said. From where I sat, I could see how her face had flushed and how she trembled just a little. And how she tried to hide all that from me.
The silence pushed in on me, tension laden in the air. It was strange to think that just a few minutes earlier we’d been on the verge of making love. That moment seemed years distant, then.
“I think you should go by yourself tomorrow,” Quinn said, so quiet that even in the previous silence I had trouble making out the words. I had no trouble understanding their meaning, however.
“I don’t want to go without you,” I said. I stood up, meaning to hold her. She stepped back from me, flinching like some animal too often abused by its master. That stung inside.
“Then I guess you’re going to be disappointed. I’m leaving now, Vaughn,” she said. She started towards the stairs, making sure to keep the chair between us as she went.
“Don’t go,” I said.
“Too late,” she replied.
“Can I see you later? Can we talk?” I said. I could feel her slipping away and I didn’t know how to pull her back.
She stopped at the top of the stairs, her hand on the banister. She still wouldn’t turn around to look at me. “I don’t know, Vaughn. I just don’t know.”
Chapter 22
QUINN
I sat at my desk in the C&M office. I looked at my monitor, but didn’t see it. My eyes refused to focus. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, but I couldn’t bring myself to tap any words out.
How could he do that?
I was a husk. Empty and singed on the inside, devoid of anything but a sort of constant, low-grade anger.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Stacey and Alisha, about the way they’d both looked at me. For so long I’d thought they were looks of dismissal and disregard. But I realized now that they were actually looks of pity.
They knew about him. They knew how he plays with other people’s hearts. And they knew what he would do to me, because he did it to them.
I guess somewhere I knew that. Especially after Ward’s confession about his feelings. I guess that I thought that I was different, somehow. That I could and did fix him.
But who was I kidding? I wasn’t a swimsuit model or an actress, rich and famous. If he could do that sort of thing to those types of women, how could I possibly think that I could? I was just an office worker. Nothing special about me.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to sweep my keyboard and my monitor off my desk and then use my chair to smash them into little bits. I didn’t know who I was more angry with: Ward for doing that to me, or me for being willing to give myself to someone like that.
It wasn’t a good time for Trish to show up. She’d been a sore loser ever since Ward told her what she was and where to go. I guess she somehow sensed that I was vulnerable and that he wasn’t around to protect me.
She was like a shark, attracted by the smell of blood in the water.
And that made me sneer. Protect me? The only thing he’s interested in guarding are his own feelings.
“So,” Trish said, leaning up against the false wall, “I guess you’re moving up in the world. No accounting for good taste, I suppose.”
“Not right now, Trish,” I said, giving politeness one shot. Even that required a Herculean effort on my part.
It made her raise her eyebrows in mock shock. “Not right
now? I guess you have an even bigger ego than I thought you did.”
That low-grade anger smoldering inside me flared up into outright rage, suffusing every muscle in my body with trembling heat. I stood up. Then I grabbed my keyboard and slammed it down on my desk hard enough for a few of the keys to pop out.
Trish’s eyes widened for a second before she brought herself back under control and pasted a haughty smile to her lips. “What? Junior partner not good enough for you or something? I know, maybe your rich jerk boyfriend told you he wants you to start going to the gym. Not a bad request, if you ask me.”
It was the type of anger that brought tears to my eyes. I looked at her slightly blurry face. “What is your problem? I’ve tried being nice to you. I’ve tried helping you. I’ve always tried to be polite to you…”
“Hey, I’m not the one with the problem…” she started.
“Keep your mouth shut for once. Women like you are what makes it hard to get people to respect us in the office. You are your own worst enemy. You want to know why they give all the important jobs to me? Because they know I could get them done! All they want from you is what you’re oh-so-willing to give. And they don’t respect you for it. They laugh about you, Trish. You’re a joke. But for some reason the punch line always goes over your head. And that’s sad. You are sad and I pity you.”
I was yelling by the end of it, my shoulders heaving and my whole body hot. The rest of the floor had gone silent, and I could feel people watching me from their cubicles.
Trish’s face went from red to white. She looked around and saw everyone looking at us.
“What? Nothing to say for once?” I said.
And then she shocked me again by turning and walking away. Around then I noticed the people watching me and their looks began working their way through my anger, making me realize what I just did.
“Whoa, that was pretty intense. I didn’t think it was possible for that much blood to drain from Trish’s face. What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Anne said, making me jump.
“How long have you been standing there?” I asked.
“Since, ‘Women like you…’ Pretty crazy, by the way. Do you want to go somewhere so that we can talk?” she said.
The anger banked itself inside me, cooling to embers. And then the self-conscious embarrassment began. “That might be nice.”
Before we could go the phone on my desk rang. I picked up, spoke for a few moments, and then put it back down. “Sorry, Ms. Spencer wants to see me right away.”
Anne sucked a breath in through her teeth, giving me a commiserating look. “Good luck.”
I started up to her office. She hadn’t said why she wanted to speak to me, only that she wanted me up there right away. There was no way she’d heard about my little blowup already, was there?
I knocked on her door.
“Come in,” she said.
It went inside just as she finished up another phone conversation and hung up the receiver.
“I was calling you up here to congratulate you in person for the way you’ve handled the Ward account. I’ve been getting some statistics. Nielsen ratings, online ad views from a few sites. Not a lot. But enough to say that we think it will be a success.”
“That’s good,” I said, not sure what else to say.
She looked at me over the rims of her glasses. “However, I just spoke with a manager from your floor. Apparently there’s been a… scene between you and another employee?”
Excuses welled up inside me. She started it; I’ve been under lots of pressure lately; I let my feelings get the better of me; I pretty much told my boyfriend I love him and he told me he wants to go back to the way things were before I said that.
I didn’t say any of those, though. “There was. I have no excuse for it, but I do regret it.”
Ms. Spencer nodded. “Good, because I don’t want to give you the speech about office etiquette, and how that’s not the type of behavior we expect from our newest, and youngest ever, junior partner. Plus, from what I’ve heard of this specific employee, she deserved every word of it.”
I nodded. She might have deserved it, but that doesn’t mean it was right for me to scream at her like that in front of everyone.
“I’m glad you understand. And now that the congratulations and the disciplining are out of the way, I wanted to see how you are doing.”
“I tried to follow your advice about not letting work consume me. But I think I made a mistake,” I said.
“Oh? I know it’s not my business, but from what I’ve seen things have been going quite well between the two of you.”
“I don’t think things are going to work out between us. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure it doesn’t affect my work any more than it already has. I fully intend to live up to everyone’s expectations of me here.”
“Don’t be silly,” Ms. Spencer said. “I know that feeling, too. That desire to throw yourself into something to get away from something else. It’s none of my business, like I said, and you’re free to disregard my advice. All I’m suggesting is that you don’t walk away from anything lightly. Sometimes you have to jump a few hurdles before you get to the finish line.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I replied, my back stiffening. I knew she was just trying to be helpful, but I didn’t want any advice right then, “Is there anything else?”
“That’s all.”
Chapter 23
VAUGHN
I wanted so badly to the let the old Vaughn Ward reassert himself. To shrug off Quinn as just another of my long string of failed relationships. There were plenty of beautiful and willing women out there, I knew.
I could walk over to that pub on the corner and see if that redhead was behind the bar again. I could go to a party tonight.
The pain would be over. I’d shift my attentions over to someone else. Quinn would just be something of a painful memory like all the others.
I sat on the stoop of my brownstone, watching the pedestrians and the cars go by. I got a few strange looks, and I knew that people recognized me. I didn’t care what they thought.
I kept looking at my car, and I kept squeezing my keys in my hand. It was after five. Quinn would be home. I could go over to her condo, try to talk to her, try to explain things.
Because she was different from all the others. And I knew I couldn’t let her slip away from me like I’d done before. I couldn’t make it that easy on myself.
I could call, I thought, feeling the lump of my cell phone in my jacket. She won’t answer. I knew.
But what good would going over do? Wouldn’t that make me no better than Archer, alternating between screaming at her and begging for her to let me inside?
I could tell how much I’d hurt her. I knew that she had really opened up to me, really showed me her inner self. And I’d turned her down.
Just thinking about the things I’d said to her made my blood boil. Go back to before you said that? Are you kidding me?
I was a wreck. I had so much baggage I didn’t know how I managed to function at all. Maybe it would be better if I just left her alone?
I recognized that voice as the one wanting me to return to who I used to be. I wasn’t going to give in. I wasn’t going to give up. Not on Quinn.
I bounced my keys against my palm and then squeezed my fingers around them. Before I could second guess myself I forced myself into the Audi and started down the road.
I wasn’t Archer. I wasn’t going to try and break her door down and I definitely wasn’t going to scream at her. I needed her to understand.
This time when I got to the building the inner security door wasn’t left conveniently open. My finger hovered over the buzzer with Quinn’s name beside it. My heart started racing.
Before I could push on it an older couple walking a small dog left the building. The man opened the door and I took it from him. “Here, let me get that for you,” I said.
They thanked me and left, leaving me holding the inne
r security door open. I went through and soon stood in front of Quinn’s door.
I knocked.
The peephole went dark and I knew she was on the other side, looking out at me. She stayed there for a while, probably trying to figure out what to do. I wasn’t going to say I knew she was there, I wasn’t going to hammer on her door. I gave her time.
The peephole brightened again, signaling that she’d moved away from it. For a few heart-stopping moments I thought that she’d decided to ignore me.
But then the deadbolt shot back with a sharp metal sound and she opened the door a few inches. The chain kept it from going any more. I nodded, accepting that.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
I stepped back, not wanting to crowd her. I am not like Archer.
I nodded to that, too. “I understand. But I know that if I don’t see you now, you’ll make up your mind for good and decide that you never want to see me again.”
She paused, then said, “Who said I haven’t already decided on that?”
“Have you?” I asked.
“I’m still standing here talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Yes, with the chain still on like you’re afraid I’m going to try and batter my way in there.”
She looked at the lock and then back to me. I still found her so beautiful, from her eyes and the way her hair fell to her shoulders. It hurt me deep inside to think that there was a very real chance she would tell me to get lost, never to look at her again.
I could see the hurt in her, too. There was some color in her cheeks. Her eyes looked too wet, and strained. I wanted to make it better. I had to make it better.
“I’m not like him, you know,” I said. Neither of us needed to say who him referred to.
“Maybe you don’t threaten to hit me or try and grab me or tell me how worthless I am, but what you said before makes me feel the same way he made me feel.”
“You’re right. I had no right to do that. We’re so good together, Quinn. I know you know that. I think that deserves a second chance. I think we deserve a second chance.”