The Last Heartbeat

by Katerina Simms

“You know my reasons for keeping Max.” His eyes flared, voice tight, signaling he expected her to keep his secret about the cliff fall.

  She flung back her head in an incredulous laugh. “You mean that, unlike every other person in your employ, Max gets a free pass and the undeserved responsibility of being second-in-charge? Yeah, I know.” She threw her hands out to her sides, pointing to the scene around them. “How’s that working for you?”

  “Agathe.” Luke’s tone sank to a growl. “Stop.”

  “Why? So you can continue with your misguided sense of duty to a fully grown man?” She tilted her head to one side. “For Christ’s sake, Luke. What you do impacts so many more people than those who live within your little family bubble. Heck, there are your employees and their families, just as a start…”

  His glare burned forward, a muscle ticking at his jaw. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “You don’t damn-well act like it.” She ground her statement, pushing each word through gritted teeth. “Max may be quirky. Lazy. Absentminded. But he’s no fool.” She jabbed a finger in Luke’s direction. “But you, on the other hand…” She jabbed again, unleashing her full frustration. “You’re the rampaging idiot who toyed with a hundred livelihoods just to ease your own pitiful guilt.”

  He jolted back, as if she’d given him a physical slap. “You’ve crossed a line.”

  “What are you going to do?” She twisted one corner of her lip in a sardonic smile, beyond caring. “Walk out on me?”

  Oh, she went there.

  She turned to the crowd of open-mouthed Tiluma employees, suddenly aware she’d yelled loud enough for everyone to hear; any privacy between her and Luke was demolished. But again, her mounting rage meant she shrugged off even that slip-up.

  For so long, grief had been her stable ground. For a small time, Luke replaced that grief. He’d nudged her toward her own crumbling cliff’s edge, toward hope and happiness, toward an emotional plunge she couldn’t survive. And worst of all… He’d left her.

  Left her with the real prospect of many more years of fear and solitude, now that she knew what it was to have love, now that she had no direction. No safe place to turn. He’d taken her security and put hollowness in its place. But then again… Of course he'd left.

  An expanding lump formed in her throat, along with the knowledge that she was a complete and utter lost cause, incapable of love. This break up was on her. She’d pushed him away too many times. But even with that understanding, logic and reason weren’t always well paired, and she couldn’t forgive him for holding her to her bluff.

  “I get that Max is family. There are different rules for him.” Her voice cracked, and she paused to allow herself time to recover now that rage had descended into drowning sorrow. “You forgive Max’s every mistake, only to abandon me at my own vulnerable moment. It hurt to see you leave last night.”

  Someone in the crowd of employees let out a gasp, wrenching her attention to a middle-aged woman with her hand wrapped around a gape-mouthed man’s arm.

  Agathe turned back to Luke, willing to let the near strangers enjoy the show. Crowd or not, she needed to have it out with him, once and for all.

  “What difference would my staying have made?” His lips dipped to a frown. “All I wanted was to hear that you cared. Don’t tell me you figured your utter silence wouldn’t hurt me too. You knew it would.”

  For a moment, he looked to the employees, and his cheeks fell slack, suggesting some deep realization had just hit him square in the chest. “Don’t I get to have a few human needs? All of this…” He lifted his hands to the people around him, to his building with fumigators traipsing in and out. “I never planned for any of this, but I carry the burden every day. At what point do I get to stop worrying about everyone else and go after what I want?”

  Her shoulders dropped, and her insides churned. Her ears seemed to ring with a sudden hypersensitivity to the crowd and noises around her. She’d been so busy licking her own wounds, she’d at no point noticed his.

  He’d tried to warn her.

  Tiluma was only a few years old, and he’d been thrown into the CEO role with little to no experience. He’d probably been treading water ever since. And the wife and children he’d dreamed of having? Maybe they were the extent of what he’d wanted all along before the stress of fixing Max’s life and running a company took over.

  And now… Now the Schneider meeting had gone bust, and Luke’s crestfallen face forced a realization that this would be their last ever encounter. She’d tried to believe she could hold down a relationship. But who was she kidding? Too much had passed here. And she was too broken. Luke had put up with a lot of bullshit, and she’d been wrong to forget how much he’d done.

  There was no way she and Luke could work together after today.

  He stood before her now, shoulders tense, form locked in a rigid stance. He wanted an answer.

  At what point do I get to stop worrying about everyone else and go after what I want?

  Her thoughts sank to Elsie, to those dark-blonde curls framing her angelic hazel eyes. The mental image alone sent her heart into an unstable flutter.

  And right then, Elsie provided the answer, the reason why this exchange could only ever end in her parting with Luke.

  At what point do you stop worrying about others?

  She closed her eyes, her heart now slowing to a plodding beat. In the chaos of her emotions swinging from one extreme to another, her daughter offered a reassuring smile, with her delicate, pink lips, and smooth, round cheeks.

  Mumma’s sweet, little peach.

  She’d endure any torture just to kiss that little face one last time.

  She opened her eyes, and Luke stepped forward, but she shot out a hand between them. “Wait.”

  He paused.

  A cry clawed at the base of her throat, and her tears started, a small trickle that escalated to a thick stream. “If you’re truly lucky, the answer is ‘never’.” She drew toward him, for once, wanting to be the one to reach out and pull him into what she’d decided would be their final embrace. “I hope you’ll always have someone to worry about, Luke. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

  She held onto him and turned her head to the warmth of his neck, offering a heartfelt truce, grasping at her last chance to savor his support before she once more went out into the world alone.

  The only person she’d worried about in the last four years had been herself. For a moment, there’d been someone else. And while his light scent soothed, and his large body calmed her torrid emotions, she wasn’t whole, and he wasn’t Elsie.

  He pulled back, his tight gaze dancing around her face, as if he knew her actions were a final goodbye.

  “Call Schneider.” She did a one-eighty turn and ran, finishing what he’d started last night, what she should never have entered into in the first place.

  The gawking crowd parted, and she kept her head bowed, but a pair of strong and somehow familiar hands grabbed at her shoulders. Not Luke. Max.

  He stood with the crowd now behind him, his face sporting the same ashen tone as his brother.

  “Don’t do this to him.” His blue eyes narrowed in a plea. “Don’t leave Luke because of me.”

  Cold shock ran through her veins, and she locked her muscles in place to keep from continuing her run. Since when did Max approach anything with any kind of seriousness?

  “I’m not leaving because of you.”

  He turned to where Luke most likely stood, a frown weighing down his expression. “I’ve never seen that look on his face before. If you go, you’ll break his heart.”

  Sickness surged in her belly. Max’s words confirmed that she did, in fact, manage to torture anyone unfortunate enough to get sucked into her orbit of misery.

  “I’ll do worse if I stay.” She stepped back, breaking Max’s hold at her shoulder, her only comfort being that, at least now, she could say she’d done the right thing. She’d ended Luke’s torture. “Go, look a
fter your brother.”

  Her heart hammered, but she turned and jogged away, desperate to disappear around the nearest corner. She got as far as the next building before a black limousine slowed beside her. A tinted window rolled down. She stopped in her tracks as a shock of white hair and a wrinkled face appeared from behind the glass. Weathered eyes glared at the disturbance out front of Tiluma. Schneider. An hour early. Of course he’d be early.

  He turned and glowered at her, her face likely tear-stained, puffy, and looking distraught.

  The window slid closed, and the car pulled away.

  27

  “I wondered when this would happen.” Sue Hatchman’s lips formed a flat line, her tight expression similar to a headmistress ready to scold a wayward pupil.

  Agathe sank deeper into her chair, attention swerving to a cloudless Melbourne sky outside the private office window at Slate and King.

  Though her tummy gave a heavy kick of guilt, she cleared her throat and dove into the discussion. Whatever happened next wouldn’t make much difference to her current sense of being a shitty person. “What would happen?”

  Sue gave a calculated shrug. “You’d crack.”

  Agathe blinked, though she already counted on adding losing her job to her mudslide of recent fuckups. “You saw yesterday coming?”

  “Sure.” Sue wove a pointed finger through the air, gesturing to the world at large. “Though, what with the whole public display outside Tiluma, getting involved with Luke Tindall, Schneider falling through so enormously… I never predicted you’d implode on such a grand scale.” She leaned forward in a clear bid for total attention. “But then again, it’s kind of typical that most people crack at a crucial point in their career. You were so close, Agathe. So close. I hoped you wouldn’t end up being like most people. Not when you were weeks away from becoming a key figure here at Slate and King.”

  Sue shook her head, the air thick with disappointment.

  Agathe’s insides contracted and wrung, her posture bending along with her already lowered self-worth. It hurt to hear her utter failure verbalized.

  “And now?” she whispered, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  “And now, I don’t know. It takes years to build the trust we handed to you, and you blew it all away.” Sue lifted her hands. “I got a call from Tiluma’s human resources manager. They’re worried about you. To be frank, so am I.”

  Agathe sagged in her chair. The phone calls and Sue’s pointed stare only confirmed her greatest flaws had become public knowledge.

  Sue sighed. “I don’t know what to do with you. I could lecture you on reliability. On not hooking up with a client. On your need to lighten up… but you’re no idiot, Agathe. I don’t need to say any of this; it’s all stuff you already know. What I will say, is you’ve now made your problem my problem, which leaves me with a giant mess to clean up on top of my already heavy workload.”

  Agathe peered down at her hands folded in her lap. She felt even shittier now, like gum stuck to the underside of Sue’s shoe.

  “Agathe.” Sue’s stern voice held firm and demanding, though her lingering pause indicated she wanted Agathe to look at her again. “Not only do I have to conjure a replacement for you at Tiluma, I’m amazed they even want to work with anyone from this office again. I vouched for you, and you made me look foolish in front of the board. And even this morning, I fought tooth and nail to see you don’t get fired.” She huffed out a sigh, shaking her head. “I don’t even know why I did that.”

  Agathe straightened in her chair. “I’m not getting fired?”

  Sue gave a flat stare. “No.”

  Agathe reeled back, her fingers clawing into her thigh. “What? Why not?”

  “Because I convinced the board that firing a long-standing staff member in the clear throes of emotional distress would be a public relations nightmare. Besides, the mention of a potential lawsuit was enough to make them take a step back. Like I said, I had a feeling you’d crack one day. In some ways, I blame myself.”

  Agathe buried her face in her hands and groaned. Everyone really did think her unhinged, and in Sue’s case, the observation had been a long-standing one that had proven true.

  “You’ve always walked around this office with a dark cloud hanging over your head. I figured you worked so tirelessly for a reason, as if punishing yourself with a heavy schedule.” Sue’s words made it sound as though Agathe wore her emotional scars like a giant tattoo on her forehead. How many of her colleagues had noticed, or altered their behavior toward her as a result? “On some level, I knew you couldn’t keep it up forever.”

  Agathe took a centering breath, her heart pained with just how much Sue had noticed. She swallowed hard. Perhaps she didn’t deserve a second chance at Slate and King, after all. “But I hooked up with a client. Isn’t that an inexcusable offense?”

  Sue shrugged. “While no one here is pleased with your involvement with Mr. Tindall, Tiluma’s H.R. manager conveyed Luke’s direct request that you don’t lose your job. It was a condition of keeping them as a client.”

  A sharp, burning sensation zipped through Agathe’s nerve endings, her entire body receiving a shock. Her breath shallowed in memory of all she’d done to hurt him. And how he still looked out for her. Even now.

  Everything he did confirmed just how much she simply did not deserve his love.

  A man like Luke belonged to someone else. Someone better. Someone more equipped to handle a relationship. No matter how much his name remained on a loop in her head, she’d made the right choice in leaving him. At least this time, she could say her troubles had stemmed from a need to save a life—Luke’s—rather than mourn one.

  She crossed and uncrossed her legs, then forced herself to focus on Sue. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Well.” Sue sighed as if the worst of the conversation was over. “It’s best you take some time off. Sort yourself out and let the dust settle around what happened yesterday. Meanwhile, I’ll put out the fires left in your wake.”

  Agathe nodded, her heart stammering that work wouldn’t be her crutch.

  In truth, this was the best-case scenario. She did need time off. Time to figure out what to do next. Because if she were truly honest, this job didn’t smooth over the cracks in her life anymore. The long hours and high-pressure clients only distracted from a wound no amount of over-scheduling would heal. In the meantime, that wound went unattended; it festered and spread. It no longer was hurting only her, but others who bothered to care for her.

  Maybe time away would propel her toward something different.

  Maybe she’d find a life where the emotional void of Elsie’s death and the bittersweet ache of Luke’s absence didn’t hurt so much. Where ghosts didn’t haunt, and love didn’t torment.

  She swallowed against another thought, that the last four years had taught her a day of healing and peace might never come. That some tragedies were so merciless, nothing could fade the memories in any way.

  But she had to try.

  Luke had been right. She’d sought him out for a reason. Perhaps a subconscious effort to push herself toward change, but whether those changes were good for her remained to be seen. So far, given the battered state of her heart, her prospects weren’t looking all that promising.

  She turned to Sue, a spark of hope lighting uncertainty. “How much time do I have off?”

  “A month.”

  Agathe paused, gnawing on her lower lip. Her near termination meant she didn’t have much wriggle room, but she’d need more than a month.

  “I have a lot of unused leave.” She threw a pleading sort of cringe. “Can we make it three?”

  Sue glared, though the tension around her eyes settled in the ensuing silence. “Fine, I can probably swing that. Three months it is.”

  Agathe pushed out of her chair, resigned to her murky fate.

  Goodbye, promotion.

  Goodbye, entire career.

  In just twenty-four hours, her life had
flipped on its head, her existence something akin to a Dali painting smashed together with a Van Gogh. Her hands pressed to her cheeks in a silent howl like The Screamer, her new world a surreal wasteland like those dismal melting clocks.

  She had three months. Three months to sort through all she’d learned. Three months to unpack what her time with Luke had been about. And three months to decide what to do next.

  Luke opened his front door, and his shoulders sank at the sight of Max waiting on the other side. He gave the strain on his brother’s face the quickest glance and then turned to walk down the hall, the door left wide open in his wake.

  Max wasn’t the visitor he’d hoped for, though that visitor would likely never cross his path again.

  “Want a beer?” He called the question out behind him, hiding his disappointment but not his dull tone.

  The front door clicked shut, and Max soon joined him at the kitchen counter. “Yeah, a beer would be great. About the other day—”

  Luke jammed a beer bottle into his brother’s hand, cutting him off intentionally. “Here.”

  He’d spent his last two days actively avoiding Max and, maybe, wasn’t one hundred percent ready to see him.

  Thanks to his brother and his never-ending string of stunts, Tiluma’s future lay in ruins.

  Max stared back, unblinking. “Ah. Thanks.”

  A nervy silence followed, and Luke pressed his bottle to his lips, indulging in a long pull of cold, bitter beer. He hadn’t yet allowed staff to return to the office, but any day now, he expected a pile-up of resignations on his desk.

  A lot of people were mad that the Schneider opportunity had fallen through; so much hard work had gone to waste, and morale was at an all-time low. Worse still, was the justified sense that all of this could have been avoided.

  And then there’d been that sorrowful scene with Agathe.

  A pounding pain knocked around in Luke’s head, a warning his brain teetered on the edge of explosion. Max rolled his unopened beer bottle between his hands, hips leaned casually against the white marble counter, like he had not a care in the world.