Chapter 5

I built a wall out of emails.

Everything in writing. Everything cc’d. Every question about the Hartwell account routed through three people so it never had to be just him and me in a room again. If I could keep it to subject lines and bullet points, I could survive this.

I told myself it was discipline. It was hiding. I knew the difference and chose not to look at it.

It worked for nine days.

On the tenth, his name lit up my phone. Not an email. A call.

I let it ring twice while I stared at it.

“Maya Reed,” I answered, like I didn’t know.

“You’ve been hiding behind your assistant.”

“I’ve been managing your account.”

“You’ve been managing me.” A pause. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there something you need, Mr. Hartwell?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what.”

“The Mr. Hartwell thing. You’ve been in my bed. It’s a little late for it.”

I shut my office door with my foot. “That’s exactly why we do the Mr. Hartwell thing.”

“The launch review is Thursday.” His voice shifted, smooth, like he’d expected the wall and walked straight through it. “You’re presenting. To me. There’s no associate to hide behind on that one. So we can keep pretending, or we can have one honest conversation first and make Thursday less excruciating for both of us.”

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass of the door.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said.

“Then it’ll be a short conversation. Tonight. The lobby of your building, not upstairs, nowhere private, all very professional. Ten minutes.”

“Lucas, “

“You used my name.” Something almost like warmth in it. “First time. I’ll take it.”

He hung up before I could take it back.

He was already in the lobby when I came down, standing by the fake potted tree, hands in his pockets, looking like he’d never waited for anyone in his life and wasn’t sure he liked the feeling.

“Ten minutes,” I said.

“Ten minutes.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what.”

“This. Showing up. Calling. You could’ve sent the account to another firm and never thought about me again. It’d be cleaner. You like to clean.”

He considered me. People were moving around us, badge-scanning, heading home, and he lowered his voice under the noise.

“Because I don’t get a lot of honest nights,” he said. “And I had one. With you. And then it turned into a problem with a name and a job and a best friend attached, and I should want to walk away from a problem like that.” He paused. “I don’t. That’s annoying me.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“I’m not going to be your, “ I stopped, looking for the word that wouldn’t sound dramatic. “Your interesting thing. The scandal you keep around because it’s the only real one you’ve got.”

His jaw moved. “Is that what you think you are?”

“I think I’m your best friend’s ex, who you slept with, who now works for you.” I counted it off like a list, because saying it plainly was the only way to keep it from owning me. “I think there’s no version of that where I come out clean. You walk away from it as the loyal friend who didn’t know. I walk away as the woman who knew the whole time.” My voice dropped. “I’ve already been the woman a man cheated on. I’m not going to be the woman who broke up the friendship too. People already look at me like I climbed my way here.”

“Who looks at you like that?”

“Everyone, eventually.”

“I don’t.”

“You will. Or your people will. Or the internet will.” I shook my head. “I know how this story gets told, Lucas. The girl always loses it.”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again it was lower, almost careful, like the words cost something.

“I trusted someone once,” he said. “With everything. Business, the family, all of it. I don’t trust easy, so when I did, I did it all the way.” A muscle in his jaw. “She took it apart. Piece by piece. Used what I gave her, the access, the trust, all of it, and turned it into a knife.” His voice stayed level, which was somehow worse than if it hadn’t. “Nearly took my mother down with it. Clara still flinches at certain names. I did that. I let someone in and my mother paid for it.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d learned, with him, that the quiet was where the real things came out.

“After that I made a rule,” he said. “People are useful or they’re a risk. You sort them once and you don’t re-sort. It’s cleaner. You don’t get blindsided when you already know what someone is.”

“That’s a terrible way to live.”

“It’s a safe way to live.” His eyes came up to mine. “It worked. For years it worked. And then a woman with no name told a bartender to put her own drink on her own card and I couldn’t sort her. I still can’t. You don’t fit either column and it’s, “ He exhaled. “It’s deeply inconvenient.”

Something in my chest pulled, against my will, toward him. The lonely shape of it. A man who’d built an empire so nobody could ever get close enough to take it again, telling me, of all people, that I’d slipped past the wall by accident.

I made it stop. Or I tried.

“That’s not my problem to fix,” I said.

“No.” He almost smiled. “It’s mine. I’m aware.”

“Then sort me. Pick a column. You’re good at it.”

“I’ve tried.” He held my gaze. “Useful, you walk out before sunrise and I never see you again. Risk, I should’ve legally kill the account the day I learned your name.”

“And you didn’t.”

“And I didn’t.” Something flickered behind his eyes, frustration, maybe, or the closest a man like him got to it. “That should tell you something. It tells me something I don’t like.”

I looked at him, this man who controlled rooms and markets and the temperature of his own face, telling me he couldn’t control one thing and that the one thing was me. And under the polish, just for a second, I saw it. The armor. How heavy it was. How long he’d worn it.

It made him human in a way I didn’t want him to be.

“Ten minutes is up,” I said.

“Maya.”

“Thursday. I’ll present. You’ll listen. We’ll be professionals.” I stepped back. “That’s all I can give you.”

“That’s not all you want to give me.”

“That's all I can do.” I held his eyes. “Those aren’t the same thing. You of all people should know that.”

That landed somewhere. I saw it.

“Goodnight, Lucas,” I said, and I turned for the elevators before my face could betray me, before the pull in my chest could win.

I almost made it.

“Maya.”

I stopped. Didn’t turn.

“I’m not going to chase you,” he said. “I don’t chase. But I’m also not going to pretend it didn’t happen, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t see you across a conference table. So you can build whatever wall you want.” A pause. “I’ll just be standing on the other side of it. Politely.”

I got in the elevator without answering.

My hands were shaking again. I watched them in the brushed steel of the doors and I told them to stop and they didn’t listen.

I rode up eleven floors thinking about the word inconvenient and how he’d said it like it was the most honest thing he’d told anyone in years.

I got home, kicked off my shoes, and finally let myself breathe.

Then my phone buzzed.

A text. Not from Lucas.

From Sophia. Three messages, fast, one after another.

Maya called me.

Did you know Evan’s telling people stuff?

He’s saying you’ve been seeing some rich guy. Says that’s why you really left him.

I stood in my dark apartment with my coat still on and read it three times, and the floor did that thing again, that tilt, the one I was getting sick of.

Of course. Of course Evan had found a way to make it a story. The one thing I’d sworn I wouldn’t become.

Another buzz.

A fourth message.

He’s naming Lucas Hartwell.