The silence is comfortable, turning my office into a safe zone she desperately needs.
Until a very loud thump! sounds on the main floor, followed by a slamming door.
I bolt to my feet. Easterly lunges to one side of the office, hiding herself from view.
I guess we’re both having the same thought: Vance Haydn found out somehow, and he’s coming to do his worst like the violent ticking time bomb of a psycho he is.
But when I race outside, it’s not Vance Haydn standing there looking like a wild man, a keycard dangling from his hand, his hair a total mess and his shirt collar and beard splattered with what looks like...blue ink?
It’s Roland.
Hot-eyed and wild in a way I’ve never seen him, his chest swelling frantically.
I stare at him in stunned awe.
“Roland? What’s wrong? What—”
He nearly stumbles across the room to me, cutting me off. Next thing I know, he’s got me by the arms, almost shaking me as he stares into my soul.
“Callie? Callie, fuck, you’re okay?”
“Yeah! Of course I am. W-why wouldn’t I be?” I stammer, looking up at him with my heart pounding. “I told you I was just here for work, right? Were you worried?”
Pain darts across his face—pain and guilt, carving grooves around his eyes, aging him instantly. “You haven’t seen then.”
I shake my head. I don’t understand.
“Seen what?” I whisper.
The broken look on Roland’s face tells me I should be terrified.
I just have no idea how right I am.
He pulls out his phone, tapping the screen a few times and then holding it up.
“I got the layouts on this from a mole twenty minutes ago,” he says. “Tomorrow, it goes to print. It’s already live online, I’m afraid.”
I hardly hear what he’s saying.
Because I’m staring at my own smiling face as the cover photo on an article, my eyes closed, my expression locked in dreamy bliss.
I recognize the scene. It’s one second before my lips were crushed into blissful submission by Roland’s, our bodies tangled together in that quaint Austin alleyway.
Oh, no.
Oh God, oh hell, oh shit.
In an instant I see my entire life spiraling away, sucked down the black hole that is Roland Osprey, ripped apart by the force of his gravity.
Gravity I never should have embraced.
Gravity so intense and visceral that nothing makes it through the other side alive.
Not my life. Not my career. Not my privacy.
And not my heart.
I’m paralyzed. So caught in a numb haze of horror and selfish mortification that I totally forget the girl in my office.
Until a soft, trembling voice behind me calls, “Callie? Oh my God.”
Easterly!
I turn woodenly to find her frozen in my office door, staring at Roland, her face white except for two red blotches of—disgust? Rage? I don’t even know. I’m too scrambled to read her right now—in her cheeks.
“I know you,” she strangles out, her voice cracking. “You’re...holy shit. You’re that guy who runs The Chicago fucking Tea.”
Roland drags his eyes between us, his face hardening like a tombstone.
“What the hell is she doing here—”
“You liar!” Easterly screeches, whirling on me. I have no defenses against the anger fit of a hurt girl who thinks she’s been betrayed. Tears stream down her cheeks, her face contorted in a mask of disgust, fear, outrage. “You...you set me up! All the pretty things you said—it’s all so you could sell me out to this bastard creep!”
I want to say no.
I want to tell her that’s not how it is.
I want to deny it until I’m so blue in the face I keel over.
But I’m not even sure I’d be telling the truth.
Isn’t that what Roland wanted, however justified?
And I was right on the verge of getting his fatal scoop, too.
I can’t move my lips. I can’t say anything.
I also can’t stop Easterly as she shoves past, bumps into Roland with a wounded moan, and then flees into the elevator.
Leaving us alone.
Roland works his jaw. “Callie. What the ever-living fuck was Easterly Ribbon doing in your office, and why didn’t you tell me she was the work you were taking care of tonight?”
It takes a comically long time to remember how to speak again.
“Because maybe I wanted something more than getting your story. Maybe I wanted to actually help her,” I fling back bitterly and shove his phone at him, leaving him scrambling to catch it. “But I should’ve known better. If I’d turned her over to you, she’d have ended up another headline like that.”
Talk about being my father’s daughter.
Only, this time I made my own problems.
This is what I get for forgetting who I am and falling for his charms.
Charms that vanish like morning fog, all the openness gone from his face, the warmth between us fading behind a frigid mask.
“I see your opinions of me haven’t changed,” he says coldly. “Anything else you’d like to share while you’re at it? Since you’ve clearly been keeping a lot to yourself. Secret meetings with Easterly. Your real feelings.”