Sixteen
Back to the place where it all began.
Arlie stood in the gleaming chrome elevator, a lump in her throat and Kassidy at her side.
“I really appreciate you coming with me,” Arlie said, doing her best to sound grateful and calm rather than gutted and terrified. In her sweaty palm, she clutched the heavy key card Charlotte had been kind enough to add after-hours access to.
“As if I would have let you face this alone.” Kassidy huffed, blowing hot air from her nostrils as the muscles in her elegant jaw tightened. “After what Samuel did to you, he better hope we don’t run into him.”
Arlie was comforted by Kassidy’s fury on her behalf. And if her best friend only knew how she had omitted key portions of the events she’d relayed to her. Like the fact that Samuel had fessed up to hiring her as part of a plot to oust Mason from the company only after they’d slept together a second time.
Arlie had returned to the moment she’d left again and again. The sorrowful expression on his face had been scorched into the backs of her eyelids, hanging in the dark when she couldn’t sleep. Which had been often over the last few days.
When the initial onslaught of anger at Samuel’s revelation had burned out of her system, all Arlie felt was tired. Tired, and sad. A bone-deep, abiding ache that rolled through her like a gray fog, relieving her of all thought and reason.
Taegan hadn’t waited long.
The morning after Arlie had failed to show for their rendezvous, she’d received a text letting her know Parker Kane would be receiving a special surprise in the coming days.
Between this development and Samuel’s admission, her resigning had seemed like the only logical option. She’d given two copies of her formal letter to Charlotte and asked her to give them to Mason and Samuel after she had a chance to clear out of her office.
The elevator slowed to a stop, the familiar bing announcing their arrival on the fifteenth floor.
The doors opened on the gleaming, marbled corridor. In the dim, after-hours light, it almost looked romantic.
“This way,” Arlie said, adjusting the empty cardboard box in her arms.
“How much you want to bet that Parker Kane has a 24K gold plunger?” Kassidy said, taking in the opulence of their surroundings. She elbowed her as they walked side by side the last few feet to Arlie’s soon-to-be-former office.
Flipping on the light, Arlie set the box down on her desk, pierced by the realization that this beautiful space would soon belong to someone else. Someone who didn’t have mistakes like hers trailing behind them like acrid smoke.
“Deep breath.” Kassidy gave Arlie’s upper arm a gentle squeeze. “You left Gastronomie and you survived. You’ll survive Kane Foods too.”
“I didn’t just leave Gastronomie. I was fired.” The words tumbled from her lips, surprising her. She hadn’t had any intention of telling her friend that now.
Kassidy’s dark brows jerked up toward the neatly knotted rows of her braids. “Come again?”
Arlie felt a strange sense of relief. There was no going back now. This last artifice would be ripped away, and she would be raw, and tender, but real.
“I was being courted by a different magazine. Over dinner one night, Hugh—the marketing executive I’d been talking to—asked me about my role in tracking food aesthetic trends for a new social media feature we’d been working on. As it happened, it wasn’t me he was courting at all—he wanted to steal our idea. The other magazine went live with their social media feature first and when the features editor traced the leak back to me, she accused me of corporate spying.”
Kassidy’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Arlie agreed. “But I swear to God, Kassidy, the way Hugh was talking about it, I didn’t think I was telling him anything he didn’t already know.”
Kassidy nodded encouragingly.
“Anyway, they hired lawyers who found a clause in my confidentiality agreement they could tee off. They tee’d hard and sued me.”
“I mean, I can understand firing you, but a lawsuit? That just seems...vindictive. Especially if it was an inadvertent disclosure.”
“Well, vindictive isn’t exactly an inaccurate description where my former CMO is concerned. Or other colleagues at Gastronomie, for that matter.” Opening her filing cabinet, Arlie began removing the stacks of glossy portfolios she’d brought with her in more optimistic days.
“Jesus.” Kassidy shook her head, looking almost as tired as Arlie felt.
“We settled out of court, but it took most of what I had.” Arlie dropped the portfolios in the box and set to work pulling the few files she’d begun to assemble. “All of it, really.”
Kassidy blinked at her, eyes glossing over with tears. Arlie could count on one hand the times she’d seen her best friend cry and still have leftover fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Arlie had asked herself this same question at least a hundred times. She didn’t like the answer any more than she knew it was absolutely true.
Shame.
She was ashamed that she had let herself be so charmed. So deceived. And beyond that, as the unwealthy girl raised with very wealthy people, the idea of asking anyone in general and her best friend in particular for help pulling her ass out of a self-made fire made her want to crawl into a very deep hole.
Which was essentially what she had done after all.
“I could have helped you.” Kassidy reached out and placed her hand over the files Arlie was sifting through, forcing her to pay attention.
“You hated being a lawyer, remember? You said that you would sooner have your fingernails removed than use your considerable mental gifts litigating someone’s mistakes.”
“We’re not talking about someone,” Kassidy said, taking the files from Arlie and adding them to the box. “We’re talking about you. I’m still licensed in the state of Pennsylvania and I have contacts.”
Arlie didn’t doubt it. She’d seen firsthand how the best and brightest in every field were drawn like moths to the flame of Kassidy’s charisma and intelligence.
“As much as I appreciate the offer, what’s done is done. In any case,” Arlie sighed, feeling both heavier and lighter all at the same time, “that’s why I haven’t invited you over to my apartment lately, if you want to know the truth. Because I’m not living there anymore. I moved into a smaller place in Hunting Park. And now that this job is ending, I’ll probably lose that too.”
Kassidy wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll move in with me.”
Arlie shook her head. “I couldn’t ask that.”