No one had noticed me yet. In fact, they were in such a state, they didn’t even seem to notice the giant hole in the wall where the window was supposed to be—outlined now in a few stray coffee beans and a jagged square of glass.
“Funny you should bring that up!” Ella spat. “You’d think that after how you and your precious publicist BEGGED me to come date you—”
“Begged you?!”
“—this wouldn’t be the first time I was seeing this place! I mean, come on Nick! How the hell could you possible say no to these?!”
At this point, she lifted up her shirt. I considered retreating back into the elevator.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Nick whirled around, facing the opposite direction as he pressed his fists into his eyes. “For the last time—put your fucking clothes on!”
“Or what?!” She sashayed forward—a snake, ready to strike. “You’ll fire me the way you fired Bradley? The way you started shouting when you walked in on us, you’d think it hadn’t already been over five years—”
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
It was at this point that I stepped forward, out of the frozen elevator. Both people stopped shouting the second they saw me—staring at me in surprise. Then Ella got right back into it at the top of her lungs, while Nick picked up his coat and headed for the door.
“That’s it,” he muttered as he stormed past me, into the elevator I’d just left, “I can’t do this anymore.”
My eyes grew wide, and without thinking, I rushed back in after him—leaving Ella to her destructive rant. “Nick, wait!”
The sound of my voice steadied him for a second, and he stopped pressing the button for the lobby long enough to look up into my eyes.
For the second time in less than a minute, I froze dead still.
I’d never seen him look like that before. Not once. There was not an ounce of that playful humor that always sparkled in his eyes. Not a single inch of leniency.
This fake relationship was done. There was absolutely no fighting it. And to be honest, no matter how well it had been going (on a professional level), I couldn’t help but be relieved. It had hurt to see him go through it, even if it was an unspoken competition between us. It had hurt to photo-shop out those grimaces and replace them with smiles.
Nick didn’t deserve that. No matter how much it might help the company. No matter how fiercely it was demanded by his father.
No—it was finished. Miss Ella Campbell would not be coming back to this place. One way or another, I would see to that.
The best I could hope to do in the meantime, was minimize the damage along the way.
“What is it, Abby?”
The question caught me off guard. I realized I must have been staring for a long time. But his tone caught me off guard as well. It also quite simply broke my heart.
He sounded sad.
All at once, two emotions warred up inside me. The desire to hold him and comfort him until I could coax out that sparkling smile. And the desire to grab Ella Campbell by the hair, and throw her out the hole in the window right after the coffee maker.
“Just...wait,” I breathed, unable to take my eyes off of him. “Can you do that for me? I just need a minute up here. Just one minute
. Can you go down into the lobby and just...wait?”
He stared at me for a second, shoulders rising and falling as he took deep, steadying breaths. Then he abruptly turned away and hit the button again.
“Fine.”
I stepped out of the elevator immediately.
“Thank you.” I tried to get him to catch my eye. “I’ll see you in just a minute. I’m going to clear all of this up, Nick, I pro—”
But the doors shut, and he was gone.
“Well it’s about time!” an impatient voice drawled from behind me. “Abigail Wilder, you are not going to believe what just happened to me.”