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“Who even knows? And whose fucking business is it, anyway?” Anger fueled his words, but his rational mind was taking over. I glanced at his face, saw the dawning understanding there.
“It doesn’t look right,” I told him. “It makes it hard for me to be at work, to feel like I can hold my head up in meetings. I feel like a fake, Oliver. I can’t stand having people talking about me.”
“Tell me who’s talking, and I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t think this works that way. You can’t fire or demote everyone your girlfriend doesn’t like.” I let myself stare at his chiseled face for a long moment more as we both remembered the analyst he’d demoted after I told him how he’d taken a position over me. My brain had kept spinning around the only clear answer, and my stomach turned as I gave the thought a voice. “I think we need to stop seeing somuch of each other. Maybe work harder to keep it away from the office.”
Oliver’s mouth pressed into a tight line. “I won’t let the opinions of other people determine what I do or don’t do.” The words were like steel.
I sighed. How could I make him understand that our situations were completely different? “That’s easy for you,” I said. “Don’t you see that? You’re the CEO. And you’re a man. Things just roll off your shiny reputation, but it doesn’t work that way for women. Especially at a company like this one.”
“Like this one . . .” Oliver repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Where you don’t get the job unless you have a dick. Where men do the deals, where men make the decisions.”
He shook his head once. “I hate that you think Cody works that way.”
“It does. I found that out early, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could still make a name for myself—and maybe even change things a little bit. Maybe if I’m successful it will be that much easier for the next woman who comes out of her grad program on top and wants to work for you. But I can’t do any of that if people think the only reason I’ve got the job is because of you.” I watched his face, saw his eyes clear with understanding. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t think of any other solution. I think it’d be best if we didn’t see each other.”
“At work.”
I chanced a quick look into the dark eyes, and theconfusion and pain I found there ripped my heart to pieces. But I knew I couldn’t see Oliver and work at his company. And I couldn’t leave my job. “I don’t know. Maybe at all,” I said, hating the words and feeling my heart tear apart. “For now. People would know, even if we tried to hide it. Maybe if we just take a little time . . .” It wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t know how else to make the ache of shame vanish from my gut where it had begun to burn constantly.
“You really think you got where you are because of me?” he asked.
I didn’t meet his eye, keeping my gaze on the supple leather of his dash where my fingers were tracing a line. “That’s the problem. I don’t know anymore. It doesn’t feel the way I thought it would.” I thought about the plans I’d made, the way I’d imagined I’d feel when I’d checked the first big item off my plan.
“I understand,” he said, and I felt the warmth that usually emanated from him click off like a space heater, and it was suddenly cold.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want . . .”
“I’ll drop you off a block from the building,” he said, his voice icy and stiff. “I wouldn’t want anyone to see you getting out of the CEO’s car.”
“Oliver, I?—”
His eyes had hardened to coal and he drove us to the Cody Tech campus with aggressive speed that frightened me. When he pulled over at the corner of the block that held the four Cody towers, he stared straight ahead, waiting for me to get out.
I stared at his profile, a muscle clenching in his jaw as his hands stayed on the wheel.
“This isn’t how I—I mean, I don’t want . . .” I didn’t know what to say. I felt the way I had as a kid when I’d been dared to drop my favorite Polly Pocket doll into the roiling water beneath the ferry’s railing when the orphanage had taken us on an outing to Catalina Island. The second the doll’s tiny head disappeared beneath the foamy dark waves I’d regretted it with everything inside me. And as I stood on the curb, watching Oliver’s car glide away as soon as I’d shut the door, my heart squeezed with a similar regret. What had I done?
CHAPTER 19
Oliver
Ididn’t watch Holland walk away. I drove straight past the parking garage entrance for Cody and turned around at Sunset, heading west and turning up the Pacific Coast Highway without thinking. For the entire day, I drove, focusing my attention on the lines flying under my tires, the expanse of optimistic blue on my left as I pushed the car along the curves that hugged the coast heading north. If I stopped moving, I knew, the demons I’d managed to avoid for the past month would come seeping back in around me bringing their blackness with them. And I honestly didn’t know if I would survive them again.
Holland had been my light. And even with the bright sun sliding in around me, illuminating the dust floating in the air inside the car, my mind was darkening. I ran out of gas in Cambria, pulling to a stop on the shoulder where I remained in the car for at least an hour before calling my service to dispatch a car to come get me. Something in myfucked-up mind believed that if I didn’t get out of the car, didn’t move forward or put any kind of hard stop between the car ride this morning and whatever was next, maybe I could continue to believe it hadn’t happened. But as lights pulled up behind me on the shoulder and one of the car service drivers came around to tap on my window, I had to accept it. Holland was gone. The light was out.
Anger boiled within me and I tried to tamp it down as I bit out the required words to handle the current situation.
“Get this towed back to LA, would you?”
“Of course, sir.”
I slid into the backseat of the idling Town Car and worked to keep my mind blank as I watched the sun streaking down the sky toward the water on the way back down to LA. But my mind wasn’t blank. Images of Holland, flickers of words I’d said or wanted to say, dashed across my mind. And worse, the pain of losing her was muddy, tied inextricably to other pain, other loss.
My lids slid shut and I gave myself over to the pain, sinking into a cold pool of sorrow that felt almost comfortable in its familiarity. And the old image came again, unbidden. The hand on my cheek, the bear in my hands. The car door slamming as my heart shattered.
