Page 3 of Boardroom Mask

“Another thing ladies do not do, Mr. Porter, is kiss and tell.”

“Right,” he agrees sarcastically. “That means that either you’re not a lady, or that twenty-first century ladies prefer todo anal and tell.”

He grins at me, and I let him have it. This version of me that Weston thinks he knows, the one who dates freely and hooks up raunchily without apology and has sexually deviant stories that make a grown man blush, is a character I’ve been performing so long that she almost feels real.

But she isn’t.

Because I haven’t slept with a soul in five years.

The reasons why are more complicated than celibacy or trauma or whatever neat little box a therapist would try to stuff it into. Ilikesex. I liked it before, and I’m pretty sure I’d like it again, if I dared. But somewhere between what happened and now, my body decided thatwantingandallowingare two different things. I can want someone and still freeze the second his hand tries to go to my waist. I can be turned on and terrified at the same time.

None of it means anything, though. The locked rooms stay locked. The lights stay on. The hands stay off my waist, and it’s better that way.

That’s not to say I don’t pretend. I have to; if people knew how broken I was inside, they’d be horrified. So I play the game. I go on dates and make sure Weston hears all about them. I kiss strangers—safe-looking strangers, clean-looking strangers—in bars and let them think it’s going somewhere.

And then I leave.

Every.

Single.

Time. I’ve gotten very good at the exiting part. It’s as simple as a casualOh, I really want to, but I have an early morning.The breezyRain check, yeah?that means I’ll never look in your eyes again for as long as we both shall live.

Weston doesn’t know any of this. Nobody does. Not even Rae.

“Heyo, Earth to Jillian.” Weston snaps his fingers in my face. “You just went somewhere dark. I can tell because you stopped insulting me.”

“Sorry. Tired.”

“Tired?” he repeats. “You look more than tired. You lookspooked,girl.”

I almost tell Weston about the man on the train. Then I decide it was nothing. Why bother him with it? It’s not even bothering me anymore.

It was just a creepy dude wearing sunglasses on a subway. There are probably a thousand more doing the exact same thing as we speak. I wish I’d gone up to him and said,Oh, hi. I know you’re staring at me, and I really want to do more, but I have an early morning. Rain check, yeah?

Because that way, I’d know for sure I’d never see him again.

2

JILLIAN

“And if you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones

‘Cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs”

— “Youth” by Daughter

Weston and I are chatting happily about the debacle that is his ongoing kitchen reno in the gorgeous Tribeca loft he shares with Jeremiah when my editor, Doug, leans out of his office and points a blunt, cigarette-stained finger at me.

“Pierce. Got a minute?”

It’s not really a question. Doug Hoffman doesn’t ask questions, ever, which is kind of funny for a man in our line of work. He merely barks and informs like the grouchy bulldog he is. It’d be annoying if I didn’t trust him with my life.

I toss him a thumbs-up, then grab my notebook and coffee. “Catch up with you later,” I tell Westie as I head into Doug’s glass-walled corner office.

“Try not to get fired!” Weston calls after me.

I flip him off over my shoulder without turning around. I hear him laugh and call after me, “That’s not very ladylike, Ms. Pierce!”