Page 46 of Enemy Boss

“One day you will find out the truth of what happened with this,” she tells me. “And you will learn that I did nothing wrong. When that happens, and you see what you’ve thrown away, I hope it hurts you even half as much as it’s hurt me.”

She doesn’t give me a chance to reply to that -what would I say even if she did? She just turns away from me and storms off across my office to the door. She doesn’t look back – she just leaves my office, slamming the door behind her, leaving me alone with nothing but the echo of her leaving my life.

I’m horrified to find that I’m close to tears myself as I watch her leave me, but I’m not going to let her do that to me. She has done enough bloody damage, caused me enough pain. I get up and go to the window and look outside, trying to calm myself down. It doesn’t work and I turn around and slam my fist into the wall. It hurts like a bastard and when I look down, I have broken the skin on my knuckles, but I feel better, calmer, and the urge to cry seems to have gone away so I reckon that it was worth losing a few bits of skin over.

I stalk back to my seat and force myself to concentrate on that damned invoice I’m meant to be approving. I manage to get it done and I go to lift the receiver of my desk phone to find out what appointments I have today, but I stop, my hand hovering above the phone. Of course, there’s no one to answer my call or my question.

I look for myself at my calendar and there is nothing pressing enough that it can’t be rearranged, and I send a message to the main reception desk asking one of the receptionists to clear my schedule for the day as I’m going to be out of the office. I almost add a note to say Max had to go home sick because I know they’ll be wondering why I’m asking them to do her work for her and I’m not ready to tell anyone she’s been sacked because then they’ll ask why, and I don’t have the heart to talk about that today. I decide against the note. Let them wonder. It’s my company and I don’t owe anyone an explanation.

Chapter 35

Cullen

After five minutes, I get a message back saying my schedule is cleared and of course there is no note asking why I needed the task done by them. God, losing Max has really shaken me up. I have never before considered that someone might question why I need something done at work by them instead of someone else. And I have certainly never thought about explaining to the receptionists where my secretary is if she’s not at her desk. But then again nothing like this that has rocked my world completely has ever happened, so I guess that makes sense.

I know I’m not going to get any work done today and I also know if I stay in the office, I will keep trying to do something useful rather than just sitting here staring into space, and I’m likely to fuck something up and I can really do without having to come in early tomorrow to fix whatever crap I cause today. I shut down my computer, grab my jacket, and leave the office. It’s the best decision for me both personally and professionally.

It’s only when I get in my car and start the engine up that I realize I can’t go home. Not yet. I told Max to go and get her shit from my house and the last thing I want to do is run into her there. I don’t feel like eating so that rules out sitting in a restaurant and it’s far too early in the day for me to be drinking or sitting in a bar so, where can I go?

I could go and see my mom, but she would ask questions and it would all come out about Max and me and she would be so excited that me and her best friend’s daughter were a thing, but then when I told her how it ended, it would only upset her, and I don’t want to risk ruining her friendship with Max’s mom. It’s not her fault things went to shit with us. I could go and see Liam and just tell him that I don’t want to talk about what’s wrong, and I know he would accept that and leave me to stew in silence, but I really don’t want to be around anyone right now.

Usually, if I want to go somewhere quiet and think, I go to the little sandy beach on the banks of the river not far from home, but I have taken Max there now and I think that place is now ruined for me unfortunately. It certainly wouldn’t be the place for me to sit and try not to think about Max. I would feel like I could see her sitting there beside me, hear her laughter, taste her kiss. It would be the opposite of what I want.

I could go to the gym or for a walk or something physical. That always helps when my mind is running a mile a minute, but I can’t exactly do either of those things in my suit and work shoes, and I can’t go home to change, because if I could go home, then I wouldn’t have this problem at all.

In the end, I drive out to the nearest mall and sit in the parking lot for an hour. I would have just stayed in the office parking lot but that would have looked really weird to staff members and clients coming and going.

Finally, I think the time I have been away should be enough for Max to have been in and out of my place and I start my car’s engine and head over there. If I see her car in the vicinity, I will just keep driving down my street and go somewhere else for a bit longer.

I get to my street and the coast is clear. I let myself into my house, stopping to pick up a key from the floor. Max must have been for her stuff then and given it back in when she was done. I drop the key in my jacket pocket, and then, despite already knowing she has been and gone, I still go upstairs and check in the bathroom. All of Max’s stuff is gone and while that should please me and let me relax knowing I’m not going to be ambushed by her unexpectedly, it just makes me sad. It’s a visual reminder that she’s gone from my life.

I go into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. I curl up on my side and get comfortable. I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of the day, but I figure if I’m just going to mope around thinking of Max – and that is looking pretty likely, I’ll be honest - then I might as well be comfortable while I’m doing it. I close my eyes, thinking I might be able to have a nap, but sleep eludes me and all I see when I close my eyes is Max. Her smile, her laugh, the face she pulls when she is about to climax, the way her hips seem to have been made for my hands to hold onto, her beautiful breasts and of course, her pussy. How can I not think of that. How can I not think of the way it felt wrapped around my cock, and how it tightened when I made her come. How can I not think of how I told her that if I fucked her one more time, she was mine and how she agreed to the terms, knowing that she wasn’t ever going to be mine. Not really.

I don’t know how to stop thinking about her, but I figure having my eyes closed is making it easier for me to picture her and so I open them and concentrate on the pattern on my feature wall instead. It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. It was never going to work. I’m going to torment myself whether I’m lying down, sitting up, have my eyes open or my eyes closed. It’s just the way I am. I will torment myself, obsess over every little detail of a thing until finally, I have picked it apart enough that I can let it go. I know this is what I do and yet I still try to fight the process and save myself the heartache.

I still find it so hard to align the Max who I was falling in love with and who I’m sure felt the same way about me, and the Max who would backstab me like this. I can’t fathom out why she waited until now. OK, so the McPherson deal was a big deal, and I can understand why she took that opportunity when it came along, but it’s not like she knew it was coming, so why did she wait? Why didn’t she sell me out when she openly hated me rather than making me like her first? There were plenty of other smaller, but still more than respectable, client accounts she could have leaked.

It’s like trying to make two different people into one. Maybe she has an evil twin I think to myself, but I don’t laugh. I can’t laugh because as absurd as that is, I still want it to be true. How fucking pathetic is that?

I sigh and force myself to stop trying to make excuses for Max, for either of her personalities. The thought of making two different personas into one whole person makes me think of something else, something I feel is important, but the thread of the thought drifts away from me before I can grasp it. I don’t suppose it was anything other than my mind finding another way to torture me anyway. I should probably be grateful to just let it float away like that. But I can’t quite let it go. I don’t know why but I keep musing on it for a moment, but nope. Whatever it was that piqued my interest has gone and doesn’t seem to be in any rush to be coming back.

I push the idea away, not wanting to be stuck with some mental equivalent of an ear worm – would that be called a brain worm or something else? - all day. I feel bad enough without letting something like that get underneath my skin too. I close my eyes again, sick of staring at the wall now, and I force myself to picture anything but Max’s face or body or voice or any part of her.

Her face is replaced by two colorful circles in my mind’s eye. The circles float over each other and then fit together in perfect harmony, two parts of one whole. I still don’t know what this is trying to tell me, but it’s distracting me in a fairly harmless way seeing shapes floating around and slotting together and I stop thinking and just watch the shapes float. It’s actually kind of soothing.

Or at least it is until it hits me moments later what this is all about. I was thinking about there being two sides to Max – the one that loved me and the one that betrayed me. But it’s not like I didn’t know in advance that she was two personas. She was Lucy in the office and Max out of it.

That was the thread that has been tickling at me, and that’s what those shapes represented, two sides of the same coin that put together so easily although on the surface, they appear to be different. I get that, but why it is significant I don’t know. Maybe my brain is just trying to be all clever and drawing the comparison between her being so two-faced and her actually having two different personas. Except that doesn’t feel right. And it still doesn’t feel right that Max betrayed me. Despite the evidence, it just doesn’t feel like something she would do. Would it be something that Lucy would do?

Oh no. I am not going there. I am not going to start to think that Max has some sort of split personality disorder and the Max I love and the Lucy that betrayed me are two different people living inside of the same body.

My rambling thoughts still try to tell me that these two things are linked, the idea of the shapes slotting together and Max and Lucy slotting together, but I don’t know how, and I don’t care. I’m done thinking, done analyzing, done trying to keep that spark of hope alive. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling and then I close my eyes again.

It seems that all I needed to do to find out why these random thoughts keep niggling at me is to let them go, because out of nowhere, the answer slams into me and I sit up abruptly. Two halves of the same person – Lucy at work, Max everywhere else. Not two different personalities, but two identities. Two identities that Max made damned sure to keep separate from each other, and the email that Bill had sent me. I was sure it was … could it be … was it signed off as Max, because if it was, that would mean Max hadn’t actually sent that email?

No. I’m clutching at straws again, and I have to let this go. The email was obviously signed off by Lucy or I would have noticed at the time (but would I? And why would Bill tell me the email was from Max if it was signed by Lucy? It’s not like he knows her and knows her nickname) and I’m just seeing it in my head now as Max because that’s how I think of her both in and out of the office. And lets’ face it, now I have come up with this theory, it’s what I want to see, what I want to believe. I am sure there is some logical explanation for Bill using the name Max not Lucy. I mean right now, if my life depended on it, I couldn’t think of one, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

It doesn’t matter one way or the other now anyway, because for better or for worse, I have found my spark of hope still burning somewhere and I intend to cling to it and protect it. I’m not willing to let it go out until I’m certain I’m wrong, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t think I am wrong. I get up and leave my bedroom. By the time I start down the stairs, I’m more convinced than ever that I’m right about this, and I’m jogging. I tell myself I can’t put too much faith into this because if I allow myself to believe it whole heartedly and then I’m wrong, it will break my heart all over again. But it’s too late for that. Adrenaline is pumping through my body, and I am a man on a mission now.

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