Page 51 of My Forbidden Boss

She inches to the couch, using a walking frame for people fifty years older than her. Beneath her bulky clothing, I see she’s lost weight. Before I leave, I’ll restock the pantry, check her meds and make sure she’s able to live for another couple of weeks.

Because I have to go back. Have to keep up the facade.

The kicker was I had been about to tell David about Max today. About stealing from Blue Sky. About me being a stand-in for his actual employee. About everything and now I have to lie no matter how much I wish things could be different.

I give myself a deadline. Two more weeks to find something I can give Max that will make him leave me alone forever. I need leverage for Mom. She can’t go on living like this. I’ll get her a better future, even if it means the end of mine.

My cell vibrates and David’s name pops up on the screen. Balls of barbed wire fill my stomach and scrape the hollowness. He won’t stop ringing until I answer the call.

“I’ll be a minute, Mom.” I step into the hallway and move away from our apartment, ignoring the rap music blasting through the neighbor’s door and the bags of fetid rubbish outside the next apartment. It’s impossible to know how long they’ve been there, but the rat running away from the chewed through plastic tells me it’s been at least a week.

I’ll make this easy for David. He shouldn’t have to think of an excuse. I can provide this small mercy. “Hey David.”

“Adeline. Where are you?” He sounds worried. I close my eyes, pretend that this is my forever, then kill that dream. No use prolonging what I’ll never have.

“I had to come back home to check up on Mom,” I say.

The pause fills with thickness. “Is she ill? You didn’t tell me.”

I kick myself. He thinks Maddy’s life is mine. Her Mom is well and fine. She’s married to a man she loves, in a beautiful house with her family. “Oh, she…she has a stomach bug, and I came back to help dad with the house for the weekend. She rang me after...” I choke and no more words come out because what can I say? After Samantha dropped the baby-bomb in your lap? True and accurate. She has non-negotiable proof.

“I’m sorry, Adeline. I didn’t know Samantha would pull that on me in Ricardo’s,” David says.

“She’s pregnant with your child, David. I think she can do whatever the hell she wants when she wants,” I say.

“I want to see you. Talk to you about it,” David says.

“I’m really busy this weekend,” I say. He owes me no excuses or explanations and I don’t have it in me to hear them.

“Samantha might be pregnant with my child, but it’s you I want, Adeline.” David’s voice is all need and husk. He says the magic words. Words I could only dream of being said to me, but it’s wrong.

He can’t want me. He won’t want me and when he finds out what I’m doing to him, he’ll need someone. That someone has to be Samantha. He’ll have a family. People who care about him. Samantha will give him everything he needs.

“You need to think about Samantha and your…baby,” I say, words like ash on my tongue.

“I have thought about Samantha. I’ve been in contact with Sophie this afternoon. Samantha will receive a very generous allowance that will cater to her every need,” David says.

“What about the baby?” I ask.

“The contract outlines my visiting rights as a parent. The child is mine. I’ll be a father no matter who the mother is,” he says.

The baby is a concept now, but after it’s born and David holds his own flesh and blood, things will change. What he thinks is important now won’t be. This argument will be dust in the wind.

It’s up to me to acknowledge what he can’t.

“You and I both know this is wrong.” I put my hand on my chest, startled to find it still intact and not shredded to pieces. I swallow around a hard, hot lump. “That we’re wrong.”

Oh, how easily the lie slides off my tongue, and I say it in a way that makes me believe myself. I’m shaking inside. A quivering mess that wants to tell my mouth to shut up. To take what I can when I can get it. Affection is a commodity, and the trade is in my favor for once, but I clamp my lips shut as the words impact against my teeth. The gates are shut and no way can I back down.

“We’re not wrong. We’re fireworks together,” David says.

God, why is he making this so hard? Because that’s exactly what we are. We’re bright lights exploding in an inky dark sky. Splashes of color filling in the void of emptiness. My palms sweat and I toy with the thought that maybe I should come clean and tell him everything now. Show him exactly who I am. He may forgive me. There may be a way around everything working against us. It’s a big if, but there’s a chance and chances are rare. They are the unicorns of my life, but Mom pokes her head out of the door and asks me if I’m alright and it slams my perspective back into place.

I glance at Mom as I say, “I…have to go. I’m…not good for you, David.”

“Don’t say that, Adeline. Don’t do this to us,” David says.

“There is no us. There never really was. I…I’ve got to go. Mom needs me. Have a good weekend, Mr Chandler. I’ll see you at work on Monday morning.”

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