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No, he didn’t forget anything. He was there to see me.

He was there to invite me out for a drink.

I said yes, and told myself I was only doing it because I didn’t want to piss him off—not when we were trying to win him over as a client.

That was bullshit, of course.

I don’t know why I needed an excuse to justify accepting his invitation, but telling myself that I was doing it for my team—and, effectively, my career—seemed easier than admitting how insanely attracted I was to him.

Maybe things would have developed differently if I had been more honest with myself.

Maybe I would have been smarter about my actions in the weeks that followed that fateful day.

Maybe it would not have ended with me humiliated and out of a job.

Maybe.

I can’t change the past, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to even if I could.

Because despite everything, Cain Hewett was the best thing that ever happened to me. He showed me things I never knew I craved. He read me like an open book, understanding even the smallest of signals, even when I wasn’t aware of sending them. He mesmerized me, he governed me, he owned me in just the right way.

For a very short period of time, he was everything to me—even though we never said those magical words to each other. I never spoke of love because I didn’t think those words could do justice to what was happening between us. It wasn’t dating. It wasn’t infatuation.

It was an awakening.

An awakening that ended just as abruptly as it began, with an unexpected bang, a shock to the system—and it forever changed my life.

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