Page 73 of The Wrong Boss

“It’s— Cole, it’s complicated.”

“Hasn’t it always been complicated?”

She smiled, shook her head, then put her hands over her face. “Cole. You’re making this so hard.”

Gently, I pried her hands away so I could look at her face. “There’s only one thing that’s hard right now…”

She barked out a laugh and swatted at me. I grinned back at her, wanting more of that laughter. Instead, I had the impression that Carrie wanted to cry. But wasn’t it good that we’d found each other? That we shared the same feelings? That we wanted each other?

Something was wrong. Why was something wrong?

“Carrie,” I coaxed, nudging my nose against hers. I pressed a kiss to her lips, and she kissed me back. “Don’t look at me like that. Whatever happens, we can figure it out. I’m not one of those guys who’s afraid of dating a single mom.”

Her eyes slid shut. The sigh that slipped through her lips was jagged around the edges, and still I failed to understand what was troubling her. “Kiss me again,” she whispered. “That always makes me feel better.”

I did—and then did a lot more than kiss. When she clung to me and cried out my name, the sadness was gone from her eyes. I relished the feeling of her fingernails across my back. I claimed her lips, her body. I wanted to claim her heart and soul too.

She tightened her grip on my biceps and said, “Cole, I’m close—I’m close again. Oh?—”

I watched the ecstasy overtake her features, and I drove myself into the cradle of her body, my own pleasure approaching its peak. This was the woman who had changedthe direction of my life. She was the one who’d made me feel alive again. She was the one who… She was The One.

“You’re mine, Carrie,” I growled, movements jagged and rough. “Say it. Say you belong to me.”

“Yours,” she breathed. “Yours, yours, yours.”

Her body clenched around mine. My pleasure peaked. I’d found her—after all these years, with everything that had stood between us, I’d finally found her.

I wasn’t going to let her go.

TWENTY-NINE

CARRIE

I hadn’t takenmyself for a gigantic coward, but the last two days of the retreat proved me wrong. I was afraid of losing this tiny slice of happiness that had finally befallen me.

It had been so long.So long.

The last time I remembered doing something reckless and selfish—which continuing this romance with Cole definitely was—was in college before meeting Derek. Those late nights with a few bottles of wine and a handful of girlfriends, the ones we’d spent doubled over with laughter while we gossiped and dreamed and were silly young twenty-somethings. The days I’d skipped classes and gone for a long walk in the botanical gardens alone with my thoughts. The time Hailey and I had crashed a party and pretended to know the birthday girl, only to run away cackling when we were found out.

Then Derek had happened, and my life shrank. As soon as I dragged myself out from under his thumb, I found myselfpregnant, alone, and broke. The last decade of my life—almost my entire adult existence—had been an exercise in survival.

Cole gave me an alternative. When he tipped his head from the other side of the dining room with a glint in his eye, my heart began to gallop and I forgot about my worries, about the future, about the big, Evie-sized secret that I was hiding from him.

In those moments, all that mattered was the feel of his palm against mine as he dragged me to an empty storage room. I became addicted to the taste of his lips, the press of his hands against my body, the feeling of clothes being shoved aside any which way so we could chase the pleasure that plagued us.

It was dishonest and cowardly and selfish. And I couldn’t stop.

“You’re so beautiful,” he’d tell me, his lips against my skin, and I’d believe him. “My girl,” he’d pant, gripping my chin as he watched me come. “Mine.”

And it was true—I was his. For those short few days, I belonged to Cole, body and soul. I cleaved myself in two so that I could be the woman who had a tryst in back rooms with her boss while also being the mother who called her daughter and practiced spelling bee words an hour later.

Maybe it was because I knew this happiness wouldn’t last that I was so desperate to experience it. Just this once, I wanted something that was perfect and beautiful and mine. I wanted the image of Cole looking at me like I was the only woman who mattered. I wanted the taste of his skin and the shape of his body embedded into my psyche, because I knew that all I’d have after this ended were memories.

The night before we flew back to New York, Cole knocked on my door. I opened it and smiled at him, and we said no more than a handful of words to each other before the bed dipped beneath our weight. He framed my face with his hands and kissed me slow and deep.

“I can’t believe you’re real,” he whispered, running his lips along my jaw. “I can’t believe I found you again.”

Words stuck to my throat. I couldn’t believe it either, but the reality looming ahead of me was beginning to bear down on me. Instead of answering, I turned my face toward his and caught his lips in mine. We made love then, and maybe it was the first time that I realized everything I was losing. Everything I’d already lost.

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