Page 8 of Shame

“Yep.”Do not call—“No.” I clear my throat. “I need to take some time away from the office.”

Now it’s his turn to say okay. He doesn’t ask why.

I swallow hard.I need you to tell my brother.“I don’t want to tell anyone just yet.”

“Understood.”

Ask me why. Make me say it.“I’ll be accessible on my phone and I’ll take my laptop home.”

“Sure.”

“Alex can take any venture capitalist meetings we can’t move.”

He nods. “You spoke to him already?”

The way he looks at the door, I realize my friend is in the building.

Did I tell him that I broke Grace’s heart? Fuck no. “He’s here.” It comes out like a flat statement. Does Cameron interpret that as a positive answer to his question? “I haven’t spoken to him yet. Can you tell him I need to see him.”

Another flat statement. I haven’t been able to ask a single question properly sinceCaitlyn Jobst called?

I’m broken.

I’ve broken both of us.

“Give me five minutes to return these messages, first. Then tell him I need to see him.”

Cameron leaves, closing the door behind him.

I’m alone with the messages, and I dig for a lighter in my bottom drawer. Next to the pack of smokes I keep for when someone needs to go up to the roof and have a Come to Jesus moment about taking their business public.

I burn the message, watch her name curl into dust.

Then I open an incognito browser, go to a web email account I will delete as soon as I send one final message, and I email my former lover a short, curt note telling her we have nothing to talk about. We both knew the deal. What we had was disposable—we just both assumed it would be her who disposed of me when I stopped being useful to her.

We can’t speak again. What we did was a terrible mistake and I regret hurting my wife.

Even as I type that, my fingers clench against the keyboard. I don’t want to bring Grace up here. I never wanted those two parts of my life to exist in the same space.

I was a fool.

A red haze blurs my vision as I try to figure out how to delete the stupid account. I close it, telling myself I’ll do it after I talk to Alex.

Then I close my computer only for my gaze to fall on my leather journal, where I keep a cryptic record of everything in my life.

Including my affair, sometimes.

Yesterday, I’d scribbled down the time and her initials. I rip that page out and light it on fire, too, watching it burn. I repeat that for a few other pages I can find.

It occurs to me I should burn the whole thing, but that size of a fire might set off the sprinklers and someone might report my erratic behaviour to the exchange commission.

Just what we need. Another Preston meltdown to send the Bay Street whisper network into top gear.

Fuck, what a mess.

A knock at the door is followed by it swinging open. Only one person isn’t afraid of what will happen when they stroll into my office uninvited—a man who is closer to me than my own brother, better than me by half, and smart enough to have walked away from this life before it ate it him alive.

Alex sniffs as he settles casually into the chair across from my desk. He’s wearing jeans and a blazer, with a leather messenger bag strapped across his body. He looks more like a hip marketing executive than the business shark he once had been—or the elusive writer he had since become. “Do you smell smoke?”

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