Page 52 of Work with Me

I tilted my head toward him. “You mean tonight? Going home. Movie night with Noah.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up, and I wanted to trace it with my finger. “No, I meant after this project. Have you lined up your next gig?”

“Oh. Yeah, a local hospital needs some help with their records system. A former coworker recommended me. Should take me to the end of the year.” It wouldn’t have the cachet of the Synergy project, but it’d be a paycheck. I could leverage Cooper’s recommendation for the gig after that and start moving up the ladder of big-name companies. Maybe I could even swing an assignment out of town next summer. I could finally travel the way I’d always wanted.

“Nice.” He leaned over the railing and scanned the green space below.

“What are you doing after the project?” I asked.

“We’ll have some loose ends to tie up. Let the test team have a whack at it. Then, I don’t know. It all depends on Cooper.”

“You really think he wouldn’t let you go back to headquarters if you wanted?”

“Depends.” He shrugged. “If he’s still mad at me, no.”

“Why do you let him treat you like that?” I thought back on my first day at Synergy, when Cooper hadn’t told Jackson I was coming to work on his project. “You’re partners. Equals.”

He stilled. “He’s better at the business stuff than me. Besides, he always has to fix it when I fuck up.”

“You don’t—” But then I remembered the intern. He’d said Cooper had fixed the situation for him. Still, it didn’t seem all that bad. She’d finished out her internship and gotten a recommendation. “I’m sure Cooper’s made some mistakes, too.”

“Not like mine.” He looked at me, his brown eyes full of something that made my heart go heavy. “The IPO. The night before we met with the bankers, Cooper and I went out. We got sloshed. Usually, he’s the grumpy drunk, and I’m the happy one. But for some reason—the stress of it all, I don’t know—I argued with a cop outside. Ended up in jail. Cooper’d already gone back to the hotel and passed out, and he didn’t get my message until the next day. He sprung me, but I showed up to our meeting in last night’s clothes, smelling like jail.” He wrinkled his nose at the memory. “The bankers said we had to bring on someone else as CEO. Someone they picked.” His face pinched when he said, “Weston.”

I searched his face. Would he have made a good CEO? We’d had a rough start on the project, but in the last few weeks, he’d shown true leadership. He had potential. Too bad he’d put so much effort into trying to prove he didn’t care about a company he clearly loved. I put a hand on his arm. “You haven’t fucked up anything here. You’ve been great with the guys. A leader. You could be so much more.” I wanted to sayif you’d stop letting Cooper keep you down,but he might not be happy if I told him what I truly thought of his best friend. I’d have clawed the eyes out of anyone who tried to say a word against Tiannah.

“You’ve made me a better programmer. A better leader.” He faced me, his brown eyes earnest, demanding. “We work well together. Admit it.”

“We do.”

He tilted his head. “I thought you’d disagree with me.”

“No. I don’t lie. I tried it when Melissa—my sister—was sick. I tried to tell her she’d be fine, she’d recover, and we’d go back to doing everything we used to do. It was what I hoped, anyway.” I stared out at the river, flowing sluggishly toward the Gulf. “She told me I was full of shit, and she didn’t have enough time left to waste it listening to me.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Melissa didn’t have a lot of patience for lies—either those we tell others or those we tell ourselves. It’s why I got Noah. She never forgave our mother for staying with our dad so long. Waiting for him to leave us.” I swallowed with difficulty. Where had all that come from? I never talked about Melissa. Certainly not to work colleagues.

“I think she’d be proud of you now. For breaking out. For starting your own business. Don’t you?” He put a hand over mine, still resting on his arm.

“It’s part of the reason I did it. For her. And for Noah. To show him we Webers can do anything we set our minds to.”

He squeezed my hand. “Alicia, I—”

“Hey!” The shout came from below us, and I snatched back my hand. Tyler stood on the grass, a red cup in his hand. “Party’s down here, you two!”

I set a hand over my racing heart. Had he seen me touching Jackson in a not-so-coworkerlike way?

“We’re on our way,” Jackson shouted down. “Just needed the fresh air.”

Tyler held up his cup in a toast and then trudged around the corner of the building toward the music.

“I should head home.” I picked up my jacket and shook it out, willing my cheeks to cool.

“One beer. You can have one beer with me. With the team.”

A beer sounded good on a Friday after writing all that code. After the soul-baring we’d done. “One beer with the team.” I shot him a teasing smile. “You can be there, too.”

“You’ve made me the happiest nerd in Austin.” He crooked his elbow at me. “Shall we?”

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