Page 48 of Work with Me

“I can do commitment. All I need is a reason.” What the fuck was I saying? I’d never committed to anything except pretending I didn’t care what anyone thought about me.

She walked toward the truck. “I guess you’ve been committed to your company for a while.”

True. “More than ten years.”

“And Cooper?”

“Best friends since our first day at college.” I considered. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” She’d reached the shiny black side of the truck, and now she turned, one corner of her mouth rising.

“It’s complicated.”

“Knowing what I do of Cooper, I can imagine.”

I didn’t contradict her. Neither one of us was easy to get along with. But no matter how much I fucked up, Cooper had never given up on me, and I wasn’t about to let go of a friend like that.

The porchlight shone golden on her hair where it curled over her shoulders. Half her face was in shadow. Her lipstick was long gone, and her eyes drooped with tiredness. She looked soft and fragile though I knew she was tough as the truck behind her.

“Maybe I’ll try the boots again,” I said, like that was relevant to anything.

“You should. Though…”

“Though?”

“Not much time left before the project ends and you go back to San Francisco.”

I scuffed my sneaker on the sidewalk. “Not sure I’m going back after the project ends. Cooper hasn’t said I can.”

“You’re his partner. You let him tell you when to go and when you can come back?”

Pretty much.“He’s the smart one. I’m just the programmer.”

“You’re notjustanything.” She stepped into my space and poked me in the chest. “You’re the smart one, too. I’ve never met a more brilliant programmer. And you’re good with the team. Tyler looks up to you. You could be so much more if you’d step out of Cooper’s shadow and be the leader I know you can be.”

I looked up from my sneakers to check if she was serious. Her jaw was set, and her eyes narrowed. She believed in me.

I closed the space between us, compressing our professional distance into nothingness. She tilted her face up, and I bent mine down. Cinnamon from the pie mingled in our shared breath.

Was I really going to kiss her? Was she going to let me? Her eyelashes fluttered down to her cheeks. I was close enough to touch her smooth skin, to bury my fingers in her unbound hair. I lowered my face to hover an inch above her plush pink lips. This wasn’t like the text flirting, or even like our innuendo-laced phone call. There was no coming back from this. I inhaled the rich scent of sweet orange in her hair.

No. Squeezing my eyes shut, I stepped back. “Alicia, I—I fucked up.”

She blinked her eyes open and took in the empty space between us. She crossed her arms. “What?”

“Right before I came out to Austin. It’s why I said I couldn’t go out with you that first day. Why I can’t kiss you now.”

A tiny furrow formed between her eyebrows.

I reached out to smooth it away and stopped, shoving my hand into my jeans pocket. “There were some photos of me from the Monaco Grand Prix in the tabloids. Weston called me into his office and yelled at me about how I was a representative of Synergy, even on the weekends, and I was pissed off. Cooper was busy, and he didn’t want to hear me vent. So I went to the closest bar and got shitfaced.” I ran my hand over my beard. “There—there was this woman across the bar. She, ah, she flirted with me, and then we, ah, went out to the back alley. You know?”

Of course she didn’t know. She’d never done anything so irresponsible in her life. Still, she murmured, “Mm-hmm.”

Now for the worst part. “The next day, I went into the office and saw her there. She was one of our college interns. Callie. I swear she was twenty-one. I freaked out. I ran straight to Coop’s office and told him about it. And he—he fixed it. Made sure she was okay. She agreed it was consensual. Cooper set up a formal apology with HR there. And then he sent me here so I wouldn’t have to see her. Or so I couldn’t.”

She swallowed. “Did you want to see her again?”

“No! I mean, I’m sure she’s a great person. But it didn’t mean anything. I had no idea she worked at my company or I’d ever see her again.”

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