Page 17 of When Worlds Collide
“It was the conference camera. I don’t know why it was even on.” Becka frowned, as if this was the first time this convenience had occurred to her.
I growled. “I fucking do. Remember who sent us the message to clean up the conference room that day?”
A shadow passed across Becka’s face as realisation struck.
“Fucking TK…”
“He knew Jihoon was still in there, and he must have known I was with you in the admin office, and obviously Celine wasn’t going to go clean the room up. It was always gonna be me – the intern. He set me up!”
“THAT FUCKING RAT!” Becka howled, then immediately shrank back down, looking down under the stalls before being seemingly confident she was still alone in the bathroom.
“Ky, what are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” I threw my hand up before dragging it back down my face. “You said I wasn’t recognisable?” I picked back up on the thread from before my realisation of Trevor Kyle’s treachery.
“Yeah, not even a little bit,” Becka rushed to confirm. “Jihoon is clear as day though. There’s several minutes of him face on to the camera, but because he stood up when you came into the room, you’re completely covered the whole time because the idol is so tall.” Becka sounded relieved, but this was still a fucking disaster.
“But there’s footage of us kissing?” I needed to hear confirmation of the full extent.
“Yeah, babes, it’s pretty obvious.”
“Is there sound?” I thought back to our flirtatious conversation, and although my memory is fuzzy…
“Are you asking me to sleep with you, Baek Jihoon?”
“Yes.”
“I would be delighted to.”
I cringed. In the moment, it had felt like a cute, flirty exchange, but the idea that everyone had heard it… made my stomach twist.
“It’s faint,” Becka admitted, “you can’t really make it out, but yeah.”
I breathed in through my nose, trying to fight the way my head was starting to throb.
“As you can imagine,” she said, “Liam Fenway is shitting a brick over the whole thing.”
Yes, considering the chief operations officer was the one to fire me – correction, allow me to resign – over the incident, I could well imagine he wasn’t happy.
“He’s basically threatened to sack anyone who breathes one single syllable of it outside of the building.”
Thank God for small mercies, I thought to myself wryly.
“I’m surprised Ji- your boyfriend,” she corrected herself, “hasn’t told you any of this.” Becka’s eyes narrowed on mine in speculation, probably seeing the stress lines I could feel carving themselves into my forehead.
“Yeah, well, there hasn’t been a lot of time to talk about it,” I replied, tiredly. Immediately, I knew this was the wrong thing to say, as Becka’s whole face twisted into a lecherous grin.
“Oh, is that right?”
“Becka…” I whined.
“Too busy getting busy?” Her eyebrows were waggling at me in a most unflattering manner.
“Becka, I swear to G-”
“Yeah, I bet you’ve been doing a lot of swearing to God. Oh, God, oh God-” she scrunched her eyes closed and moaned like Meg Ryan having an orgasm over a pastrami on rye sandwich.
Just then, Becka sat upright, eyes as wide as saucers, and I heard banging on the cubicle door, before a shout: “This is a place of business!”
