Page 61 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Zac snarled and swung his fist.
Chloe screamed.
But Oliver dodged neatly, and before anyone else knew what was happening, he had Zac in a choke hold, pinned to the ground. It all happened in a flash.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Chloe said. This was not a situation where she wanted one of them to win and the other to lose. She just wanted it to stop, to rewind the night and make it all go away.
“I’m not actually choking him,” Oliver said. “He’s just immobilized, and I’m going to keep him like this for a minute until he calms down and promises not to launch himself at me again.”
“Screw you.” Zac struggled to free himself.
“It won’t work,” Oliver said. “I’m a second-degree black belt. I can stay here all night like this if you want.”
After a few more cursory attempts to wriggle free, Zac realized he really was trapped, and he spat at Oliver but gave up trying to escape.
Chloe looked back and forth between the two men in her life. What the hell was she supposed to do?
But she couldn’t leave it up to them. She had to be the one to decide.
“Oliver…” she said. “I think you’d better go home.”
“What? And leave you with him?”
“You hear that?” Zac said. “She chose to stay with me.”
Chloe sighed. “Actually, I’m not staying at all. I’m just making sure you both leave separately so there isn’t another fight as soon as I turn my back. Oliver, you go first. Please. Then once you’re gone, we’ll wrap things up here.”
Oliver chewed on the inside of his cheek. But then he released Zac, and Oliver got up off the ground in one fluid, graceful motion. Chloe couldn’t help being mesmerized for a second. It reminded her of an old Bruce Lee quote, “Be like water.”
“I’ll, um, talk to you later, okay, Clo?” Oliver asked.
She nodded. She didn’t know when that would be, though, because her mind was a hurricane, whirling through what had happened tonight.
Chloe felt Zac’s eyes, watching her watch Oliver as he walked away. She hated that Zac had had to suffer tonight, and she wanted to touch him and assure him everything would be okay.
But she couldn’t, because she also felt the gravitational pull of Oliver, like her soul wanted to follow him off this roof and into the elevator. There was a reason they’d found each other again and again here in New York.
Chloe closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Oliver was gone.
“Did it really have to be him?” Zac asked, rising and attempting to brush clean his ruined tuxedo shirt. Julie was standing a short distance from them, still filming.
Chloe shook her head and sighed.
“I can’t talk about this right now, Zac. I think… we should call it a night.”
Oliver
Unbelievable.
As Oliver rested his head on the window in the back seat of the town car, that was the only word he could think of to describe the evening.
Chloe, like a mirage, stepping into the ballroom in that blue gown. The rightness of being close to her when they danced. The touch of her skin beneath his hands.
And Zac throwing a punch at Oliver’s face.
Oliver groaned as he remembered that Julie had recorded the short-lived fight. That would be all over the company Slack channel by the end of the night, and he could already imagine the staff starting betting pools for a future brawl, with people cheering on Team Zac or Team Oliver. It was exactly the kind of break room gossip he loathed, and now Oliver would be at the center of it.
