Page 16 of Hard to Forgive

Maybe I didn’t need to channel my inner Eli.

I gave him what I hoped was a bored expression. “Yes.”

“What apps are you looking at? I wanted to try to fit what you’re doing in with what I’m doing. Why pull up more data than we need, right?”

I sighed heavily and listed off the apps I’d begun pulling data from. I kept my tone as bored as possible, because maybe if I only answered exactly what he wanted to know, he’d get the memo and leave me the hell alone. It worked, because ten minutes later he was sauntering back to his desk.

And I do meansauntering. He strutted like he’d made some kind of forward strides in getting past my dislike of him. Or maybe he strutted like he owned the place. All I knew was that it made me hate him a little more.

Especially when he settled back in next to Isabel and leaned over to her. I watched a little too hard as he whispered something, and they both started laughing. It reminded me of high school all over again. Suddenly breathing was a bit more difficult.

I was completely wrong when I told Sebastian I could handle this.

I couldn’t.

But I couldn’t ask to be reassigned either. This was the kind of project everyone in the company dreamed about. It was one that was going to make Brighton a lot of money. More than that, it would determine the quality of assignments the team got moving forward.

If the rumors were true and this was supposed to be some kind of star squad like Conner had suggested during yesterday’s meeting, then walking away could be career suicide. I was going to have to make this work.

It would just be so much easier if Silas would stop coming over to bug me, leaving behind the ghost of his cologne and awakening memories I wanted to forget.

6

“I think you shouldleave him alone,” Isabel piped up after two days of me trying to get Jonas to give me more than single syllable replies when I spoke to him.

It shouldn’t bother me, the fact that he was still pissed at me for what happened in high school. It shouldn’t get under my skin that he was acting like a petulant brat, but it did. It bothered me that he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was work related. It bothered me that he barely looked in my direction. He was just so prickly.

And the pricklier he got, the more I wanted to poke at him. I wanted to get a reaction from him. But maybe Isabel was right. Maybe I should stop before he bitched to Yvette and complained that I was creating a hostile work environment or something. Or maybe I should quit because he wasn’t budging.

But then, it had only been two days of trying and failing. That could hardly be considered an attempt.

“Maybe,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

She narrowed her honey brown eyes at me, and I found myself feeling chastised. It had only been a few days, and she alreadyhad that effect on me. She was sweet, and the idea of making her angry made me itch under my skin. She gave me the impression that under that sugary surface was something not to be messed with, and I didn’t want to test the theory.

“Si…” She managed to drag my nickname out across multiple syllables.

“I’ll leave him alone,” I promised her. She looked skeptical, and I buckled. “Today.”

“Silas!” The admonishment would be far more effective if she hadn’t been laughing.

“Can we focus on our work now?”

She rolled her eyes at me, as if she’d been the reason we were constantly distracted. No, that was an honor I not so proudly wore. I couldn’t stop bothering Jonas, and even when I was at my desk working, I couldn’t stop looking over at him. It seemed to piss him off. His fists were always balled up, like he was trying to keep from punching me.

He really was an intriguing person, and I wanted to know more.

Isabel opened up her laptop and pulled up the daily assignments. I hadn’t expected there to be much change from the previous day’s assignments, which had been more research into our target market. Two members of our team had been sent out into King’s Bay for informal research, polling people to discover what they liked and disliked about certain dating apps.

Personally, I thought my uncle should have hired people to do this already, but what did I know? I’d been tempted to complain about it to Isabel, but I’d decided against it. It would require confessing that my uncle was the man in the big office upstairs. Once one person knew, everyone would know and things would shift.

I wanted to have a chance to prove myself before it became common knowledge.

I read over that day’s assignment. “Ooh, something different,” I whispered excitedly to Isabel. “We all get to come up with some UI proposals.”

There were several attachments to the email. Isabel clicked on one and pulled it up. It was a summary of the data we’d each spent the past two days compiling. At least Yvette showed that she’d spent time going over everything. It hadn’t been busy work until more orders came down from upstairs. Seeing all of our work in black and white felt strangely rewarding.

Having the freedom to find ways to implement that data into something usable felt even more rewarding. There had been little room for creativity at my last position, and I was grateful to have it in this job. Maybe I had been wrong not to come straight to Brighton after university.

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