: Chapter 20

Almost a whole Ethan-free week had passed since our amicable, grown-up breakup.

It rolled like a holiday collage. Photoshopped family dinners at the Blacks’, exchanging acute opinions about the royal family’s best fashionistas with Lori, whispering like a schoolgirl with Katie, and braiding Clemmy’s hair as I taught her how to make ready-made cupcakes. I talked to Ronan as much as I could without monopolizing his time. I had firsthand experience when it came to dealing with a sick relative. People often preferred to avoid the sick. To converse with other family members. Those who were easier to look at, I guessed.

I learned how to ignore Amber and Julian without popping blood vessels whenever they addressed me like I was a servant. It wasn’t that difficult, actually. Amber was usually drinking herself to oblivion for social-lubrication purposes and was easy to outwit. Julian was still a snake but spent much of his time either trying to sneak meetings with Ronan or locking himself with Chase in the library, where the octaves reached a few Broadway-worthy highs, even with the doors closed.

I didn’t ask Chase about his meetings with Julian. It wasn’t my business. I knew Julian was privy to my kiss with Ethan but guessed Chase had taken care of that. I didn’t want to get involved. The more I knew, the more I got attached, and I was desperately trying to cling onto the remainder of my senses and keep my heart out of this arrangement.

My body, however, was a keen participant. Chase and I had sex like it was a competitive sport. And we were winning. In my bed and his, in the shower, in his bathtub, on the kitchen counter (his—I was no rookie), against his floor-to-ceiling windows, and on my washing machine (a personal fantasy of mine).

I kept waking up every morning telling myself that Chase Black was a temporary fix. Like a Band-Aid or SlimFast. Something to keep me occupied while I was waiting for the real thing to come. I refused to go to events with him, and when Chase mentioned something about a double date with Grant and a colleague of his (Really? That fast?), I flat-out told him there was no way I’d be seen with him in public. Those were the safety measures I was careful to take, even if the three-times-a-week sleepover rule had gone out the window.

Then a message from Ethan came. It was on the one morning I spent without Chase. At some point yesterday, I’d physically pushed him out of my apartment to ensure some me time.

Ethan sent me my azaleas back. What was left of them, anyway. The flowers were wilted, the leaves curling in gray and black at the edges, shriveling into themselves. The pot in which he kept it was coated with tar-like sand, clustered together. I held it in my arms and looked up to my windowsill, where my flowers thrived, then back to the dead azaleas again, something red and hot and angry sizzling behind my rib cage. There was a note. I plucked it out.

So sorry. Was busy keeping people alive, forgot about plant. Maybe you can save it?

Thank you for the gift, though.

—E

I thought about the dead azaleas the entire portion of the first half of my day while working on my Dream Wedding Dress. I stabbed at the sketch pad with my pencil, tearing it several times.

“What happened? Did one of your kids die?” Nina taunted from her corner of the studio once Sven was out of earshot, referring to the wilted plant. “Bad mommy, Maddie.”

I ducked my head down and continued working.

“Maddie.” Sven appeared behind my shoulder. I jumped, gasping.

“How are you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind, I’m not here for small talk. Is the sketch ready?”

“Almost.” I held it to my chest protectively. I’d grown very attached to this sketch. It meant a lot to me. I’d designed it seeing myself wearing the dress.

“Let’s see it.” He dragged a stool from someone else’s station and sat in front of me.

“Now?” I looked around, buying time.

“No better time than the present.” He pried the clipboard with my sketch from between my fingers. I sucked in a breath, feeling the walls of the studio closing in on me. My lungs were scorching, I was so nervous.

“Oh,” was all Sven said, after a full minute of silence. Oh couldn’t be good. He didn’t even drag out the h. Ohhhhh. Nope. Just the Oh. I was feeling nauseous.

Sven’s brows pulled together. “There’s a lot of detail here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You asked me to be artistic.”

“I figured you’d be sane too.” He scrunched his nose, still looking at the sketch.

“You actually used the words off the wall,” I countered, not really believing my own ears. Was I arguing with Sven? That was a definite first. I’d never challenged my boss. I suspected this was why he’d promoted me so quickly. I was his yes-woman. But not now. Not when I knew this dress was my best design to date.

Sven held the sketch out to me, his eyes finding mine. “Look, I’m not saying it’s not good, but there’s money to be made, and this season is all about simple strokes.”

“You specifically told me there are no rules to abide by.” I snatched the sketch from his hands. “And that’s exactly what I did. Everyone is going to turn up to Fashion Week with variations of the same simplistic dress, and I’m going to give them something new. Something grand. Something out of this world. You gave me this assignment because you said I was ready. Well, I am, Sven. And I love this design. Love it wholeheartedly.”

I thought about Chase’s words of encouragement. He seemed to love it. No, more than that. He was mesmerized by it. It helped my decision to stick to this sketch. Wedding dresses weren’t only about haute couture. Sometimes, they were just about seeing men—men like Chase—looking at a pretty dress and having that punch-in-the-gut feeling.

Sven stared at me long and hard. I looked right back at him. Even though it was out of character, I knew I was doing the right thing. Not only for myself but for the company.

He jerked his jaw toward my sketch. “I’ll get a lot of shit about it from the bigwigs, you know.”

I held his gaze. “It’s also off white.”

His eyes widened. “But swan white—”

I shook my head, holding my palm up. “It will sell, Sven. I promise you.”

He stood up, scratching his cheek. I thought he was shocked. I definitely was, by my own stubbornness.

“When did you become so”—he searched for the right word—“fierce?”

I smiled. “Since I found out being a pushover doesn’t equal being nice. Being strong is not only kind on myself—but on other people too.”

At half past noon, while everyone was taking their break, someone tapped my shoulder. I was still hunched over my drawing table, tongue poking out of the side of my mouth, sketching. I turned around.

Chase was standing there, lifting a white plastic bag full of containers. I could smell the pho soup and detect the paper-thin white-rice dumplings in the small plastic bowls. My mouth watered for exactly five seconds before I realized what he was doing.

I gave him a small shove, peeking to see if Nina was at her station. She wasn’t.

“Are you insane?” I whisper-shouted, feeling my eyes widening. “Someone could see you here.”

“And?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m offering you soup, not dick. The rumor mill won’t go haywire if we take lunch together.”

I realized I was being ungrateful. He’d come in with the intention of feeding me. I took a calming breath, plastering a smile on my face. “Although I am very touched by your concern, I am also very adamant no one should know about us. It is temporary, and as I said—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved his free hand like he’d heard this speech thousands of times before. “God forbid someone thinks you got dumped by the boss.”

“It’s not just that.” I gritted my teeth. He parked a hip over my drawing board, waiting for an explanation. I looked around. The studio was empty. It was one of those summer days when staying indoors felt borderline masochistic. I glanced at my phone. We had at least thirty minutes until people began to trickle back in. Plus, he was right. We were sharing food, not orgasms. I shook my head. “Fine. Only because you’re twisting my arm.”

“I’ll be twisting a lot more of you after we’re done with the main course.” He winked.

Chase quickly set the table at our kitchenette while I grabbed us two cans of Diet Coke. I told him about Ethan’s azaleas, watching carefully for his reaction. I’d visited Chase’s place a few times since I’d given him the azaleas but knew he’d gotten rid of them at some point. They were no longer on his living room table or anywhere else in the apartment. He’d failed the test he’d set up for himself. Not that it mattered—as we’d both agreed, this was just temporary.

“Flower murderer.” Chase tsked, fishing out a shrimp from his soup with chopsticks and throwing it into his mouth. “That’s a shame, considering Katie has a lady boner for him.”

“She does?” I slurped a noodle between my lips. Katie and Ethan made sense, in the same way cookies and milk did. Uninspiring but legendarily fitting. A classic. Chase frowned, and I realized he mistook my contemplation for something else.

“That an issue?” He dropped his chopsticks to his soup. I nibbled on crab cake, letting him wait. I didn’t like his tone.

“Nope,” I said finally, popping the p. Chase was still frowning. I saw the moment when he decided to drop it. Change the subject. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

“Would you accompany me to the bathroom, Miss Goldbloom?”

“Hmm.” I looked around me. The office was still empty. “You can go by yourself. I trust you’re fully potty trained.”

“I’m not sure where the bathroom is on this floor,” he said dryly.

“That is the stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard.” I stared at him, mildly amused by how much he wanted to lure me into his clutches.

He offered me a one-shoulder shrug. “I channel my working brain cells into managing a company that’s worth billions of dollars. Priorities, baby.”

“All this humblebrag,” I taunted.

“You’re right. Telling you I’m good is bad form. Allow me to demonstrate.” Chase winked, offering me his hand over the table. I took it, watching our fingers lacing together. He tugged me forward. I stood up, glancing around and rounding the table to sit in his lap. I had a great view of the elevators and could tell when they opened. It left me a three-second window to stand up. I was safe.

“That’s better.” His eyes were molten silver, darkened by lust. He rubbed his thumb across my lower lip. “Much, much better.”

Our lips met, hovering at first. Our eyelids dropped at the same time. We shared a breath. A pulse. The same heartbeat for a second. His mouth moved on mine. Patiently. Seductively. Almost sweetly. The thing about good kisses, I’d found, was that they were like good wine. They got you drunk before you realized it. They were spell-like.

“Is this HR-manual appropriate for Black & Co.?” I murmured into his lips. “Because it sure as hell isn’t allowed here in Croquis.”

“I’ve never read either, but if it isn’t, I am liable to buy Croquis just to make it so.” He kissed me again, not a trace of sarcasm in his voice. I laughed into our kiss, biting his lower lip softly.

“I should feed you more often,” he said.

“You can take care of my dinner.” I kissed him again. I knew we were treading dangerously close to getting caught, but for the life of me I couldn’t stop.

“It’s a date.”

“We don’t do those,” I reminded him. “Remember the rules?”

He pretended to roll his eyes, grabbing my ass and grinding me against his erection. “But we still do this, so let me ask you again—where’s the restroom?”

“Someone might catch us.”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know?” I nearly purred. I reminded myself of a virginal, marginally uneducated teenybopper listening to the high school’s handsome quarterback explaining to her why he could use the pullout method and not get her pregnant in the bed of his truck.

“Simple. I know everything,” Chase snapped, his face masklike.

“You’re not—” I started.

He cut me off. “A little faith, Mad. You only live once.”

Ain’t that the truth. Chase must’ve gathered his last sentence had gotten to me, because he smirked. “Come on. We don’t have long.”

I didn’t know whether he meant my lunch break or at all. More than likely, he meant both.

We raced to the restroom hand in hand. Chase banged a stall door open and tugged me inside, kissing me everywhere. I murmured something about the HR manual of Croquis and my concerns about the lack of hygiene in doing what we were about to do. Then lust won over, and before I knew what was happening, I was pressed against the door, Chase between my thighs. He unbuckled and pressed himself against me, nudging my panties away under my dress.

“I love that you wear dresses.” He kissed my nose. I snatched his lips before he moved away, devouring him passionately. “It makes you fuckable not only theoretically but logistically too. Thing is, I don’t have a condom,” he whispered into my mouth. “But I’m clean.”

“I’m on the pill and clean,” I said.

“Well, I’m about to dirty you up.”

As he entered me, the thought that I was breaking one of my very own rules occurred to me. Having sex without a condom was most definitely real-relationship territory. Then again, not having sex with him right now would likely kill me.

He entered me deeply, grabbing one of my thighs and stretching it along his body.

I threw my head back, banging it against the door, then whimpered. “I’m going to die.”

“Be a good sport and wait a few minutes. I’d really appreciate coming before I leave here.” He pushed into me harder. I laughed. He laughed too. Was it weird that we were laughing while having sex? Probably. But it was the essence of Chase and me. Whatever we had with each other was always dipped in something crazy.

Bathroom sex proved to be less sexy than advertised on TV. For one thing, we were both sweating. The industrial AC didn’t extend to the restrooms. My dress clung to my flesh like wrapping film. I looked up at Chase, surprised by the boyish vulnerability I saw on his face when he thought I wasn’t looking. The orgasm built inside me. Every time he entered me, the tip of his buckle hit my clit. I was shaking all over, not exactly sure what suspended me in the air from falling flat on my butt. Physics aside, I didn’t want this to end. Ever. And that frightened me.

“Come, Mad,” he groaned.

“No.” I kissed the curve of his jaw. “No, no, no. I want to continue. Can’t you hold it a little bit longer?”

“I can,” he said painfully, but he was losing himself, I could tell. His eyes were hazy, the first tremors of him coming undone, making his tight muscles dance. “But the time . . .”

Just as he said it, I came apart, letting out a loud moan, clutching his shoulders. He held me in place, but instead of pumping inside me and searching for his own release, he cupped his hand over my mouth.

I heard the door to the restroom flinging open, then slamming shut. It felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped all over my orgasm. My eyes flared, my mouth pursing behind his hand.

No, no, no, no.

He lowered me down to my feet, helping me smooth my dress over my thighs, still hard and unsatisfied. I slapped his hand away, feeling the tears stinging the backs of my eyeballs. Of course he’d said it would be okay. And of course it wasn’t. I was such an idiot to trust him. But I couldn’t deny my own responsibility. I was the bubbleheaded cheerleader who’d agreed to go bareback in that imaginary truck bed. Hell, I’d let the quarterback take a shit all over me.

“Mad,” he said, tucking himself back in. There was something surprisingly pitiful about watching Chase still hard and wanting, trying to console me. I knew he hadn’t wanted this to happen. That he’d tried to warn me when he’d heard the door. “Whoever it is doesn’t know that it’s you. Your legs were wrapped around me, so they couldn’t see your shoes. All they heard was moaning. For all they knew, there was someone constipated in this cubicle.”

“One of my legs was wrapped around you,” I countered, while we stood in the stall, which suddenly felt so much smaller than it had been when we’d first entered it. I wanted to get out of there but dreaded leaving at the same time. “Just the one. The other was still on the floor.”

“Your shoes are not that recognizable,” he tried to reason. We both looked down at my shoes. I was wearing flowery heels with a yellow bow at the front. Pretty darn recognizable unless you lived on a Eurovision set.

“Maybe they didn’t look down,” Chase suggested.

“After hearing a couple having sex in a bathroom stall?” I laughed bitterly. “Fat chance, Chase.”

“Mad.” He bracketed my face, pressing his temple to mine.

I shook my head, trying to escape his touch. “Whatever. You got your way. Wasn’t it your bottom line today? Getting your way?” I sounded bitter and not myself.

“Mad.”

“What?” I snapped.

“Don’t worry. Whatever’s gonna happen, we’re going to deal with it together.”

My knees high-fived each other the entire way to my office. I tried to give myself an internal pep talk. Tell myself Chase was right. There was no reason to believe people knew what we’d been doing or that it had been me in the stall.

I returned to gather and dump all the food containers in the kitchenette. There a note was waiting on the fridge, typed out in a Word document so no one could recognize the handwriting:

Riddle me this: She is cute, small, and a little MAD,

but her milkshake still brings all the boys to the yard.

More specifically, I just caught her with her pants down, having sex with Black & Co.’s big boss.

The one who wears BLACK and normally dates the likes of Kate Moss.

With this kind of lip service, no wonder she just got a promotion.

So much for being Martyr Maddie, full of goodwill and devotion.

I ripped the note from the fridge and threw it into the trash can. Storming to my station, I glanced behind my shoulder. Nina was busy filing her nails, humming an Ariana Grande tune with a smile on her face. She caught me glaring at her, picked up a pint of milkshake on her desk, and took a noisy slurp.

Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Aha. It didn’t take a private investigator to see this as an admission of guilt. I was so embarrassed I’d gotten caught I wanted to cry. I fished my phone out.

Maddie: We’re busted.

Chase: How do you know?

Maddie: There was a note on the fridge.

Chase: Shit. Do you know who caught us?

Us. He’d said us. That made me hopeful he saw this as a mutual problem.

Maddie: Nina Na, I think. Of course it would be my archnemesis.

Chase: Her name is Nina Na and you taunted ME for having a made-up sounding name?

Maddie: She’s quarter-Korean, I think. Focus, Black.

Chase: I’ll deal with it.

Maddie: That sounds cryptic and super shady. What are you going to do?

Chase: Leave it to me. I’ll see you tonight.