It was funny, the things a person’s words could do. Words were fickle, changeable things, things that could mean everything or nothing at all. Words could bring on times of peace or incite horrendous wars, and it wasn’t always possible to predict how they would be received before they were uttered. At the times they were spoken, Garrett hadn’t put much stock in his mother’s words. They were only the words of a woman with a sick mind, after all, the words of a woman with real intelligence but a mind that was more likely than not to betray her. Add to that a divorce for which the word contentious could only be considered kind, and there was no reason for him to put any stock in her ramblings whatsoever. He hadn’t planned on doing so, either. When he’d walked out of the hospital and climbed into the waiting car, it felt like a monumental weight was lifted off of his shoulders. He had told his mom that he would be back to visit soon before he’d left her, had all but promised that he’d being coming to see her regularly from now on, but as the car took him further and further away from the deceptively normal building that housed her, he wasn’t completely sure that he trusted the weight of his own words. He had been glad to see her, he honestly had, but the experience had also left him with an uncomfortable feeling buried deep in his gut. Just because he didn’t like seeing her that way, he told himself, insisted to himself, just because it was uncomfortable and for nothing more. It couldn’t possibly be that there was potentially truth to the ramblings he’d just indulged her in. His dad wasn’t a saint, and he would be the first one to admit to that, but a lack of perfection did not a criminal make. He was tough and unflinching, and yes, pretty much an asshole almost all of the time, but none of those things made a person a criminal. If they had, half of the United States would have been incarcerated.

These were the things he’d told himself when he’d left his mother behind in the hospital, and he’d tried very hard to believe them. The thing about that was, her words didn’t exist in a vacuum. Unlike so many other things he’d listened to over the years, and having been in advertising for such a long time that was a lot of things, these words had staying power. Instead of evaporating into the air after being delivered, they had taken up residence in his mind, burrowed down inside of it and planted roots. He thought about the outlandish claims his mom had made about his dad when he woke up in the morning and as he tried to drift off to sleep at night. In between those two times, he thought about them off and on for the whole day long, thought about them what felt like a minimum of a thousand times as the minutes ticked by. He did everything he could think of to get her words out of her head. He read, listened to music so loudly that he was sure the people below his penthouse suite had to be doling out complaints he just never actually received. He got up and went for runs before the sun even came out and resorted to drinking before he went to bed. He did these things for a little over a week before he was willing to admit to himself that his mom had really gotten to him. He wanted to go straight back to the hospital once he knew that was true, but not to pay her another social visit. He wanted to go see her and chew her out for fucking up his life just when he was starting to feel like it might be falling into some kind of order. Absurdly, it was actually the thought of little Penelope behind the desk that kept him from giving into this desire to throw a full-blown tantrum. He could see the look of disappointment on her face if he were to go and cause the kind of scene that would require him to be forcibly removed. Because he couldn’t do that, he did nothing, right up until the morning when he realized the answer had been right underneath his nose the whole time.

“Jesus!” he shouted, sitting bolt upright in his desk chair as he did so and spilling coffee all over his designer desk. “I’m such a fucking idiot!”

“Hey, boss,” was the answer he’d gotten immediately, delivered courtesy of Travis, who seemed to be wherever he was constantly and always asking him if he needed anything at all, “you said it, not me!”

“Right,” Garrett said along with a forced laugh, wiping coffee off of himself and wishing he didn’t have such a suck-up employee in his office with him. “Good call. Hey, would you do me a favor?”

“Of course!” Travis practically shouted, his expression such that he appeared to have been waiting for all of his life to receive just such a request. “Anything you want, boss!”

“Great. Would you go and get Finnley for me?”

Something interesting happened then, something Garrett wouldn’t have predicted and that made his respect for Travis—the suck-up—go up a couple of notches. The “I’ll do whatever you ask me to and then some” look he’d worn on his face since the first morning Garrett and his dad had walked into the Cubed offices disappeared. Garrett couldn’t quite put his finger on what the look it was replaced by, but he thought it had at least a hint of protectiveness. Protectiveness and perhaps dislike? Perhaps mistrust? Whatever it was, there was one thing that was perfectly clear to Garrett, which was that getting Finnley and bringing her to his office was something Travis had no interest in doing whatsoever. In fact, Garrett was absolutely sure that if he hadn’t been the boss, Travis would have told him to go fuck himself and been done with it. Because he was the boss and Cubed was Travis’s baby, he wouldn’t do that, but he also didn’t immediately leave the office to do as he had been told. He just stood there, looking at Garrett as if he’d suddenly lost the ability to speak English. Garrett wasn’t sure whether to be amused or royally pissed off. Either way, if it was a fight Travis wanted to get into, it was a fight Travis was going to lose. Garrett had spent too much time trying to figure out what to do with the things his mom had said to give up the one ray of hope he’d encountered, just because a man he hardly knew didn’t like the idea of the two of them talking.

“Travis.”

“Yes?”

“Well, did you hear me? I’m going to go out on a limb and say you didn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t still be standing there with your mouth hanging open. Not when I’ve given you such a direct, straight-forward request.”

“Right. You want me to go get Finnley.”

“Right,” Garrett answered slowly, feeling his temper rise and doing his best to keep ahold of himself, “that’s what I said. Is there a problem?”

“No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Ok, look. I’m trying here, Travis. I’m trying very hard to keep my cool here, but I gotta say, you aren’t making it easy on me. I’ve asked you to get Finnley Row for me. That’s all I asked you to do. I don’t feel like it’s a difficult task, all things considered. I feel like it’s probably one of the easiest things a boss could ask of one of his employees. So what I’m not understanding, is what you’re doing still standing here. Any chance of you elaborating for me?”

“It’s just...do you really want me to tell you?”

“Yes, Travis! Yes, I really want you to tell me what the hell is going on. That’s all I want you to do at this point. After you’re done with your explanation, we’ll see if we can get you to actually do what I asked you to.”

“She doesn’t want to be around you, okay? She doesn’t want to be in your office; she doesn’t want to talk to you, if she can help it. I’m just not sure if asking her to come in here when I know something like that is a good idea, you know? I’m not sure whose wishes I should be honoring.”

Garrett looked at Travis with real, undeniable surprise. Even though he didn’t want it, this was just another example of how people could surprise you. From the moment he’d met Travis, he had disliked him. He had disliked him because he’d gotten the distinct impression that the former owner of Cubed didn’t have any kind of a spine, which made him very hard to respect. Men like that, men without the ability to stick up for or even to form an opinion, they were the kinds of men other men stepped over to get to the things they wanted. They were the kinds of men that pissed other men off just for being the cowardly things that they were. Garrett had no patience for men like that, and he hadn’t been anywhere close to pleased to find that he would have to be wrangling one on a day-to-day basis. So imagine his surprise now, now when he was finally discovering that there was a real man, a man with a backbone in there after all. Unfortunately, he was making his first stand against the new regime about something Garrett was dead set on getting, which meant his patience for any opposition was close to nil.

“You aren’t sure, huh?”

“No,” Travis answered with a voice that sounded almost cold.

“Alright,” Garrett answered in a voice that was eerily calm, understanding that he was very close to the verge of losing all semblance of control still left to him. “I can see that. May I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead,” Travis answered with a tone of relief, the first hint that maybe this standoff was taking its toll on him after all, “by all means.”

“You and Finnley have worked together for a long time, correct?”

“Correct. She was one of the first I brought on.”

“And she’s very good at what she does, correct?”

“Oh man, absolutely! She’s the best, Mr. Wallace. I know that’s something employers always say about employees, but with her it’s really true.”

“It’s not actually, something employers always say about their employees, but it’s nice that you think so. So we’ve established that she’s been here for a long time and we’ve established that you think highly of her. Now tell me, do those things make her your boss?”

“My-wait, what? I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“Those qualities we’ve already outlined. Did they lead you to giving her the control of the company? Was she the one in charge all along? If so, my father made a grave error when purchasing Cubed, and it’s one I’ve been continuing this whole time. Here I am, going to you for matters of importance, when all the while it was her I should have been talking to.”

“Ah. I see your point.”

“Do you?”

“Yes sir, I believe I do.”

“And what point is it that I’m trying to make?”

“I answer to you. I answer to your directions, and not her feelings. Is that about it?”

“It is, Travis, yes. I’m glad to see that we’ve come to an understanding. Now, would you please go and get Finnley? I need to speak to her and that is a fact that has not changed during this unfortunate little exchange.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll go now.”

Travis left the office then, but not before shooting Garrett a look that made it very clear he would have liked to kill him right then and there if he thought he could get away with it. It was such a change that the moment Travis was out and had the door shut, he burst out laughing. This was certainly not how Garrett had anticipated this conversation going, and it was his hope that maybe that would carry over into his conversation with Finnley, too. Because although he’d remained stoic and in control when he talked to Travis, he was definitely nervous about having Finnley in his office again. The last time she’d been in there, they had first fought and then wound up making out until his father had walked in. It hadn’t been something he planned on, of course it wasn’t, but when it came to Finnley, he just didn’t seem able to control himself. There was something about her that acted upon him like a magnet, like he’d been put under a spell when he wasn’t looking. Even looking at her across the office and knowing that she couldn’t stand him anymore, he found her simply irresistible. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to be near her. He wanted to put his hands on her and feel the warmth of her body pressing against his. He wanted all of these things, and yet he had managed to royally piss her off, not once but twice in only a month.

“What do you want?”

“Finnley,” Garrett answered a little bit too loudly, startled out of his inappropriate thoughts by her near silent entry into his office. “Hello.”

“Yeah, hi. What do you want?”

“Could you shut the door please? What I need to speak to you about is a private thing.”

She did as he asked her to, but he could tell that she would have rather been anywhere else on the planet than in his office. He understood why, of course, but the understanding didn’t keep the knowledge from hurting his heart a little bit. Finnley was probably the girl he’d wanted most since he’d been old enough to realize that girls were something worthwhile, and she was also the only one he hadn’t been able to have just right off the bat. It was his first real rejection and adding that to everything else going on made it so that he wasn’t sure what the hell he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t have much time to figure it out, either, because as soon as she had the door shut, she turned back to him, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her beautiful face.

“So Travis came and told me you wanted to see me. I’m here. What do you want?”

“I have to say I’m surprised he actually did it. He surprised me just now. He’s got more of a spine than I gave him credit for.”

“Of course, he does. At least he always did before you and your dad took over. The second you guys got here he changed, and not in a good way. Maybe he’s finally realizing you guys aren’t worth sucking up to after all.”

“Finnley, you do realize that I’m still your boss, right?”

“Yeah, I realize it. I’m just not sure I care anymore. I know what you’re alluding to, I’m not an idiot. You wanna fire me for being rude? Go ahead and do it. You should remember, though, you haven’t exactly behaved like a typical boss, have you? You know, just in case we’re keeping score or anything.”

“I’m not going to fire you, okay? I didn’t bring you in here for that.”

“Fine, great. So what did you bring me in here for? What do you want?”

“I need your help.”

Finnley’s eyes got wide, so wide it looked like they might actually pop out of her head, and then she started to laugh. At first it was just a small laugh, the kind of laugh that sounded full of disbelief, but once she really got going, it sounded like she was on the verge of going into hysterics. He could feel his face burning as he watched this take place, but bit his tongue, determined to let her get it out of her system. After all, it was something he’d earned and there was no way for him to deny it. It wasn’t her fault that he wasn’t used to being laughed at, and maybe if he’d gotten used to it earlier, he wouldn’t have been so arrogant as to have pissed her off in the first place. It was only when she’d started to calm down some on her own that he spoke again, and he was surprised by how weak his voice actually sounded.

“Finnley, please.”

“I’m sorry!” She gasped, actually looking like she might be a little bit sorry by how strong of a reaction she was having. “I’m sorry, I swear I’m not actually trying to lose my shit like this. It’s just...are you serious right now?”

“Are you?”

“Um, yes, actually, I am. Are you honestly asking me for help? Do you legitimately think that a pathetic sounding ‘please’ is all it takes?”

“I don’t know what it takes, but yes, I’m asking you for your help.”

“And are you going to fire me if I say no? Is that why you started off by reminding me that you’re my boss?”

“No, not even close. What I’m asking for your help on isn’t about work, or at least not that I know of. It’s not even something I want you to talk to any of the people in the office about.”

“And what on earth makes you think I would help you with something like that?”

“Wow. You really do hate me, don’t you? I didn’t realize it until this moment, this one right here, but you do, don’t you? Fine, then. I don’t want to take up anymore of your time. You may go.”

He hadn’t realized he was going to say it, and he wished he could take it back the moment the words flew unchecked out of his mouth. Because once they were out there in the open, once they were out there for Finnley to hear, Garrett all of the sudden felt very close to crying. He felt like a little boy again, lost and afraid and very much alone. He thought he might also be experiencing something close to heartbreak, not because he was stupid enough to think that he’d fallen in love with Finnley after such a short amount of time, but because he understood now that he would never have a chance to have her and that felt like a real loss. She was special, this girl, and not having a chance with her stung more than he wanted to admit. Not knowing where to turn next to figure out if there was any secrets he needed to know about his father wasn’t the best feeling, either, and having the two of them combined into one large disappointment was a hell of a lot to take.

“Garrett, do you understand that the things you do affect people?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The way you misled me in the bar. The way you turned into a total prick in this same office when your dad walked in. Those things don’t just affect you. They didn’t just affect you; they affected me. You made me feel like shit, and you managed to do it twice in less than a month. That’s like, an accomplishment, you know? But it’s not a good one. It’s not something to be proud about, and I don’t know if you even care. That’s the thing about you, Garrett. Sometimes you seem so great, and then other times you seem like the biggest jackass the world has ever seen. I can’t figure out which one is real.”

“You wanna know the truth?”

“If you’re capable of telling me, yes, that would be pretty fantastic.”

“Sometimes I don’t know which one is really me, either. It’s like they’re both in there, and I don’t know which version is going to win.”

She stood and looked at him while he spoke, looked at him with such intensity that he felt utterly exposed. He felt as though his words, another slew of words he didn’t mean to say and hadn’t even realized he felt before they came tumbling out, had made him transparent to Finnley. She looked at him as if she could see all of his inner workings, and he knew then that there was nothing else he could say. What he’d just told her was the most honest thing he could remember telling anyone in a very long time, and if that wasn’t enough to convince her that he wasn’t all bad, he was pretty sure that nothing would do the trick.

“Okay.”

“Okay? What do you mean, okay?”

“I mean okay, you idiot,” she said with a smile, finally moving away from the door and pulling a chair up beside his own. “I mean you asked me for my help, and I’m going to give it to you. Just so long as you know that if you mess with me again, it’ll be the last time. I operate on a three-strikes policy, my friend—and you’ve already used two of yours.”