Bruce gave me the day off. I tried not to feel self-conscious about that. After all, I had just stepped way out of my comfort zone when I teased him about waiting a week for sex after I went down on him last night. If I had been completely honest, I was still scared to go all the way. I was worried I’d do it wrong or disappoint him somehow, and my little tease had been a cover I didn’t think he’d accept. I had expected him to growl something at me, pin me to the wall, and take me anyway.

I couldn’t be upset about it in the slightest. All Bruce had done was respect my wishes, even if I had stupidly hoped he wouldn’t.

I was a coward, and I hated myself for it. I was hoping he’d do the heavy lifting for me. I wanted him to make all the choices and take over, but it wasn’t fair. I was the one who needed to come clean about my real job. I’d decided forever ago not to write the piece—the piece which had no substance to begin with. It felt ridiculous. It should’ve been the easiest thing in the world to admit, but I’d dragged my feet for so long that the small lie had grown into something bigger, as small lies in close relationships tend to.

I resolved to tell him when he came back. I’d be ready for him to fire me or hate me, but I knew I needed to do it anyway. I couldn’t keep stringing him along like this.

I headed to Business Insights to check in with Hank and Candace. I also needed to tell Hank I wasn’t going to be doing the piece, after all.

When I arrived, Hank was standing behind his corner desk talking with a large, older man who was balding with liver spots on his head. It was Weinstead. I was staring at him in barely disguised shock when Candace rushed over to me and gave me a quick hug.

"Hey, stranger!" she said. She lowered her voice and made a conspiratorial face. "The bigwig is here. Dun dun dun…"

“Any idea why?” I asked. I’d only ever seen Mr. Weinstead once at a Christmas party.

“Oh I have a little bit of an idea. He was asking about you.” She lowered her voice to do an impression of a grumpy old man. “Where’s that girl doing the piece on the Chamberson brothers?”

“On the brothers?” I asked. “Hank told me it was just on Bruce.”

Candace shrugged. “Alls I know is alls I heard.”

I sighed. It wasn’t like I was going to actually walk over there and introduce myself. I decided I’d just wait until Weinstead left. Then I could go talk to Hank privately and tell him the bad news. Accepting the fact that I was giving up on the piece felt like I was letting a part of myself go.

I was ashamed of how I hardly even dug for any real information about Bruce once I realized I had feelings for him. I felt like a silly little girl who didn’t deserve to have a job in journalism. After all, I finally got a real assignment and I blew it. Literally and figuratively.

My heart stopped when Hank looked in my direction and his eyes lit up. He pointed at me, said something to Mr. Weinstead, and then they both started coming my way.

“Can I use you as a human shield?” I said to Candace, but when I turned to look for her, she was already fast-walking back to her desk.

Weinstead and Hank reached me with expectant smiles. Hank, for his part, looked like he was hoping I wouldn't embarrass him. Weinstead looked like he thought I was about to spill some of the juiciest dirt he'd ever heard on Bruce and his brother.

“So you’re our undercover agent?” asked Weinstead. He had a kind of Santa Claus look, but a weirdly high-pitched voice and beady, dark eyes.

“You make it sound a lot fancier than it really is,” I said, laughing nervously.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Nat. You landed the job like it was nothing. Been imbedded over two weeks now. That’s no chopped liver.”

I forced a smile. “Well, it’s not all that impressive.”

“So,” asked Weinstead. “Making progress, I assume?”

“I was actually wondering if you could give me any details on why you suspect the Chamberson brothers of corruption,” I said.

“Let me give you a little tip from one journalist to another,” said Weinstead. I noticed the look on Hank’s face that seemed to say he was just as aware as I was that Weinstead had never even been close to a journalist, but did my best to look eager and receptive anyway. “Don’t forget your job is to investigate the subject of your piece, not the person who assigned it to you.”

I gave a tight-lipped smile. It was as clear a refusal to answer my question. “Well, I was only asking because I haven’t seen even a hint of corruption in Galleon. Maybe if I stuck around for months, I would eventually overhear something, but even if I wanted to do that, which I don’t, there’s no way I could survive months without getting paid. The fee for the article wouldn’t even come close to covering my expenses for that long a stretch, either.”

Weinstead spread his hands and looked to Hank. “Then pay the woman what she needs.” He dug in his jacket pocket for a checkbook. “What do you need to stick on this case? Two thousand? Five?”

The casual way he threw out such staggering amounts of money as an option took my breath away. God knew I could use the money, but at the same time, this wasn’t about a magazine piece anymore. It didn’t matter how much I craved the recognition and respect that would come with a piece like this. Bruce was the subject, and there wasn’t a price tag for smearing him or betraying his trust by playing along with this charade any longer.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—”

That was the precise moment the universe decided to give me the worst case of bad timing in the history of my life. Just as I was reaching out to push the checkbook back to Mr. Weinstead, I saw Bruce Chamberson standing only a few feet away.

“You were supposed to be out of town,” I said. I realized my hand was on the checkbook and snatched it back like I’d been caught stealing. “God, Bruce. I can explain all of this.”

“You don’t need to,” he said, and it broke my heart when I heard the coldness in his voice. “You have bills to pay, and you were doing what you needed to pay them.” He fished out a check from his jacket and handed it to me. “This is fair pay for the time you worked as my intern, including overtime. I had to ballpark some of the numbers, and I didn’t include two hours of your time, because we weren’t technically working.”

Prickles of heat traveled across my skin at that. He was talking about the two times we let our desires turn to action, but the mention of those times didn’t feel like it was intended as a flirtation. It felt like he was reminding me so I’d feel the fresh jab of how truly twisted it had been of me to fool around with him under these circumstances.

“Bruce, please…” I tried to give him the check back, but he folded my fingers around it.

“Take the money. But I don’t ever want to see you again. Oh, and I prepaid for a hotel room your brother can use for the rest of the month. He already has the room key and knows where it is. I wish I could say I’ll miss you. Goodbye, Natasha.”

“I wasn’t going to write it. Once I met you, I—I was going to tell you, but I was too scared you’d…” He was already walking away, showing no sign of hearing me or caring. I couldn’t say which.

Mr. Weinstead slid his checkbook back into his jacket and fixed Hank with a glare. “I expect you’ll find a way to rectify this? I need that piece.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Hank.

And without another thought, the two men seemed to forget me. In an instant, I wasn’t just back to where I’d started. I was lower. I’d had a taste of the possibility. The idea that one day I might climb myself out of the crummy hole I’d dug for myself in life. Instead, I’d fallen flat on my ass, right back at the bottom. Now Hank knew I couldn’t be trusted with a real assignment. Worse, his boss knew. I was honestly going to be surprised if I even got the bottom of the barrel assignments going forward.

I tried to keep everything, and instead, I’d lost it all.

I spent two weeks feeling sorry for myself. It seemed fitting. For two weeks, I’d lived a different life. A life where I tangled with the thrilling and scary idea of Bruce Chamberson and what a man like that could mean in my life. For two weeks, I’d known how fun it was to feel like everything I’d ever wanted was within reach.

So I spent two weeks purging it all from my brain. I tried to forget everything. Him. Galleon. Business Insights. I wanted to forget it all. I’d waited tables before, and the work might not have been fulfilling, but at least it was steady money. Maybe I’d need to find a place to live outside the city once my lease was up in a couple months, but I’d survive. I always had, and I would find a way now.

Braeden was visiting, which was a rare occurrence. He still had the room Bruce booked for him at the hotel, which felt like a weird thread to the part of my life I was busy trying to forget. Still, it was nice to see my brother because he felt like stopping by and not because he had to have a place to stay.

Despite his previous enthusiasm about not being a burden on me, my brother, as usual, hadn’t changed a bit. He was laying on the floor by my wall, mostly because there wasn’t room for a couch and I was already sitting on the bed.

"Think about it though," he said. "It'd be like a hammock but you could use it underwater. I mean, you can't seriously tell me that doesn't sound like a billion-dollar idea, can you?"

“Yes. I seriously can,” I said a little more harshly than I meant to.

He sighed, sat up, and leaned his back against the wall while he scrutinized me. “You still bent up about Batman?”

You could say what you wanted about my brother, but he was a sweet guy. Calling Bruce “Batman” instead of his name was just one way he’d been trying to make me feel better, like we could make him into a big joke instead of the gaping hole in my heart he actually was.

“I’m getting over it, bit by bit,” I said.

“You know. Not that I’ve watched too many romance movies, but isn’t this supposed to be the part where the guy does all these grand gestures for forgiveness? You know, like the part everybody watching can splooge over because they get to see the guy down on his knees groveling?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “The difference is, in those movies, it’s usually the guy who royally screwed up. Not the girl.”

“Okay, so why don’t you take a cue from all the groveling men of the world. Do something grand. Make the guy forgive you. Somehow I don’t think you’re on a fast-track to impressing anyone like this, unless you’re trying to out-do me in the whole unemployed department. But joke’s on you, sis. Batman said I was ‘aggressively’ unemployed, and I don’t think you’ll ever top that level of praise.”

I rolled my eyes, grinning. “No. You’ll probably remain king of that one. But you seriously think he’d even care if I tried to apologize?”

“Would you, if the tables were turned?”

“Well, yeah. I’d care. I don’t know if it would make a difference.”

“Just because we like to wave our dicks around and flex in the mirror, it doesn’t mean us guys don’t have a soft side, Nat. Think about it. The poor dude just got out of one bad relationship and then he runs into you? He liked you, too, and he’s probably embarrassed he let himself be seduced again by another wily woman who was out to get him.”

I glared. “I was never out to get him. You know that.”

“I do,” agreed Braeden. “But does he?”