Vince

In Kayla’s office I stop speaking midsentence when movement outside her window snags my attention.

Remember that part from Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor witnesses the apocalypse and is powerless to stop it? I feel kind of like that, only without the chain-link fence to hold on to while the world is annihilated before my eyes.

Jackie’s outside, talking to J.T. in a scenario scarily like the first time I was standing in here and watching her tackle her fears, he stops to talk to her and she fiddles with the water bottle in her hand as my heart incinerates to ash.

Kayla silently watches with me.

Jackie waves and J.T. nods, but not before he smiles and runs off again. I can’t bear to see the thumbs-up she might give, or her smile when she turns around, so I pretend to search for an email on my phone.

“She did it,” I mumble.

Kayla sighs in resignation, and that sound doesn’t give me much hope for my and Jackie’s future together. Kayla and Jackie were in here whispering last week. I don’t know what was said, but they left together. It’s not hard to guess that Kayla has chosen a side and it’s not mine.

I can’t blame her.

“I’m sorry, Vince” is all she says, and that feels like the felling blow.

“Yeah. So am I.” I turn to leave, numb and wishing I’d brought a flask to work. I don’t always pour whiskey into my coffee, but now seems like a prime opportunity to start.

“Vince?”

I turn, hoping Kayla has a brilliant idea of how I can reverse my assery and win back the woman I love. If she does, she doesn’t tell me what it is.

“What did you need when you walked in here?”

“Oh. Um.” I lift my phone, which I forgot I was holding, and scroll through the email that propelled me in here in the first place. “Just a question about the meeting later…” I settle into the chair next to her desk to discuss, but I don’t hear a word I’m saying.

The three o’clock meeting comes and goes.

Jackie and I were exempt from running it. We sit silently at the boardroom table and jot notes on the pads in front of us. Or, well, she jots. I doodle on the edges of the paper.

I call this series Stick Figures and Their Various Demises. This one went in the obvious hangman scenario. This one, knife through the heart. The one I’m drawing now is about to be run over by an oncoming car. He’s resigned to his plight, as you can tell by the daisy he’s clutching to his chest.

Stupid daisies.

Jaundice won Jackie. After my slotting him into the role of douchebag and my working hard to convince Jackie I was the one for her. None of it mattered. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe in spite of him banging some other girl he is the better man for her.

I liked being angry and sort of drunk guy better. This abject misery stuff is ugly.

The meeting adjourns and I stand with my pad and empty coffee mug and shuffle with the crowd, my mind light-years away from work.

“Going to McGreevy’s?” Ronald asks me. He’s on our sales force and a helluva nice guy.

“McGreevy’s Pub?” I ask, wondering at the odd invite. We aren’t buddies and never do anything socially together, so the request is strange.

“Yes.” Jackie materializes at my left elbow. “When Faye wrapped the meeting, she dismissed us for the day. She invited everyone in this room out for a Friday-afternoon drink on the Brookdale Group.” She glances at the pad of paper pressed against my chest. “You must have been busy writing your to-do list.”

It’s morbid to think of my stick-men deaths as my to-do list, but neither will I lie and say I don’t envy them that their pain is finally over.

“Must have,” I answer, my voice devoid of emotion.

“Ron, Vince and I have a few things to go over, but I promise to let him go ASAP. Save him a seat.” She smiles at him and Ronald waves and walks out. Just leaves me in here with her. Alone.

Some friend.

Before I can craft an excuse to escape the conference room, Jackie closes us inside and gestures to the wide table, a pair of chairs nearest us in particular.

“Sit for a second?” she invites. “I need to set some ground rules for us working together.”

A deep sigh works its way up from my gut. She’s probably right. Avoiding each other during our breakup hasn’t resulted in a well-oiled working relationship.

I lower myself into my previously vacated chair and put my pad facedown next to my coffee mug. I consider flipping it over and adding a stick-man death by electric chair. Maybe later.

Jackie sits across from me rather than beside me and opens her pad folio. Flipping a page, she reviews a tidy bullet list. She’s overthought this and I’m not surprised. I’m the one who doesn’t overthink. Hell, I don’t think.

Maybe we were doomed from the start.

“Item number one,” she begins. “If we’re going to continue sharing VP—and I’m not planning on stepping down. Are you?”

I shake my head and dredge up a hint of the humor that has helped me survive many a terrible situation. “I’m planning on advancing to president, though, so we’ll only have to deal with one another as equals until my inevitable promotion.”

Her smile is tolerant.

“Right.” Her eyes go back to her list. “I thought we’d split the meetings so we aren’t attending them together all the time.”

Ouch. That burning feeling in my chest is less likely from the hot wings I ate on autopilot for lunch and more likely because Jackie just cracked open my chest cavity. I can’t let the torture continue. It’s inhumane. So I blurt out what I’m thinking.

“Because you and J.T. are back together, and it’s not kosher for you and me to see each other too much.” Makes sense. Relationships have no prayer of making it when outside parties are involved. I can’t help adding a petulant “I still think you can do better.”

“Well, probably.” She draws a line through the item and looks up at me. “But you’re the one I’m in love with, so I guess I’ll have to make it work.”

Brown eyes seek mine and I hold on to that gaze with such desperation, I forget to inhale.

“I don’t think we should do too many meetings together because it’s obvious how much we love each other,” she tells me. “To avoid everyone being grossed out all the time, we should keep our desires reserved for before nine and after five.”

I’m staring in disbelief, like if I blink she’ll vanish in a puff of smoke and I’ll realize I hallucinated everything. She stands and walks to my chair. I’m peering up at her shining eyes, my mind mush.

“I saw you outside with J.T.,” I say, my voice hollow.

“Yes, you did. And like when I saw you with Leslie, you have no idea what I said to him. Do you?”

I guess I don’t.

Jackie lowers herself onto my lap and my arms wrap her slim waist before I can warn them not to. God. I’ve missed her too much for words. It’s taking everything to keep from crushing her against me and putting my lips on her neck. Burying my nose in her hair and inhaling deeply.

Her arms loop my neck as she regards me like she’s sad that I’m not very bright. “I asked him if he’d run a different route.”

I must not be very bright because her statement makes no sense.

“J.T.,” she clarifies. “When I was outside, I apologized for Bethany kicking him in the nuts, and I asked him for a favor.”

My lips twitch with a budding smile. “Bethany kicked him in the nuts?”

Remind me to buy Bethany something nice. Like a car.

“She did. Anyway, I told J.T. I was in love with you—and that I have been since you kissed me—and that he needed to choose a different route to run because I don’t want to remember how stupid I was every day when he jogs by.”

“Are you sure it’s not because you can’t trust yourself not to go out and fling yourself at him?” I tease.

“You know me, Vince.”

I do know her. My brain is wading through days of light beer, trying its hardest to absorb this new info. “Did he agree?”

“Ha. Not exactly. He said it’s a free country and he can run wherever he chooses. But he did amend that if I can’t stomach seeing him without feeling waves of regret, he’d do me the service of running elsewhere.”

My arms tighten around her. “I see him run by here again, I’ll make it so he’s physically incapable of running at all.”

She puts her hand on my jaw and my anger with Jaundice recedes like Bruce Willis’s badass hairline. “I made a mistake when I went out with him. I made a mistake when I assumed you and Leslie did more than talk. What’d you talk about, Vince? I heard a rumor you talked about me.”

My eyebrows climb my forehead in surprise.

“Davis came by and told me you were in love with me, but only after I told him I was in love with you.”

I hear a click and figure it’s my brain turning on the lightbulb over my head.

She loves me.

“Say that again, Butler. Slower.” I tip my chin to take her in. All of her. From her long brown hair to the sexy black wrap dress. She’s tempting me—and she’s not even trying.

On a whisper, she leans in and repeats in a seductive tone, “I talked to Davis.”

Smart-ass.

“Not that part.”

Then she grins, knowing what I need, and finally, finally gives it to me. “I’m in love with you, Vince Carson. Only you. I love your penchant for old movies, and the way you always burn the popcorn, and how you can’t decide where to eat when you’re hangry.”

I smile.

“And the way you make love to me on the stairs,” she whispers.

My smile turns gooey right along with my heart.

Her lips lower to mine and I’m lost. Fingers in her hair, I kiss her as deeply and fully as I’ve wanted to for three lonely weeks. I’m starving for her, and it takes me a moment to remember we aren’t somewhere I can strip her out of her fantastic dress and make her shout my name on a cry of pleasure.

My fingers halt on the knot of the fabric belt keeping her dress closed. “Hell of a place to break this to me. Not a bed in sight.”

“It was either tell you here or follow you home like a stalker.”

“You’re the pro,” I joke. “I still want you to follow me home, though. Maybe stay there for the weekend.”

Or forever, my mind adds, but I’m trying to keep my cool.

“The weekend at least.” She kisses me sweetly. “Longer is preferable.”

Ah, hell, I love that she’s no cooler than I am.

“Longer as in the following week? Or longer as in”—I squeeze her waist with my arm—“forever?” She smiles but I don’t let her answer. “Now that I have you in my arms admitting how wrong you were about letting me go, I’m thinking you’re a keeper.”

“You were thinking that way before I screwed up. Remember? Back when your brilliant plan was to set me up with J.T. and then swoop in when he inevitably hurt me?”

Chagrined, I cringe. “We bumbled our way here, didn’t we, Butler?”

“ ‘Once upon a time’ always starts with bumbling, if you think about it.”

I consider the fairy tales I’ve heard and decide she’s right.

“That’s what makes the ‘happily ever after’ so worth it.” She ruffles my hair. “Want to go to McGreevy’s Pub for a celebratory cocktail?”

“If by McGreevy’s Pub you mean my house, and by cocktail you mean sweaty, hot makeup sex”—I stand, scooping her into my arms as she yips a happy laugh—“then yes, I’d love to.”

“As usual, Vince, you read my mind.”

I open the door to leave, and walk into a crowd of coworkers who are standing just outside the door. Kayla looks the guiltiest—but in her defense, also the happiest with that giant smile on her face. I put Jackie down and she skims a hand over her dress and straightens her skirt.

There’s a moment of silence before Ron starts a slow-clap, reminding me of any one of the rom-coms Jackie and I have watched on my sofa over the past year. My sofa, I think, as she curtsies for the cheering crowd, then beams up at me.

Jackie’s the only girl who belongs on it.