“Are you ready?” Clara asked.

I shook my head. “No. But I will never be ready for this.”

We were waiting for Gary’s current meeting to finish so we could pitch our proposal for the contract with Livingston Management. The reality of the situation still hadn’t fully caught up to me, but I already alternated between hyperventilating and barely being able to breathe.

“You don’t look very good,” Clara said. “Do you want to leave?”

Lorelei had made it very clear that the results of this negotiation were my responsibility. Gary already knew I was coming. That was the only reason we were able to get a meeting in the first place. If I couldn’t soldier through, we’d lose the contract, and I might lose my job. As crushing as it was, I couldn’t run away from it.

I need to face my demons, I thought.

“No. I can deal with it.” As shaky as my voice was, it was still more confident than I felt.

“Merritt Publicity? Mr. Morris is ready for you.” The secretary waited with a polite face as we stood and picked up our things. She brought us down a wide hall and gestured through a glass door.

I avoided looking at the man behind the desk for as long as possible. Instead, I took in the office. It was on the corner of the building and bigger than our firm’s entire office space, in a much more prime location.

Gary had done well since we’d split.

“Holy fucking shit.” The voice was exactly as I remembered it, and just the sound of it made me shrink into myself. “I honestly wouldn’t have believed it was you, Maddie.”

It was impossible to avoid looking at him any longer. Gary hadn’t bothered standing up from his desk, sprawled in his chair like a despot awaiting petitioners. He cut his hair shorter than he used to, and he had gained weight that showed in his jawline and around his waist, but he was instantly recognizable.

A response choked in my throat, but he simply waited with a smirk on his face. “Why’s that?” The tone of my voice would have been unrecognizable to anyone I’d met since living in the city, but it was still too familiar to me. It was old Maddie, the girl Gary used to date. The timidness was painful to hear coming from my mouth, but I couldn’t help it.

“Well, I never would have believed you could have survived living in New York. You’ve always been hopeless. But you also lost fat and learned how to dress. You look like a different person.” Coming from someone else, the last couple of sentences could have been taken as a compliment. I knew Gary better than that. “If you’d looked like this back when we dated, then I might not have dumped you. Maybe wouldn’t have cheated on you, either.”

That brought the fire back, and I clenched my fist. It would be satisfying to charge across the room and punch Gary so hard that he collapsed on the floor. I could already feel the sting in my fist, the dull thud of impact as I struck him. I craved the freedom to take what revenge I could.

Clara shifted at my side, and I looked at her. Her eyes were wide in shock at Gary’s remarks, but she shook her head. We still had a job to do, no matter how vile Gary was. Getting arrested for assault wouldn’t help me, no matter how sweet the vengeance would be.

No, it would have to wait. Gary deserved worse than a mere punch, anyway.

Just as quickly as it came on, the fire was snuffed out. Once more, Gary had me in a position where I couldn’t do anything to fight back. Despair filled me. As if the past three years had never happened, the nightmare of my adult life continued.

I thought I’d gotten away from him. He was right. I’ll never be free of him.

I couldn’t say anything, simply stood looking in Gary’s direction with my eyes unfocused so I wouldn’t have to actually see him. It was the simplest of my old coping mechanisms, and it was scary how automatic it was to slip back to that response.

Clara took the lead, stepping forward and setting a folio on Gary’s desk. “Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Morris. I don’t know if you have already looked at our proposal, but we brought an extra copy for you. We worked hard to make sure it is competitive and has a few extras perks that no other firm can offer. At Merritt Publicity, we pride ourselves on our unique touch.”

The silence was uncomfortable. Gary didn’t react to Clara’s opening and acted like she hadn’t spoken. When I refocused on him to figure out what was going on, it was to find Gary staring at me with an ugly leer on his face, his eyes slipping down my body. I felt dirty from his gaze, in desperate need of a shower without even being touched.

“Do you still touch yourself while you think of me?” Gary asked. He ignored Clara’s sharp intake of breath. “I bet you pant and moan after me every night, remembering how hard I used to fuck you. I bet you’re fucking wet, hoping I’ll send this bitch out so I can fuck you here on my desk.”

His verbal assault continued, each sentence pushing me further inside myself. Terrible memories rose within my mind, escaping from the dark corners they’d been banished to.

I looked away, retreating mentally as I waited for the abuse to pass. The individual words stopped carrying any meaning, but the tone of the barrage was enough to make me tremble.

Finally, he stopped talking.

“Mr. Morris, this is inappropriate,” Clara said. “If you won’t be professional, then we will withdraw our proposal and leave right now.”

I threw her a grateful look, almost hoping that Gary would kick us out. Lorelei could go screw herself. As badly as I needed the job, I wanted to be anywhere else at that moment.

He barked a laugh. “She likes it, just look at her. She can barely hold herself back from jumping my bones. But whatever, let’s do this. Take a seat.”

I drew in a shaky breath and took the seat closest to the door, holding my bag to my chest. After a few days of working hard on the proposal, I didn’t need to look at it to remember the details. I knew it backward and forward, but that didn’t even matter. My ability to talk and contribute to the negotiation had evaporated.

I’d never heard Clara’s voice so clipped as she led Gary through the summary. My will to fight had been subsumed under Gary’s verbal assault, but she sounded as though she was an inch away from throwing him through the window.

“What do you think of the proposal, Mr. Morris?” Clara asked. “Are there any aspects you’d like to revisit? We have room to maneuver on points important to your company.”

He waved her questions away as though she were an annoying insect. “It’s fine.” He leaned toward me across his desk. I’d been avoiding his eyes, but the move grabbed my attention even though I tried to resist, like a horror movie building to a climax. “You should come over to my place so we can get reacquainted, Maddie. If you want this contract, that’s the easiest way to do it.”

Even as my mind screamed, I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t say anything. It felt like my mouth was sewn shut. Later, I might pretend that it was for the sake of the contract that I didn’t shut him down, but that was far from the truth.

I was past this, wasn’t I? I thought. What happened?

The past three years had been a journey of self-development and growth, but that structure had collapsed like a house of cards.

“Gary Morris, that is too far,” Clara said. “We don’t whore ourselves out for our work.”

Gary shrugged. “You should try it. That’s the way the world works among people who are honest. I think we’re done here. You know what my conditions are.”

There was no need to say goodbye for courtesy’s sake. Gary had torpedoed that convention as soon as we’d walked through the door. Clara and I cleared out of there as fast as we could.

“What the fuck was that?” Clara hissed as we scampered out of the agency’s offices and onto the sunny sidewalk. “I know you said he was the devil, but Jesus Christ, I was almost tempted to exorcize him.”

Putting my back against the wall of the building, I took a series of deep breaths with my eyes closed.

“Are you okay, Madison? I can’t believe you didn’t tell Lorelei to screw herself now that I know what he’s like. I’m sorry I didn’t do more, but I was so shocked, and I couldn’t think of anything nonviolent.”

I opened my eyes, regretted it, and closed them again. “It’s okay, Clara. I don’t think I let myself remember exactly how bad he makes me feel. After so long, I thought I could stand up to him, but he just… he gets under my skin and festers like a rotten wound.”

Her hand patted my shoulder. “I’ve never seen you like that. It honestly scared me. But at least it’s over. We’ll tell Lorelei that it’s a nonstarter and move on. You’ll never have to deal with that asshole again.”

That was a relief, but it might already be too late. The encounter had exposed fault lines in my mind and split my psyche open like an earthquake. My entire persona was built on an illusion of confidence that had just been exposed for the fraud it truly was. Was it possible to recover without another three years of work?

At least I wouldn’t have to see Gary again.

Then again, that’s what I thought when I moved to New York in the first place.