As soon as Zander leaves, Steph walks into the office. “What the fuck is going on? Are you okay?” My heart thumps wildly in my chest and all I can do is stare ahead as I start to hyperventilate. “Shit, sit down, hon.” She guides me over to a seat. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

I shake my head. “My life has turned to shit.”

Her eyes nearly bug out of her head. “What, why? What the hell happened in here just now?”

“He thinks I conspired against him to get that account. The guy who just walked out is the client we were talking about.” I close my eyes and take a deep calming breath. “It’s not the first time Mr. Noble has put his hands on me.”

“That rat bastard!” She jumps up out of her chair. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

I shrug. “I thought it was more trouble than my job’s worth.”

“But if you’d have said something then he wouldn’t have been here anymore.”

Commotion from the hall has me standing as my boss’s younger brother walks toward the office. “Oh, God.”

Steph straightens up. “You’re alright, hon. I’m right here with you.”

Instead of looking angry, when he steps into the room he smiles. “Ladies, I’m sorry to have to do this but I need one of you to inform anyone that hasn’t yet left that they need to stay behind. Of course they’ll be paid overtime.”

Steph looks at me before stepping forward. “Absolutely, Mr. Noble.”

“Thank you.” After Steph leaves he returns his focus to me. “You’re my brother’s assistant, aren’t you?” I nod, holding back a gulp as he shuts the door. “I don’t know what’s happened, but he came downstairs to my office telling me I could have his job and shouting about slutty assistants.” I cringe and he puts up a hand. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything, I just want to get to the bottom of this quickly so I know what to tell everyone who’s waiting for me.”

Fuck it. I’m not keeping my mouth shut anymore. I kept quiet over the last three years, but after seeing Zander stand up for me like that, I’ve realized I need to do the same for myself.

“I’m a graphic designer by trade.” His brow rises. “I…. know one of our clients and he insisted I work on his account. Your brother wasn’t happy about it, but he allowed it.”

“And what does any of that have to do with what happened today?”

I take a deep breath. “The client I’m working with was actually someone that stopped… your brother had ahold of my arm… I…” I swallow down the lump in my throat before whispering, “If he hadn’t have turned up when he did, I don’t know how far he would’ve taken it.”

His face pales. “Is this the first time…” he trails off, but I know what he’s asking so I shake my head no. “Why didn’t you make a formal complaint? This is a serious accusation.”

I stutter out a breath, gripping my hands together. “Yes, I realize that now, but I was only looking out for my job. Besides, nothing came of it. He apologized the first time.” Kind of.

“That does not make it okay.”

“I agree, but for the sake of my job and this account that could help me land my dream career, I didn’t say anything.”

But I wish I had. If he’s done this to me, how many other women has he done it to?

“What happened today?”

I look out the window; I wish I could say it was a good view but it’s not. All I can see are the windows of the building opposite this one. “I came back from a meeting with my client and he wanted to see my ideas and notes.” I point at my laptop that’s now on the floor beside him. “I brought in my laptop and he told me he’d figured out who my client was. He accused me of conspiring against him and grabbed my arm. That’s when Mr. Reed walked in and saw him.”

“Mr. Reed?”

“My client,” I supply.

“I see.”

“Mr. Reed wasn’t happy, of course, so he said he’d out him if he didn’t resign.”

He fights a smile and walks over to my laptop, picking it up and scrolling through my notes. “And these are your ideas? You drew those?”

He points to the couple of sketches I drew on my tablet before I was called in here. “Yeah, they’re very basic, I was just playing around.”

He nods as he scrolls down the page. “Very impressive. Why are you an assistant again?”

“What?”

“You should be designing, not running around after my sleaze of a brother. Not that that’s an issue anymore.” He closes the laptop and folds his hands in front of him. “I’m so sorry for what he put you through, if you want to file a complaint or go to the police, Noble Marketing will back you one hundred percent.”

I stare incredulously up at him. “You’re not firing me?”

A shocked expression lights up his face. “Firing you? Why would I fire you?”

“I’ve caused all of this mess.”

He smirks. “Good point. But do you know how long I’ve been waiting for my brother to slip up? He has no idea what he’s doing running a company like this. I have degrees upon degrees in business, design, and marketing, and yet he still got the company. You’ve done me a favor, so now I’m going to do you one.” He makes his way over to the door. “You’re fired. When we walk out this door together, you’re no longer his—or my—assistant.”

“But you said—”

“You can go ahead and move your stuff downstairs onto the design floor tomorrow. I’ll have someone get an office ready for you.”

I stand stock still, feeling like I’m in a daydream. “I’m sorry, did you just say I could move my stuff onto the design floor?”

He looks at me like I’ve gone mad. “And that I’ll have someone get an office ready for you, yes. Now, shall we? I have to do damage control.”

He motions for me to leave the room first and follows me down to the main conference room. When I step inside, everyone turns to stare at me so I slip into the back, hoping everyone will look away.

Did I just land my dream job? I think I did but I don’t know if I dreamed it because my life’s going to shit.

Mr. Noble asks for everyone’s attention. “Thank you for your patience. Whatever you think you may know about what happened today, didn’t. My brother isn’t the easiest man to work with, but I think it’s time to let you all know that he isn’t well. Today he admitted this and has resigned as CEO of Noble Marketing, effective immediately.” He pauses for effect as murmurs fill the room, some people saying they heard he has cancer and others saying that he’s gone insane. I have to admit, even though I know he’s lying, it’s an effective cover story. “Therefore, I will be stepping into the role of CEO from here on out. Before my brother left, he informed me of his wishes that his assistant of three years be stripped of the position and moved into a role she’s more suited to on the design floor, so I will be looking internally for a new one. If you’d like to be considered for the position, please be outside of my office on Monday morning. Again, thank you for your patience tonight. I’d like to remind you that should anybody continue to speculate on the events of today with office gossip, they will be reprimanded. That is all.”

* * *

I should’ve left but I would’ve regretted it. I’m not running anymore, I came here for a reason, and even though I know she’s dealing with the aftermath of what that sleazeball did, I stayed.

My leg bobs up and down as I check the time. I’ve been waiting in the lobby of the building for almost two hours now. Scanning the chattering crowd as people start to filter out, I search for her, hoping like hell she hasn’t already left.

Where the hell is she?

I spot her flowing dark hair and stand up, pushing my way through the crowd. “Taylor!”

She stumbles at the sound of my voice, looking up at me and rolling her eyes before she walks in the opposite direction out the door and onto the sidewalk. I run to catch up with her, stepping in front of her and blocking her path.

“Please talk to me.”

She shifts awkwardly as I step closer to her. “I have nothing to say to you right now.”

“What happened?”

She sighs, looking around us. “I don’t really know. I can’t get my head around it.”

My brow furrows. “Did he resign?” She nods. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“I had to tell them what he did, about how you stopped anything from happening.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“The new boss gave me a position as a graphic designer, so I guess at least two good things came out of this shit show.”

My muscles tense up in restraint as my gaze drops to that beautiful mouth of hers. She blushes when she sees where my attention is, but I try to ignore it when really all I want to do is sweep her up into my arms to see the redness up close and personal.

“I guess I should be thanking you really, but I’m not happy about the way you went about it.”

I shrug. “Sometimes I can’t think straight. I saw red when he was touching you and… I’m sorry.”

She scans my face, searching for something I’m not sure she’ll ever find. “I had a meeting with Kai earlier. I actually called you but you weren’t there.”

And just like that I’m pissed again. “You talked to Kai?”

“I had to, my boss was breathing down my neck for your designs and since you hadn’t contacted me, I had to call you.”

“You get everything you needed from him?”

She frowns. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but he was nothing but professional.” She storms past me muttering, “Unlike someone I know.”

What in the—I tail after her down the sidewalk. “Taylor! I wasn’t insinuating anything.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

She continues walking but I step in front of her again. “I’m serious.” I see her drop her walls and her face softens when she looks over my face, but as she meets my eyes, her expression is neutral again. “Can we talk?”

She sighs. “I don’t have time for games, I have a lot to wrap my head around right now.”

Of their own accord, my fingers wrap around her wrist gently, my thumb grazing a path into her palm. “Please let me talk.”

Her shoulders relax as she blows out a breath. “Fine.”

I motion around us. “Not here though, will you come somewhere with me?”

Her gaze is hesitant, but she finally nods and walks to where I parked my car. “You have an hour, that’s it.”

I nod and climb in the car, the tension in the air making it hard to breathe. Or maybe it’s the way my heart is pounding against my chest, trying to jump out? It isn’t listening to my head that’s screaming at me to turn around and run.

But I know that’s all it is; in my head.

The farther out of the city we drive, the streets get more run-down and dirty until we hit our destination. She looks around the street with wide eyes. “Zander, where are we?”

Plucking up the courage to look at her, I admire the curves of her body. Fuck. I’ve missed her! “Back where it all started,” I say simply, climbing out of the car and opening her door for her.

She shuffles her feet as I pull out a set of keys and walk toward the building in front of us. I unlock the doors, flipping the light switch on the side and lighting up a huge space with broken floorboards and knocked-down walls with graffiti strewn over everything.

When she steps inside, I suck it up and start talking. “Why did you leave?” I know the answer, I just need to hear it for myself.

Her eyes meet mine but her expression isn’t accusatory, it’s matter-of-fact like her tone. “You told me to.”

She doesn’t mention me shouting at her to which I’m thankful for, but I still feel the need to apologize again. Man, I’m an asshole. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugs and walks over to a wall, touching it. “I kinda get it. It was a lot to deal with.”

“That doesn’t matter, I never should’ve raised my voice to you like that.”

She shrugs. “Why did you throw me out?”

I cringe. “For you to try and understand where I’m coming from, I think I need to tell you everything you wanted to know the other day.” She nods and I sigh. Here goes nothing. “I used to think anyone with an addiction was weak-minded. I watched my mom shoot heroin and wonder why I was never good enough for her. Why couldn't she be addicted to loving me?”

She screws her hands up nervously. “Zander, you don’t have to—”

“I want to,” I reply, looking into her eyes and conveying that I need to. I’m tired of running and pushing people away. “Addiction is genetic, or at least that’s what the doctors and shrinks told me. After I started dabbling with drugs myself, I realized my mom was trying to love and take care of me in her own way. She just wasn’t trying hard enough. So I had no chance, or at least that’s what I told myself because apparently it’s a chemical imbalance and you can’t control them.”

I stare in front of me at the wall she was touching a second ago as I lose myself to memories. “I blamed her for so long. It had to be her fault that I was the way I was. I lost myself in the highs and drowned in the lows, until one day I watched a pregnant mother of two shoot heroin into her arm in front of her kids. I called an ambulance and got the fuck out of there because it made me feel sick that I was associated with these people. I’d become the very person I despised.” I take a deep breath to tell the next part. It still stings that I was so desperate. “Taylor, this is the area I grew up in. This is why I brought you here.”

“Alright, but why?”

“Just listen.” I step toward her. “There was a well-known gang. I guess you could even call them infamous around here. They had their hands in all sorts of illegal substances and I knew they were bad news, but I didn’t care. I walked up to them and asked them to kill me that day.”

At my admission, Taylor’s breath hitches but I can’t bring myself to look at her and see the same pity in her eyes she held the day I told her I was an addict. “I wanted to die more than anything else in that moment.” I clench my jaw together as my skin starts crawling, the same feeling invading every part of me. I still haven’t gotten over it.

I take a second to remind myself of where I am and how far I’ve come, but it’s not until Taylor puts her hand over mine that I relax and look at her for the first time. “What happened?”

Instead of pity or the sympathy I expected to see, there’s intrigue. “They laughed at me, taunted me.” I close my eyes. “I got angry.”

“Fuck off, junkie!” a guy with a red cap shouts.

My hands clench by my sides. “Kill me.”

I get pushed from behind and I’m so high that I stumble a few paces, barely able to catch myself as another says, “Get the fuck outta here!” But in my hazy unbalanced state, I turn and launch myself at the nearest guy which just so happens to be the biggest one of the bunch.

His breath whooshes out of his chest as our bodies collide and hit the dirty sidewalk. I don’t get another hit in as I’m dragged off, being pummeled from all sides by feet and fists. But I don’t move or even flinch.

This is what I want.

I welcome death.

“I cried like a damn baby when I woke up to bright lights and beeping machines. I knew they hadn’t succeeded and I was too chicken shit to do it myself.”

When I open my eyes, Taylor’s crying silent tears. “Why didn’t you just get help?”

“Because dying was the easier option,” I deadpan.

The next few moments pass by in complete silence apart from her snivelling, but I can’t bring myself to comfort her right now. I’m trying to keep myself together. I’ve revealed the deepest, darkest part of myself to her like Emma said I should. Now I wait.

“But you’re here now,” she whispers finally, her head lifting, her gaze clashing with mine. “You made it.”

I think back to how hard it was to get to where I am now, but in the end, it was all worth it. “I did, but I haven’t been happy just getting by.” Her brow furrows and I swallow before saying, “I walked around these streets several months ago thinking about my life. I’ve made something of myself, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

Her brow furrows. “You help people lose weight and get healthy every day. You’ve created thousands of jobs for people who really needed one.”

I’ve never thought about the job aspect of it before, but the health thing? That’s bullshit. I just own the company that runs their gym. “That isn’t enough for me. I ran into a bunch of kids around thirteen or fourteen when I was checking out the area and they were kicking a bottle down the street, swearing like motherfuckers.” I chuckle, I don’t miss the irony in what I said. “I got to thinking that I was those kids once upon a time, walking the streets, running into trouble because what the hell else did we have to do?”

“That’s where you got the idea for the center?”

“Kai told you about that, huh?”

She nods slowly. “This is it, isn’t it?”

I look around us. “It will be, yeah. That day I was thinking about all the money sitting in my bank account. I’m a simple person. I don’t own a million cars or a huge house, I don’t need all that materialistic crap to be happy, but those kids need support and stability more than anything. I know if they don’t get it, the majority of them will go on to be exactly as I was doing drugs, dead, or in prison.”

She shivers. “That’s awful.”

“That’s the reality of it though. Society shies away from people and places like this because they’re afraid to see what’s just beyond their reach, but I had to do something. Anyway, I’m getting off topic. As I was walking the area, the idea churning into a real plan, I found this place.” I try to refrain from shutting my eyes. “Run-down buildings make me feel empty. The absence of people means there’s something wrong with the place. As if it was built with hope and optimism, just to inevitably crumble into broken dreams and anguish.”

“All this is amazing, but I don’t understand what this has to do with us.”

I don’t acknowledge what she’s said, instead carrying on with my analogy, remembering seeing this building for the first time and seeing myself. Someone who was born into the world an innocent, only to be destroyed by myself and the people around me. It made me realize that no matter what you make of yourself, no matter how much money you have in your account, you still have nothing if you don’t have the ones you love around you or you’re not doing something that makes a real difference in the world.

“It makes me uncomfortable to see the shame in the flickering lights and the broken windows. It makes me feel uncomfortable being a part of someone else’s failure.” My mom tried I guess, I get that now. But like I said before, she didn’t try hard enough with me. She failed.

I make sure I look into her eyes at this next point. “I never want to understand what it feels like to know I could’ve had more. To know I could’ve worked harder or took an opportunity I’ve been handed.” I take her hand in mine. “I never want to be struggling to keep the windows boarded up or to keep the lights on, knowing that I had the potential to be cascaded in light.”

By the time I’ve finished my speech, I’m within inches of her face. Her eyes still glisten and a tear rolls out as I cup her cheek. “I don’t want to regret not ever trying with you and I want to make a difference in this world. You’re a light in darkness that shows me I can do this.”

“The boards to your windows?” she supplies, chuckling slightly.

I shrug. “Yeah, that wasn’t the best analogy, but I’ve never been good with expressing myself. You’re like a drug I can let myself have. One that won’t destroy my life and everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

“I can’t promise that,” she whispers.

“After a life of shitty endings, I’m willing to take a gamble that you’re a happy beginning. I’m not the easiest guy to be around sometimes but I mean well. I have to have things in certain ways and I’m bad at deviating from a schedule. I can’t promise romantic getaways at the last minute all the time or to make spontaneous plans with friends, but I can fucking promise you now I’ll never stop treating you like you deserve. You deserve the world and if you’ll have me, I’ll never stop proving to you how grateful I am that someone else finally took control. I’ll never stop trying to make a difference.”

I trail my hand down onto her neck as a strange expression crosses her features. “Finally took control?”

“Of these fucked-up feelings inside of my head. Baby, when I’m with you I feel like I can breathe. With you, I don’t need a release.” I waggle my brows. “Apart from in the biblical sense because... fuck do I want you that way all day, every day.”

She bites her lip and I have to refrain from doing the same. “And now you have all these plans in place, are you happy?”

My fingers thread into her hair. “Not without you. I’ve been fucking miserable.”

She pulls back slightly, seriousness clouding her eyes. “I’ve wanted you since that first night we were together. I only ran because you told me to.”

I pull her within a hair’s breadth of my lips. “And I couldn’t be sorrier about that. I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my life before never mind told them about my past. The only people that know are my shrinks, sister…” My voice tightens. “And Kai.”

I have to admit, the thought of losing Kai as a best friend hurts. I’ve ghosted him since he turned up at my place unannounced and was a complete ass. But maybe it’s time to forgive and forget.

She smooths a hand down my cheek, grazing the stubble. “Kai’s pretty important to you, isn’t he?” I nod. “You’re important to him, too. He told me not to hurt you, I think it was kind of a warning actually.”

I frown. “He did? Wait—you guys talked about me?”

She looks down at her lap. “Yeah. I knew I wanted you all along, I just wasn’t sure what I did wrong.”

“Nothing,” I blurt out. “You did nothing wrong, I was an ass. All of this is on me.”

“Then…” She bites her lip again and I have to stop myself from growling and kissing her. “I think we should take this one day at a time and see where it goes. I want to make a difference, too.”

“I like that idea,” I mumble before her soft lips touch mine and the buzz I was starting to feel in my head silences.