Chapter 143 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 26

Chapter 143 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 26
VIVIENNE

I'm fine.
Completely fine. Totally, absolutely, no-questions-asked fine, and the fact that I reorganized my entire filing system twice in four days doesn't mean anything except that I have standards. High ones. The kind of standards that require color-coded tabs and a level of document management most people find excessive but I find necessary.
The report was going to be perfect. That's what I told myself at three in the morning on the second night of staring at my ceiling with my brain refusing to shut up. Make it so thorough, so clean, so airtight that the co-signer would walk in, read it, and realize within about four minutes that his presence was completely unnecessary. He'd sign his name at the bottom and feel vaguely embarrassed about the whole thing and I'd be gracious about it because I'm a professional. That was the plan. Good plan. Solid plan. Nothing about it was an elaborate coping mechanism dressed up in workaholic tendencies.
I also emailed my managing partner three times in one week about keeping my name as lead on the final report. Three emails. Which, yes, is more than the usual number, but this was important and it warranted follow-up. The first email was very professional. The second one was also professional. The third one had a footnote. I'm not going to discuss the footnote.

He confirmed it Thursday afternoon. My name at the top, co-signer below. I read the confirmation twice, nodded to myself, and moved on with my day like a person who was definitely not counting this as some kind of moral victory.
Maya called that evening. She'd texted twice already and I'd responded with variations of okay! and sounds good! which in hindsight was a screaming red flag. Maya knows me. She knows an exclamation point from me means I'm either genuinely excited or performing excitement with the desperate energy of a woman trying to convince herself, and she can tell the difference within about three words.
"How are you," she said.
"Good. Really good. The report's nearly done, I'm on track to file by end of next week, and the lead designation thing got sorted."
Pause.
"Maya?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to. I could hear you about to."
"I was just listening." That voice. The one she uses when she's paying attention to everything I'm not saying. "You sound very... efficient."
"I am very efficient."
"You sound like you're weaponizing efficiency. Like you're trying to manage my concern by being aggressively competent at me."
I opened my mouth. Shut it. She wasn't wrong and I didn't have a comeback ready and Maya knows a delayed comeback means she's hit something real. She waited. She's been better at waiting than me since we were kids. She'd just sit there with her patient little face while I ran through every deflection I had and eventually ran out.
"I'm managing," I said.
"Sleeping?"
"Somewhat."
"Eating?"
"Priya brought dumplings before so...."
"That's a point for Priya and not actually an answer." She let the silence sit for a moment. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Okay." And she dropped it, which is one of the best things about Maya. She offers, and then she actually respects the no. "Come over Saturday? Dev's attempting the jollof rice recipe again, the one that took him four tries. We can eat and watch something fun. No talking required."
I said yes immediately. Didn't check my calendar, didn't think about whether I had plans. Just yes. Which should tell you exactly where my head was at, because I never say yes without consulting my schedule first. I'm a person who checks things. I said yes to rice and a stupid movie like someone starving for a room full of people who weren't connected to any of this mess.
Fine. I admit it. I'm not entirely fine. Satisfied?
The co-auditor arrived Monday.
Daniel Osei. Priya knew him from her old firm and had vetted him ahead of time, texting me he's one of the good ones I swear with about seventeen reassurance emojis. I appreciated the vetting. I also slightly resented it because I didn't want him to be one of the good ones. I wanted a reason to be difficult about this, some justification for the simmering resentment I'd been carrying around since the letter arrived, and a genuinely decent co-auditor made that impossible.
He showed up with a laptop bag and a quiet handshake and asked all the right questions about the report structure within the first ten minutes, which was irritating. He didn't try to take over. Didn't explain my own findings back to me in slightly different words. Didn't do any of the things men in his position sometimes do when they're added to a project another woman has already nearly finished. He read what I'd written, made a few sharp notes in the margins, and asked if I had the original vendor invoices from Q3 because something in the supporting documentation had caught his eye.
Which I had. Obviously.
"Good," he said, and went back to reading.
Infuriating. The whole thing was infuriating in the least dramatic way possible because there was nothing to fight and nowhere to aim the restless angry energy I'd been stockpiling for a week.
We were in the conference room. Daniel at one end with his laptop, me at the other with my annotated draft, the afternoon light going golden through the windows. I was making a note on page thirty-seven when the door opened.
Cole.
He stopped in the doorway like he'd walked into a wall. One hand still on the handle, his whole body doing that tiny recalibration of someone who'd expected an empty room and found the opposite. His eyes found me instantly. Just a second, maybe two, but it was a full one, the kind where neither of us moved and the air went strange and I forgot Daniel existed entirely.
And God help me, he looked good.
That was my first thought. Not professional, not measured, not any of the careful distance I'd been cultivating for a week. Just fuck, he looks good. The sleeves rolled up to his forearms in that way he does, the way that always made me want to run my fingers down the inside of his wrist just to watch him react. His shoulders filling out that stupid charcoal shirt, the one I'd peeled off him in his bedroom, my hands on his chest, his mouth on my throat. I remembered exactly how his biceps felt under my palms when he braced himself above me, that shift of muscle and heat, and I remembered his mouth, God, his mouth, the things he could do with it that had nothing to do with board meetings and everything to do with the way he'd put it between my legs and refused to come up for air until I was shaking so hard I forgot my own name.
I was looking at him across a conference table with a co-auditor three feet away and my body was remembering everything.
His jaw. The way it tightened right before he kissed me. The sound he made when I bit his bottom lip, low and rough and surprised, like I'd pulled it out of him without permission. The way his hands fit on my waist, thumbs pressing into my hipbones, holding me exactly where he wanted me while his mouth did devastating things to my collarbone.
I pressed my thighs together under the table. Like a teenager. Like a woman who hadn't been touched in years instead of one who'd been in his bed three weeks ago with her legs wrapped around his waist and his name falling out of her mouth in a voice she didn't recognize, but there was this exhaustion sitting behind his eyes that didn’t look like it had anything to do with sleep. I recognized it because I'd been seeing the same thing in my own mirror every morning.
His mouth opened. He was about to say something real, I could feel it forming in the space between us, and I sat there frozen with my pen hovering over page thirty-seven and my heart doing something completely unacceptable in my chest.
"Mr. Westbrook." Daniel stood up with his hand extended and his pleasant professional smile. "Daniel Osei. I've been brought on to co-sign the final report. We've exchanged emails, I think."
Cole blinked. Looked at Daniel's outstretched hand. Looked back at me.
I stared at page thirty-seven like it held the answer to every question I'd ever had.
"Of course," Cole said, and his voice had gone smooth, that polished boardroom voice I hadn't heard in weeks. He shook Daniel's hand. Said something about the filing timeline. Daniel responded with something about the Q3 documentation. They had a brief, efficient formal exchange while I sat there making a note I wasn't actually making and waited for the whole thing to be over.
It ended. Cole left. The door swung shut.
Daniel sat back down and resumed typing. The HVAC hummed. Someone's phone rang down the hall.
I looked at my notes.
I had written the same word four times in the margin, each one slightly smaller than the last, like my hand had been trying to work something out while my brain was otherwise occupied. I closed the folder. Opened it again. Stared at the word without reading it.
This was going to be a very long week.