Chapter 36: What’s Wrong?

“Of course we were coming here. I knew it, I swear!” I exaggerated on speaking useless stuff as Xavier parked the car in front of the company.

He looked at me with a casually irritated gaze and ignored my apparently “self-ted-talk” before stepping out of the car. I scoffed, “Sure, I would see myself out of this damn car!” I whispered to myself and came out too.

I realized that I had been overreacting to everything to myself, but I guess that was a coping mechanism. Otherwise, I would probably go insane!

He suddenly took my hand and I looked at him with a confused gaze, jerking myself away from him.

“Today is the day I finally announce you as my girlfriend. You need to cooperate.”

My eyes widened. “What— what are you even saying!?” I exclaimed.

“Yes. This is the way to go from here, Scarlett. I need to stop you from ruining our child’s future and for that, you need to stay away from Max and for that…” his smirk returned, “You need to be mine.”

“I—”

“Don’t even try to retaliate because there are so many cards I haven’t played yet, Scarlett, and one of them is your dad. You do know that I can do anything, right?”

I scoffed and looked sideways. Of course, go ahead and ruin my life. Just let me bring popcorn. Man!

I looked back and put up a fake smile.

“Go ahead.”

He looked at me carefully, as if trying to read my emotions before he continued: “If you try something stupid in front of the media, you know that it is going to be bad, right?”

“Yes.”

He nodded before taking my hand again — and this time, I didn’t take it back. I have a really great idea. Might not be the best thing later on, but man… I am having a great feeling about this one.

…

As we entered the company, I noticed that everything seemed to be a lot different than before. Everyone was working extremely hard — it wasn’t like the last time. The receptionist wasn’t idle enough to even welcome Xavier personally, attending several calls at the same time. A lot of people could be seen running around, carrying a lot of documents in their hands. The employees who used to roam free in corridors could be seen handling work on multiple computers and documents simultaneously and their eyes seemed to be strained from long hours of work and no sleep.

I looked at Xavier and raised my eyebrow. “What happened here?”

“What? You don’t like the fragrance or something?” He shrugged it off and started moving.

I came forward and ran to come in front of him. “No. What happened with everyone? Why are you ignoring my question?”

“Why are you so interested in my company if you hate me so much?” He asked a simple question, which actually made sense. I didn’t say anything else after that. I couldn’t deny what he said — I did hate him, but I also wanted to know what happened suddenly. I wasn’t worried, I couldn’t be, but… there was this weird feeling in my heart. I wanted to know what was wrong and it wasn’t just general curiosity — I wanted to make sure his company was doing fine.

But if I don’t care about him, what could his company mean to me?

Why am I so messed up, God!?

“Move,” he said, waking me from my trance and I gave him a side, as he continued to go to his office. I followed him.

_______________________________

“I need you to follow this script,” He handed over a printed document to me as we entered his office. It contained three to four lines that I was supposed to speak in front of the media later.

“You had this printed out? Since when?”

“Not everyone is as messed up as you,” he said with a general shrug. “Some people can plan things for days and do stuff systematically.”

“Yeah yeah. If you don’t remember, you are the reason I am messed up in the first place!”

“No, actually,” he shifted his eyes toward me, “You are messed up because you don’t know shit about your own feelings.”

A small smirk appeared on his lips as he again moved past me, towards the other end of his office. I sighed and looked at the document.

A question kept on repeating in my mind: Should I really ruin anything?

There was something wrong with Xavier. I didn’t know what, but his company wasn’t at his finest. I knew he loved his company — so I could see a direct relationship between them. And I wasn’t unaware of how easily he could hide his stress behind his smirks.

“Don’t stare at some random molecule on the floor, rather learn those lines. I can’t have you fuck up anything later,” he said.

I looked at him and sighed. Keeping the document down on the table, I walked over to him. He was going through a file.

“Xavier.”

He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “What? You miss my scent?”

“What’s wrong?” I ignored his question and asked with a genuine worried expression.

“As I said, you don’t know shit about your feelings, right?”

I looked at the ground and heard him sigh. “Just go on and do stuff like you always do, Scarlett. Don’t pretend because you never know when the other one is not.”

“What do you mean?”

He smirked. “Exactly.”

“What?”

He went back to his chair near the table and sat down. “The journalists will be here in an hour. Be presentable. Take the document and go to your cabin.”

“Oh, I have my cabin still? I thought you would have replaced me, because… you know, everyone seems to be very determinant.”

“Not everyone is replaceable.”

I ignored the obvious meaning of his words and continued: “An inexperienced, careless and completely new employee is.”

“Go back, woman,” He looked at me — with a genuine smile on his face.

“…yeah,” I whispered, turned around, and left.

Damn, what does he want?