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“Not good, then?”
I gaped at him. “No, Weston, it did not go good.”
He visibly swallowed. “What can I do?”
Ugh, I hated how my heart fluttered at his words, at the sincerity in his eyes. He was actually looking at me like he cared, like he was worried about me.
“You can give me some goddamned answers,” I snapped, stomping past him toward my desk. “That would be a start.”
“Whoa,” he said, spinning around to face me. “What the hell, Brynn?”
“Why did you go with Seth’s proposal?” I asked once I’d made it to my desk. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to text you last night,” he said. “You never texted back.”
“It didn’t come through until this morning,” I explained. “And his proposal was totally the wrong vibe. The bid was for awomen’sathletic line, and Seth’s proposal spoke to men, not to women.”
Weston blinked a few times, like he was putting pieces together, and then he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got word your proposal wasn’t testing well with a male audience and I made a last-minute decision to switch to Seth’s. I thought you’d do the same thing with the same information sitting in front of you. I didn’t realize—”
“You didn’t realize a lot of things,” I cut him off. I could feel my heart on the verge of breaking, but anger was doing its best to crush every other emotion at the moment. “We definitely lost the account.”
“Brynn,” he said, almost soothingly. “I’m sorry about the proposal. I’ll set another meeting with Nike and play yours. We’ll get another shot at it.”
“You don’t get it,” I said, emotions spinning on full speed in my body. “You don’t understand how devastating it is to lose. Because you’reyou. You can always fix things, always try again. It’s not like that for everyone, Wes.”
Weston raised his hands as if he didn’t quite register where all my hostility was coming from. Well, he was about to find the fuck out. Fear crept up my spine, its icy chill wrapping around my nerves and crystalizing them as I reached for the magazine on my desk.
Part of me wanted him to tell me this was all a lie, that Lena had made it all up, but the more rational part of my brain knew that would be so outlandish it couldn’t be possible, right? I mean, how the hell would she get a hold of his grandmother’s ring?
Everything pointed to Weston giving it to her, and it just…hurt. It wasn’t like I was ready to get married and have babies right this second, but I certainly didn’t want to be a mistress while Lena trotted around the world with his last name. The fact that he could even think I would agree to something like that made me feel like I’d been living in a fantasy world these last few months, only seeing and feeling and hearing what I wanted to hear instead of actually paying attention.
“You know,” I said, shaking my head, tears already welling in my eyes. “Even if I had lost the account, lost the deal, at least I would’ve had you, right?”
“Brynn?” Weston looked so damn confused, and it made me break all over again. Because how did he think I would react? Did he expect me to not be hurt by this? Did he expect me to go back to being his assistant, his friend, like nothing ever happened between us?
Had I signed up for that in the beginning? Maybe.
Had things changed the longer we were together? Yes.
For me they had.
“I didn’t want to push,” I said, the fight going right out of me. “I never wanted to push you, Weston. I knew what we had was too new, too fresh…but I never thought you’d use me like this.” Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I pressed the magazine to his chest. He took it, but kept his eyes on me. “Now I know why you never told me you loved me.”
“Brynn,” he said, but I ignored his plea, grabbed my bag, and stormed out of my own office. My heart broke with every step away I took from him.
WESTON
“Ms. Nelson is on a conference call!” Her assistant almost tripped out of her chair as she tried to stop me from barging into Lena’s office.
She was unsuccessful, only catching up to me after I’d already stormed through her closed double doors.
“Mr. Rutherford,” the assistant whisper-hissed. “She’s on a—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Taylor,” Lena said into her phone while simultaneously holding up a finger toward us. “I’m sorry, dear, but I’ll have to call you back. Something just came up.” She smiled at the phone, nodding before hanging up.
My hands were in fists at my sides, my adrenaline spiking and mixing right along with my anger. I turned toward her assistant, doing my best not to roar at her. “Leave us. Now.”
The assistant, to her credit, waited for Lena to nod before she headed out, closing the doors behind her.
