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“I stabbed myself on something. It hurts.”
Elliot crouches at my feet. “Let me look.”
“Christ. You guys actually care about each other.” Max sounds surprised. But it’s the surprise of someone with severe vertigo who’s been promised their heart’s desire, only to immediately discover they have to walk along the edge of an unfenced five-hundred-foot cliff to get it.
“Oh fuck off, Max,” Elliot says, peeling my grip from my foot and twisting his head to look at the sole. “It’s bleeding a bit.” He brushes it off with his thumb. “But I don’t think there’s anything stuck in there.”
He reaches back and yanks my shoe out of the ground. “Looks like you got tangled in some roots.”
“Jesus.” Max sighs. “You’re a real life Cinderella and Prince Charming. I’m watching an actual fucking fairytale.” Mouth open, eyes wide, he shakes his head as if trying to wake from a dream—or more likely, a nightmare—and bring himself back to reality.
“Why are you still here?” Elliot snaps, keeping his attention on easing my foot back into my shoe as painlessly as possible.
“I’ve been trying to decide what new role to give Charlotte after she handled your launch so well.” He presses his palm to his forehead. “But now I can see that’s not the only thing she’s been handling.”
Shit. Max was here with good news. The news I’ve wanted to hear for more than a year. I take a tentative step forward onto my foot that apparently now has a hole in it.
Elliot rises from his crouch and rests a hand in the small of my back to steady me. “I need to get her up to the house to clean this wound. It doesn’t look too deep, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Hold on,” I tell Elliot, my hopes raised by the suggestion Max might have picked a business for me to run and this might not be career-ending after all. I push my hair out of my face and look at him. “You’ve decided on my promotion?”
“Well, this morning, I had a flash of inspiration. Something that would be perfectly suited to you.” He takes long, slow strides between two fallen trees, his eyes on the ground. “And I thought this would be the perfect quiet moment to share the good news.”
He stops, raises his head, and looks from Elliot to me. “But…urgh…you guys are killing me.” His head falls back and he stares up at the trees and sky. “What am I supposed to do now that I know you’ve broken the nonfraternization terms?”
“Charlotte has not,” Elliot snaps in the firmest voice I have ever heard him use on anyone, least of all Max. I teeter a little, and he increases the pressure on my back. “Your nonfraternization policy doesn’t cover me. I don’t work for you.” He’s strong and clear and right there for me.
While his support means everything, it could also piss off Max so much he withdraws his offer.
“And what about the family subclause?” Max’s pained expression says he’d do anything right now for a device from one of Elliot’s time travel shows to set the clock back ten minutes so he could choose not to follow us into the woods.
“Screw the subclause,” Elliot says with his new raging defiance. “I love Charlotte. So screw it.”
My head snaps to Elliot like it’s been yanked on a string. “You what?”
“I love you,” he says, more sheepish now, and almost like it’s a question. “You probably think that’s fast, but I’ve known for years. It might be only sixteen days since I carried you home, but the time since then has only crystalized my feelings. So, yes, Charlotte Lipton, I love you.”
Sixteen days? He counted.
Not that that’s the most important part of that sentence, obviously. But still…he counted.
My mind’s so busy trying to process his declaration of love that Max speaks before I can form a thought or a sentence.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Max presses the heels of his hands to his temples as if trying to contain an exploding brain and stands there with his elbows sticking out like chicken wings. “What am I supposed to do? I mean, I’m happy you’re happy.”
Well, that’s something I guess.
“But all those policies are in place for good reasons,” he continues. “I lost a shit-ton of money and almost had to close a business because of fraternization. I lost a good friend and a great employee because of an office romance that went sideways.”
He spreads his arms wide. “And someone died in that bus crash, Elliot. Someone died. And people were hurt. All because mixing family and work made it too awkward for anyone to discipline a bad driver.”
“A bus crash?” What the hell is he talking about?
I look at Elliot, but he ignores me and turns back to Max. “No one is going to die.” His voice strong again. “You can’t stop this. You can’t do anything about it. You are not in charge of me, Max.”
“No, I’m not.” Max paces off to the side, stepping over a fallen branch. “And I love you guys. Both of you. But I can’t show favoritism. How could I enforce a policy on other staff when they’ve seen me waive it for my assistant? And what would Connor think, after I lost my shit with him over the Anna thing, if I now cheered you two on?”
“Because it’s different,” Elliot says.
