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“I have issues with being accused of things I had nothing?—”
“It wasn’t an accusation. It was…” He growls deep in his chest, scowling as he turns and punches the stop button. My pulse lurches as the elevator brakes sharply.
“It was a statement of fact,” he mutters. “Our ‘relationship’ and anticipated engagement has been leaked to a major tabloid. I just got off the phone with their dipshit in-house counsel. I threatened the fucker enough to hold it for now, but they’ll be posting it online in the next fifteen minutes, if they haven’t already.”
My lip sucks between my teeth, my stomach dropping.
“Soon” just got upgraded to “imminently” in terms of everyone at work knowing.
“So, what does that mean?”
“It means, Fumi,” he says quietly, “that we need to hit this head on and get in front of it. The entire office will be talking about it in the next few minutes, so we might as well rip the band-aid off ourselves.”
My face pales.
I know what I signed up for. But the reality of having to look Taylor in the eye after she hears that I’ll be marrying her business partner, friend, and my boss feels like a knife to the gut. I mean this is a woman I look up to and respect more than anyone. Someone I aspire to be like.
And here I am, “screwing the boss” to get ahead. Talk about cliché.
It also makes all of this so much more real. Not just the marrying Gabriel part. Not even just looking my friends and coworkers in the eye and smiling when that comes out.
It’s the part when Gabriel actually campaigns for Governor, and I’ll have to face a part of my past I’ve spent years burying.
It means I’ll have to face him. Literally. I’ll have stand in a room with that fuckwad. I’ll have to pose for pictures, smiling, with him in the same photo.
It makes me want to throw up right here and now.
I’m shaken from my dark thoughts when Gabriel turns and starts the elevator again. The car begins to rise once more, my pulse thudding like I’m taking my last footsteps up the stairs to the guillotine.
“Like…now?”
Gabriel’s face is stony as he reaches into the pocket of his immaculately tailored suit and pulls out his phone. His brows furrow as he thumbs the screen open, and his jaw clenches tightly.
“Right now,” he grunts, jamming his phone back into his pocket. He turns, his gaze stabbing into mine. “The story went live one minute ago.”
Fuck. Me.
Before I can agonize about my new reality, or fret about what I’m going to say to Taylor and my other friends, the elevator stops again as he jams the button once more.
“Oh, and I almost forgot.”
The glimmer of diamond has my eyes widening as Gabriel pulls a ring out of his pocket.
“I…”
But no words come out of my mouth as it opens wide. Instead, I just stare, my pulse thudding as Gabriel deftly takes my hand and slides the engagement ring onto my finger.
It’s perfect. I almost wish it was a design I hated, or that it was too gaudy, or too small. Too anything. Because that would make this whole thing easier to roll my eyes at.
But it’s not. The goddamn thing is exactly the freaking ring I’d pick for myself out of a thousand options.
I swallow as my gaze holds on my finger with an unblinking stare. Without another word, Gabriel turns and pushes the button again, lurching the elevator into motion again.
“Game faces,” Gabriel growls.
He turns to me again, and though his brow is still creased and his jaw still set, I catch a brief flash of—fuck, is that humanity that I see in his eyes?
“Ready?” he says quietly.
