Shit,I thought.You fucked that up.
I loved her. I did. I didn’t want to push her away. I didn’t want to hurt her. But somewhere along the line, things had shifted—from wanting to be together to needing to be together.
And I wasn’t sure when that had happened.
The five o’clock meeting is worse than the first.
Jim doesn’t pace this time. He sits. Hands folded. Jaw tight. That’s how I know.
The room feels smaller. The air stale. Nobody’s joking now. Nobody’s pretending this is just another bad Monday.
“We’ve been escalated,” Jim says flatly.
No one speaks.
“Sales is pushing back. Hard. Finance is circling. And corporate… corporate wants eyes on this.”
My stomach sinks.
“Meaning?” someone asks.
Jim looks directly at me. “Meaning New York.”
The word lands heavy.
“Manhattan,” he adds. “Global headquarters.”
The room goes dead silent.
“When?” I ask.
“Next Thursday,” he says. “We’ll stay over Thursday and Friday. Head back over the weekend. I don’t know yet.”
He rubs his face. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat this. Shit’s bad.”
My collar is burning now. My pulse loud in my ears.
I nod, because what else can I do?
“Get me options,” Jim says. “Fixes. Stories. Something I can sell upstairs.”
The meeting breaks, but nobody moves right away. Chairs scrape slowly. Papers gather without urgency. The energy is… grim.
Back in my office, I shut the door and sit down hard.
New York.
Corporate scrutiny.
And everything with Sage already feels like it’s balancing on a fault line.
My BlackBerry lights up again.
Sage.
I hesitate.
Then I answer.
