Jace stripped his jacket off and dropped it on the floor. He stepped around me without another word and disappeared down the corridor, his footsteps sharp and quick against the floor.
The woman looked at me. "Did you just throw up on my brother?"
Brother. The resemblance clicked into place.
I didn’t answer because Miley was already there, taking one look at my face and switching into extraction mode without a single question.
"We’re going," Miley said, her arm around my waist. "Right now. Let’s go."
She didn’t ask what happened. Not in the corridor or in the Uber where I leaned my head against the window and watched the neon lights of South Beach blur past like smeared paint. Notuntil we were home and I was sitting on the bathroom floor in her borrowed black dress with mascara on my cheeks and my back against the cold tile and the full weight of the evening pressing down on me like a hand on my chest.
Then I cried.
Miley slid down to the tile beside me as I told her everything.
"It’s over," I said, my voice wrecked. "One week. That’s all I lasted."
"You don’t know that for sure."
"He fired me to my face, Miley. In a nightclub corridor. While wearing my vomit. That’s not a gray area. That’s a very clear, very vomit-covered termination."
"Okay, when you put it like that it does sound bad."
I laughed. A wet, broken sound that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a laugh or a sob. "It is bad."
"It’s bad tonight. Tonight isn’t forever." She bumped her knee against mine. "And for what it’s worth? If someone threw up on me and then cupped their own boobs and told me they were soft like clouds, I’d probably fire them too. So at least he’s being reasonable."
"That’s not helping."
"It’s helping a little bit. You smiled."
"I didn’t smile."
"You did. A tiny one. Don’t lie to me, I’m sitting on a cold floor for you." She reached over and pulled my head onto her shoulder. "You’ve survived worse than a man in a fancy suit, Anna. Way worse. And you’re still here."
She was right. I had survived worse. But surviving and living were different things. And I was getting tired of only doing one of them.
Miley stroked my hair. "We’ll figure it out. We always figure it out."
I didn’t believe her. But Miley was warm, and the tile was cold, and believing took energy I didn’t have. So I closed my eyes and let her hold me, trying not to think about what was waiting when the sun came up.
Whether I still had a job. Whether Jace Hunter meant what he said. Tomorrow was another day and I’d know if I had to start over from nothing.
CHAPTER 5
Anna
I walked into Hunter Interactive on Monday morning like I was attending my own execution.
The building looked different when you entered it expecting to leave. More intimidating. The lobby was all polished concrete and glass, with massive screens cycling through trailers for Hunter Interactive’s latest titles. A character from their flagship franchise, some armored warrior mid-leap, frozen on a sixty-inch display like she was judging everyone who walked past. The security guard nodded at me. I nodded back. At least someone in this building acknowledged my existence without hostility.
Miles was waiting by the elevators, looking like a man who’d been expecting me and had prepared remarks.
"Before you say anything," he started.
"I’m just here to get my stuff."
"You’re not getting your stuff."
