Page 92 of True Colors

I want to pull her into my arms. I want to hold her. I want to give her the world.

What a joke!

I can’t even give her the visibility in a board meeting that she’s worked so hard for.

Defeated, I hang my head, and I look away from her. “Yes, that’s all.”

She stands. Picks up her laptop. She moves like she’s on autopilot, muscle memory carrying her through.

“Th-thank you for t-telling me,” she murmurs.

I watch her leave, each step widening the distance between us. This is why I hesitated for so long—because I knew she wouldn’t see my decision as simply a business one. She’d make it personal.

This is the end of us.

“Anouk,” I call.

She pauses, turns halfway.

I want—desperately—to say something that fixes this. Something reassuring. Something that tells her she’s not being sidelined, not being erased.

“You did everything right.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line. “Th-then why am I th-the one who is hu-hurting?”

She doesn’t wait for my response, not that I have anything left to say. There is no repairing this.

The door shuts softly behind her.

Fuck! I broke her heart. And mine.

Give it time, Luther, she’ll get it. This isn’t the end.

I know I’m lying to myself. The devastation I saw on her face is akin to what I saw that time when she sat in a conference room, having got the message about her mother dying.

No, actually, this time is worse. Then she was crying. Now…there was nothing.

Damn it! I didn’t have a choice.

This is leadership. This is me being a good leader. I did it kindly. Someone else would’ve just announced it. Can’t she see that?

CHAPTER 21

Anouk

Humiliation is a silent devil.

It doesn’t shout, rage, or demand attention. It just settles into your bones, heavy and cold, and it makes everything else distant—muted, surreal.

It’s like watching your life through a Salvador Dali lens.

Everything is distorted, and the wrong things are exaggerated.

I get to my cubicle and feel the crush of the things Luther said to me, as well as the things he didn’t, the things he said to Erin that I had the misfortune of overhearing.

I was too eager to start our meeting. I wanted to kiss him, tell him I love him, tell him how ready I was for the board meeting, and thank him for his trust in me before we talked about work.

So I got there early. And the universe showed me who he really is before I made the mistake of opening my heart completely to him.