Page 112 of This Changes Everything

“What the hell is going on out here?” Ken emerged from his office, confused. “Did I hear screaming?”

I didn’t fight. There was no flight. I didn’t even freeze. I didn’t fall to the ground, but my body still played dead, like a possum in front of a predator. I’d had panic attacks before, but I didn’t know what this was. This wasn’t anything. I’d turned into nothing.

“Ellie?” I think it was Ben talking. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking through him. “What happened?”

“Ellie McCain’s a liability to your company and your reputation, Ken. You need to fire her.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Ben snapped his head toward Craig.

“Me? Nothing!” Craig looked like he was actually surprised and confused by Ben’s questioning. “She’s been acting fucking cra—”

Ben ripped his arm back and punched Craig, connecting with the side of his face and knocking him straight to the ground.

“BEN!” Ken screamed.

“I quit,” I said. I was breathless, like I had been punched in the gut.

“What is happening?!” Ken asked, but I didn’t answer.

I don’t know if I ran, but somehow, I was gone, already through the emergency exit, and Ben was with me. As I made my way down the stairs, Ben grabbed my waist and picked me up like a feather. It felt like I was flying. When we got to his rental car, he opened the door and set me inside, then got into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the private parking lot before either of us could buckle up.

“Ellie, what happened?” Ben implored, driving quickly through Beverly Hills down Wilshire Boulevard. I couldn’t speak. “Jesus Christ! Ellie, give me your phone!”

I was clutching my phone, unable to open my hand. It was as if I were experiencing rigor mortis. Ben pulled it from my grip and punched in my four-digit code. 9178. He remembered. He went to my call history and pressed the screen when he saw Rory’s name. Ben put the phone on speaker and set it on the dashboard as Rory’s phone rang on the other end.

“What’s up, babe? Are you late to work?” Rory answered, without saying hello.

“Rory. It’s Ben. I’m with Ellie.” Ben’s voice was clipped.

“Uh, hi . . . ? Is everything okay?”

I could imagine Rory sitting straighter, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Ben calling him from my phone and saying we were together would have been, to say the least, surprising.

“No, dude. Everything is not okay,” Ben answered. His eyes jumped between the road and me in the passenger seat.

“Give Ellie the phone,” Rory ordered.

“I can’t. She’s not talking.”

There was a beat. I could almost hear Rory shaking. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Something happened at her office.”

“Okay . . .”

“I came in to meet Ken Caplin. She and I were catching up on my way out, then she got called away by someone. Something happened between them. Now she’s having a panic attack.”

Rory was silent. His brain was likely firing in a thousand different directions.

Ben gave him a couple of seconds to catch up before asking, “You still there?”

“Take her home. Get her head under cold water. Give me your number, and I’ll text you the address.” Rory’s voice was cutting.

Ben gave Rory his phone number. There was an immediate ding from Ben’s back pocket. He pulled out his phone and tapped in his passcode. 9178. His eyes flicked over to me for the briefest of seconds. I blinked, then was flooded with a lost memory of us making our passcodes the same, back when we were together and living at Grayrock. Neither of us had changed it since. I wasn’t sure either of us even remembered we had done that until this very moment, when Ben’s muscle memory kicked in.

Ben mapped out the directions to my address, then placed his phone on the center console.

“Who was she with?” Rory demanded.