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Quentin burst from his desk chair, reaching her quickly and wrapping his arms around her thin, bird-like shoulders. He shot his palm down to the small of her back, trying to hold onto her, stop her shaking.
“What is it?” he asked her tenderly. “You can talk to me. Something’s been up since last night…”
Charlotte’s tears blurred her eyes. Swallowing sharply, she finally found words. “Quentin, it’s been such a wonderful time, getting to know you. But Pamela—she saw us last night. She saw us kissing. And now, she’s going to hold it over my head for a few days, and then she’s going to tell Maggie.”
Quentin huffed, slipping his fingers through his dark hair. “Fuck.”
“I know,” Charlotte murmured, her head spinning. “I should probably just leave. Maybe Pamela won’t have a vendetta against you and spare you. This can’t get to the owners.”
“How about you let me worry about Pamela and the owners?” Quentin said firmly, pressing his lips together. “In the meantime, you have a job to do.”
“What do you mean?” Charlotte whispered.
“You have to write your feature. More than ever, now, you have to focus on it. It has to be the best fucking thing you’ve ever written. You need to show these assholes how good you are. That this magazine doesn’t even deserve how good you are.” He smacked his fist against his other palm, giving her a fiery look. “And you can leave. Go home. Do it there, or anywhere. This is a poisonous place for you right now, and I blame myself for that.”
Quentin took a dramatic step forward and placed his palms on either side of her cheeks, his breath hot. “I’ll see you when you’re done,” he whispered simply.
Charlotte nodded, biting her bottom lip. With a dramatic motion, she swept from the office and went to gather her things, listening as several of the interns muttered things under their breath at her. “Sell out.” “Slut.” “Groupie.”
At the doorway, she turned quickly toward Randy, who was still bent over his computer. His eyes flickered toward her for the first time since the morning. They were heavy with disappointment. Charlotte’s lips parted, yearning to state another apology, anything to link them together. But she felt the moment slip away.
27
The moment Charlotte slipped from his office, her eyes heavy with the news of their escaped secrets, Quentin collapsed against the side of his large mahogany desk, his shoulders slumping forward. Jesus. He hadn’t been careful enough, always robbing Charlotte from her intern offices and fucking her hard against the desk, lifting her dress over her spine to reveal the moon-like curvature of her porcelain ass. Inhaling the scent of her during her office day had become like a ritual, something he associated with office life, now.
But everything soured with time.
Throughout the day, he focused his attention on another feature he was writing for the online MMM landing page, an article about a band named Everest, which he’d toured with during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The nights with Everest had been heroin and cocaine-laden, with powdery mountains lining his memories. The lead singer, a guy named Walt, had actually passed away from his addiction during the summer of 2011, becoming a harrowing story for Quentin, who was just beginning to clean up his act around that time.
Jesus. He remembered Charlotte’s face when he’d considered doing the drugs with those kids in Brooklyn. He’d felt such rapturous emotions, having her on his arm, and listening to that music—that music!—and feeling a kind of zealous energy he’d abandoned when he’d become a boring dad. “Just a small hit,” he’d told himself. “It can’t hurt anything.”
But Charlotte had held him back. He owed her everything for that.
Standing casually, he made a pass through the offices, watching as his editors and writers typed furiously or else snapped away from social media screens, making it appear as if they worked hard all day. He peered into the intern offices once or twice, finding Charlotte’s now-familiar space to be empty, her chair removed. Pamela, the woman on the hour, sat haughtily, her nose seemingly higher than the others, with terrible, burnt curls coating her back. Who on earth had allowed her into that party? Why had Pete the bouncer led he and Charlotte to the fire?
Maggie’s office door was open halfway, revealing her own red-headed form, slicing at pages with a rogue pen, editing ruthlessly. He peered at her from the door, wondering if, when told about the affair, she would really take the steps to rid him of his position as editor. Didn’t their friendship matter?
It had been a one-sided friendship, Quentin realized. He hadn’t given her much in return for her padding along after him, eyes like a doe’s, her body aching for his touch.
Perhaps he should have fucked her once more, just to shut her up. But the thought of it now made his dick soft, untouchable in his pants. He knocked on the side wall of her doorway, causing her to cut her chin upward, surprised.
