I buried myself in work.
Not metaphorically. Not in that cute, I’m-so-dedicated, look-at-me-climb-the-ladder way. I mean I quite literally barricaded myself behind my laptop, four monitors, and two towering stacks of strategic review docs I absolutely did not need to reread but suddenly could not afford to ignore.
Because thinking about work meant not thinking about him.
About his mouth. His hands. His desk. The way he’d gone from threatening to fire me to kissing me like he wanted to ruin me in one breath.
So yes. I was working.
Hard.
I didn’t even let myself flinch when I saw him in the hallway. I just nodded curtly, said “Good morning” like we were in a corporate training video, and returned to obsessing over infrastructure models like I hadn’t made an unholy sound into his collar two days ago.
Because the second I thought about it—really thought about it—I’d remember that it meant nothing. And that I was nothing. Not to someone like Liam Duarte.
So I threw myself into it. Reports. Presentations. Late-night Slack pings with charts I’d redone for no reason. I lived in spreadsheets and strategy docs. I made myself indispensable. I became the kind of employee people wrote LinkedIn posts about.
I had something to prove.
And everything to lose.
***
Isabella was less impressed.
“Okay,” she said, flopping onto the couch and stealing my phone without permission, “but let’s say for a second that I’m bored of being supportive and now I want to gossip.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re trauma-Exceling.”
I ignored her. She opened my browser anyway.
“Okay, let’s start with the obvious,” she said, fingers moving fast. “Your boss is hot.”
“I’m aware.”
“Like, statistically hot. Like, I’ve found at least four Reddit threads rating him higher than Henry Cavill.”
“Please don’t tell me where those threads are.”
She ignored me. “And you kissed him.”
“I didn’t kiss him,” I said, on autopilot now. “He kissed me. Then stopped. Like a well-dressed emotional terrorist.”
“Exactly. Which means he wants you. But also possibly wants to destroy you. He’s known for that you know.”
“Excellent. Thank you for that very productive insight.”
“Oh my God.” Her voice went up an octave. “You don’t even know.”
I glanced over. “What?”
“I just set up a Google Alert for his name using your email. You're welcome.”
She kept scrolling. “Let’s see... okay. Apparently, he’s been linked to an opera singer, an Instagram model-slash-DJ, someone with a French aristocratic title, and two actual princesses. One from Liechtenstein.”
“That’s not even a real country.”
“My point is,” she said, leaning forward with all the grace of a nosy gremlin, “he doesn’t do relationships. Every blog, every photo, it’s the same. Gorgeous woman, black-tie event, three-week shelf life.”
I sat back. My chest tightened.
“I know that look,” she said. “You’re spiraling.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You’re comparing yourself to the literal heiress-princess population and wondering what he’d want with someone like you.”
“Well,” I muttered, “he probably doesn’t. Want me.”
She went quiet.
And that, weirdly, felt worse than anything she could’ve said.
Because she didn’t argue. She didn’t say I was wrong. She didn’t say Liam Duarte kissed people because he felt things. She didn’t say I was different.
She didn’t lie to me.
So I doubled down. I shoved all the feelings into a box labeled not your problem, buried it under a mountain of strategic planning decks, and pretended I didn’t care.
Because Liam was a golden boy with generational wealth and a custom-built skyline view. I was the imposter hiding under a fake name, trying not to breathe too loudly in case someone realized I didn’t belong here. I knew how that story ended.
And then—just when I thought I could coast on the high of avoidance for one more day—my phone pinged.
It was a text.
Jeremy: Need to meet. Urgent. Tomorrow first thing.
I stared at the message for a full thirty seconds before letting my forehead gently collapse onto the keyboard.
So much for avoiding emotional collapse.