My CEO Boyfriend Kept Me Secret and Gave My Promotion Away novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Page

Porter lets himself into her apartment and asks only who she has talked to; she takes back her key and refuses Friday, and a stranger named Tobias Reeve asks her to come work for him.

I was on my kitchen floor with the fan running when I heard his key in my lock.

I had given Porter that key nine years ago.

He came in with a paper bag from the bakery on Clark, the one that sells the almond croissants I like, and set it on the counter.

"You walked out in front of forty people," he said.

"I did."

"Tamara." He crouched in front of me and used the voice he used on investors. "Kylie is a placeholder. The board wants to see me backing someone new, and she's easy to back. It's six months of optics."

"You backed her with my job."

"Titles are paper. You know what you are to me."

I looked at him in my hallway light.

He was handsome in the way that had kept me quiet for a decade.

His tie was loosened, and there was a smear of lipstick the color of peach on his collar.

He saw me see it and didn't touch it.

"You told me it would be two years," I said. "That was ten years ago."

"My father is chairman. If he finds out now, it costs me the company, and that costs us both."

"Us," I said.

"Us."

"Porter, you drove past me today."

His jaw moved.

"I explained that."

"You explained it in a text, while she was in the seat."

"It was only for show."

"Show for whom? I was the only person on that curb."

For the first time, he didn't have a smooth answer.

He stood up and walked around my kitchen.

He looked at my laptop, closed on the table.

He looked at my phone beside it.

"Who have you talked to?" he asked.

"About what?"

"About us. About the company. Did you email anyone from the office? Did anyone call you after?"

I waited for him to ask if I was okay.

He didn't.

"Maggie texted me," I said. "That's all."

His shoulders came down.

That was the part I kept replaying later: not the lipstick, not the car.

He was relieved.

"Good," he said. "Good. Then here's what happens. You take the week. Don't talk to the press, or to the people who'll call you, because they'll call you. Friday we have dinner at my lawyer's office, the way we do every August. One page. Then I'll fix this."

"No."

"Tamara."

"I'm not signing anything of yours on Friday, Porter. I'm not eating dinner with you either."

He laughed, softly.

"It's the tax form. It's one page."

"Then it can wait for a day when I'm not on your kitchen floor." I corrected myself. "My kitchen floor."

I stood up and my knees cracked.

I took the key to my apartment off his ring, which he had left in the lock, and put it in my pocket.

He watched me do it.

"You'll want that page," he said quietly. "Believe me. Everything you have depends on it."

I thought he meant the money in our joint account, the one I'd never looked at.

I thought he meant my salary.

"Then I'll figure out what I have," I said, "without you. Good night."

He stood in the doorway a moment longer.

He picked up the paper bag, looked at it, and set it down again.

"Eat something," he said. "You get dramatic when you're hungry."

He left, and the lock clicked behind him.

I stood there until I was sure I wouldn't cry.

Then I opened the bag, because the croissants were mine, and ate one standing at the counter with the fan blowing hot air at my ankles.

My phone buzzed against the table.

It was Maggie: "TAMARA. THE VIDEO. SOMEBODY POSTED IT. 400,000 VIEWS."

Under it was a link, and under that, a message from a number I didn't know.

"Ms. Whitby. This is Tobias Reeve, Reeve Partners. I watched you quit. I would like to watch you work. Eight tomorrow morning, 200 West Madison, 31st floor. Bring nothing but yourself."

I read it three times.

Then I put the second croissant back in the bag and went to find a clean dress.

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