He Brought His First Love Home Again, So I Left novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Under Protest

She signs to protect her coworkers, reads a public apology, resigns, and tells Gavin she is not coming back.

"No," I said.

I put the pen down on the notice.

"You know I didn't do this, Gavin."

"It goes on her record," he said, calm as a man ordering lunch. "What happens to her after that?"

"What happens to me?"

"You're different."

"How?"

He seemed truly puzzled that I had asked.

"If you lose this job, you can stay home and be Mrs. Chamberlin."

I stared at him.

Four years of proposals I had rewritten at midnight.

Every client I had calmed down after Gavin lost his temper with them.

He could wipe all of it out with a single sentence, and he thought it was a gift.

"And if I refuse?"

"Don't be difficult."

I looked around the table.

Two of the people there had asked me for help on their own reports in the last month.

Both of them looked at the carpet.

"The computer was at your desk," the supervisor said. "You carry some responsibility."

"Her login was open on it."

"How do we know you didn't sign in as her?"

Corinna sniffed.

"Then punish me instead. I don't want Callie in trouble because of me."

"This has nothing to do with you," Gavin said, and his voice went soft.

He turned back to me, and it went flat again.

"Sign it. If you don't, everyone who helped check your data this quarter gets pulled into the review. We're already cutting headcount."

Some of those people had babies at home.

Some of them were two payments from losing their apartments.

They hadn't spoken up for me, but I still couldn't make them pay for it.

He knew that, and he had always known exactly which button to press.

I signed.

Corinna smiled and leaned back in her chair.

That afternoon the company announced my discipline in an email to everyone.

My quarterly bonus was gone.

I was demoted to junior associate.

And I had to apologize in person at the all-hands meeting that same day.

I stood on the little stage in the cafeteria and read a page someone else had written for me.

It said I had made a careless mistake, and that I regretted the trouble it caused Corinna Danvers.

Someone in the third row laughed out loud.

"So it was her."

"And she still thinks she can fight Corinna for him. Pathetic."

Gavin sat in the front row with his arms folded and his face blank.

Afterward he caught my elbow in the corridor.

"I know that was hard. I'll make it up to you."

He always said it after he hurt me.

A pearl necklace, once.

Two handbags.

A watch with my initials on the back.

"Do you know what today is?" I asked.

He frowned.

"Tuesday?"

"It's nothing."

Seven years ago today I had met him on a Savannah sidewalk, and he had asked if he could walk me home.

I went back to my desk and typed a letter of resignation.

I put it on the supervisor's chair before I took my bag, and walked out past the whole floor.

Nobody said a word to me.

Gavin came home at ten that night.

I was at the dining table with the folders from my mother's hospital, sorting out which bills had been paid and which hadn't.

He dropped my resignation letter on top of them.

"Who told you that you could quit?"

"I did."

"You don't just resign. We have the new project next month."

He picked up my mother's folder, and I took it back.

"I want a different life, Gavin."

He rolled his eyes.

"Fine. After Savannah I'll move you to a different department."

I looked up at him for the first time that night.

"I won't be here after Savannah."

His hand stopped on the back of the chair.

"What are you talking about?"

"I have a job there already. My mother's hospital has a bed for her."

"The doctors in New York are better."

"Maybe. But no one in Savannah will cut off her treatment to teach me a lesson."

He said nothing.

The clock on the wall ticked twice.

"That was last winter," he said at last.

"For you."

I stood up and pushed in my chair.

"I'm not coming back."

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