“Croissants. And I don’t think you can. Your office is a bit far if we walk. We won’t make it in time.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I sent my driver to pick you up.” He ends the call without waiting for my response. Great. Fantastic. Being around Damien at his home is one thing. Being around him in his domain is another.
The driver he mentions arrives sooner than I expected. He whisks us to Damien’s offices in record time and sooner than I want; I am holding Lake’s hand in an elevator while Lake holds a box of pastries in the other. The elevator doors open and even though the offices differ from eight years ago, memories flood in. I can still remember the smug look on Damien’s assistant as she told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. I brush away the thought and squeeze Lake’s hand.
These offices are bigger and buzzing with more people. The C-suite has a sterile white and black aesthetic to it that is reminiscent of how his company works. Brutal capitalists who wipe other companies clean of incompetence and then resell them at a higher value. Destroying whatever creativity was there along the way. People like to call him the devil of Wall Street, but war general would be more precise. And now he’s at the gates of my family’s company, waiting to conquer.
The C-suite receptionist is kind to us as she sees us enter. She doesn’t even ask who we are and immediately recognizes me as soon as I approach her desk. Seems like she has been keeping abreast of the Hawthorne-Sinclair family drama. We follow her as she leads us down a block of glass offices and right to the end, where a two-door office is situated. I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s Damien’s office. Nicole is sitting right outside. She’s typing away at her laptop. She lifts her gaze from the screen and frowns, her eyes narrowing when she sees us.
“Mr. Sinclair has a couple of guests,” the receptionist says meaningfully to Nicole.
“He’s aware. He’s in a meeting.” Nicole’s tone is curt and dismissive. “Like I told you when you called,” she adds. The receptionist looks at me and at Nicole and then back at me as if to say, this is not how I expected it to go, but this situation is above my pay grade. I smile at her. “It’s okay. We can wait.” The receptionist returns my smile with a weary one of her own and leaves.
Lake and I take a seat on the couch of the semi-lobby we’re in and wait. And wait. Lake is quickly getting impatient and is now swinging his legs against the couch to keep himself company. Meanwhile, I’m slowly getting angry that Damien is keeping us waiting and wonder if this is one of his ways of playing with me when my phone chimes. It’s a text from Damien. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Outside of your office.” I send the reply. Seconds later, one of the double doors swings open and Damien comes out. He sees us waiting for him and turns to Nicole. “Didn’t I tell you to send them in as soon as they arrived?” I can hear the barely concealed irritation in his voice. It doesn’t seem fake at all. Maybe he didn’t know. I turn to Nicole with a fresh perspective. She couldn’t have been blocking us from him, could she? “You said you were on a call and not to be disturbed.”
“A call that ended twenty minutes ago.”
“Sorry.”
Damien shakes his head and turns to us. Specifically Lake. “I hear someone has a gift for me.”
Lake brightens and jumps up, pastry box in hand. “I brought you some croisandis!” He rushes over to Damien and presents them to him. “I baked them myself. Sonya helped.”
Damien brushes Lake’s head and leads him into his office. I follow the two, content for them to have their father-son moment. Damien’s office is spacious and just the kind of place that fits his style. It’s modern and chic with a giant glass table,navy blue leather chairs, and blue sofas in the corner. It also has a classic office touch with wood panels and an oak bookshelf. I gravitate towards the bookshelf while Lake and Damien occupy themselves with the croissants.
Curious to see what he occupies his mind with, I browse the books. The middle row is filled with business and financial-related books. Color me surprised. I move to the next row, where there are interesting-looking fiction books. Damien is a prodigious reader. He always had a book in his hands whenever I would visit Nolan at the apartment they shared in college. I even tried to read a fantasy series he was reading to try to make myself interesting, but he clocked my disingenuousness immediately and I never finished the long-winded story. There are a few fantasy books here, as well as some literary fiction.
Something else catches my eye, however, as I scroll through the shelves. A familiar book. My heart hammers against my chest as I wonder if I am seeing double. It can’t be. I pick up the book. It is. My hands tremble as I hold it in my hand. I gave it to him as a gift on his twenty-sixth birthday. I was eighteen back then and my allowance was increased considerably, so I used some of that money to buy a first edition of his favorite book. Or at least one I had seen him reading time and time again. Nolan and I threw a birthday party for him, and I used it as an excuse to give him the present. He had been surprised to receive it but said little about it. He merely thanked, browsed through the pages, and put it aside. I was so disappointed back then that he had what, at best, could be described as a casual reaction. Later, to pierce further into my lovesick heart, I heard him talk to a girl he was with what I gave him. “A book first edition,” he had said.
“Wow,” the girl replied, “sounds expensive.”
“She’s an heiress who can afford it. I doubt she felt a dent when she bought it.”
Something fell out of the book, bringing me to the present. A bookmark. I scoop the white card from the floor and as I am about to put it back into the book when I flip it over. It’s not a bookmark. It’s another gift I gave him. The next year, we went to an amusement park. Nolan, Damien, and I. It was his birthday again, and I asked him out to the circus. I was asking him on a date without making it obvious, and when he asked if he could bring Nolan along; I didn’t have the confidence to tell him the truth. At some point, Nolan got separated from us and we went to a photo booth and took a lot of pictures. One of those photo booth prints is the one I am holding. I am gazing into his eyes the entire time. Anyone who sees this can tell I was hopelessly in love with him.
“What are you doing?”
I jump at the sound of his voice. Damien is standing a few feet behind me. Quickly, I put the print back into the book and return the book to its original place. “Just browsing. There’s a lot of men in suits on the covers of your books.” Can he hear the breathlessness in my voice? I hope not. “Do you only read books about taking over people’s companies?”
He glances at the shelf and smiles menacingly. “How else would I succeed?” He steps forward, and my skin tingles as he invades my space. His drugging scent fills my nostrils, reminding me of all the times we’ve shared. He leans closer to me. So close that our lips can touch if I move an inch. Is he going to kiss me? Do I want him to kiss me? After what he did. What he’s doing. I tilt my head up just a little. But he does what I least expected. He pushes back a book that I had pushed out during my perusal, steps back, and thrusts his hands in his pocket.“I think we should be going.”
“Where?”
“The vote. It’s the kind where one needs to vote in person or bring a proxy.”
If Nolan sees us walking into the boardroom together, his stare alone would be enough to kill me. “Can we go separately? I can’t be seen with you.”
“That’s terribly inefficient. One car should be enough.”
“I can walk. Hawthorne Inc. is not that far away from here,” I say, knowing how ridiculous that sounds.
“You’ll be hounded by journalists. Or are you scared?” He closes the space between us again.
“Of what?” My heart hammers in my throat. Thoughts of Paris fill my mind. What we did. What we didn’t do and what we almost did.
“You have been avoiding me,” he says in a low voice designed to keep the conversation between us, I imagine, but makes my stomach flutter.
