Hard Sell| ETHMA

31

ETHAN
Tuesday Morning, October 17

"What the fuck? Tell me you're joking." I yell.

Michael takes a sip of his coffee. "Nope."

"Emma wants to go to the gala with Lanham?" I say it more to myself than to Michael.

"Not what I said. I said he wants to go with her." He says.

I suddenly have a whole new respect for the simplicity of cavemen's thoughts, because right now, I'd love nothing better than a big stick and a cliff, just Lanham and me fighting to the death, with him going over the edge.

"This is bullshit," I mutter.

"Did you miss the part where you get to manage all of Lanham's money?" Kennedy says from where he leans against the wall on the far side of my office.

"Yeah, but the asshole is using Emma as leverage. How am I the only one outraged by this?"

"Because," Amanda says, coming through my open office door and unabashedly entering the conversation, "what he's doing is not that different from what you did to her."

I glare at her. "It's entirely different. And how do you know about this?"

Kate shuts the door and shakes her head, coming to sit across from me, beside Michael. "Emma told me. And it isn't different. You used her to get him. He used you to get her. You and Jarod want different things, but you still used someone else to get it."

"The parallels really are remarkable," Kennedy muses.

"Shut up," I growl at him. "How are all three of you sitting there like this is fine? Like it's no big deal that the woman I . . ."

"Yes?" Amanda asks, sitting back and crossing her legs. "I'm dying to know how you're going to finish that sentence."

"I wouldn't mind hearing the answer to that one myself," Michael says. His tone is mild, but there's a note of warning there.

I lock eyes with him. "You've talked to her."

"Yes. We had lunch yesterday. That's when she told me about the Lanham deal."

"Fuck Lanham," I say, leaning forward. "How is she?"

There's a moment of silence in my office. Finally, Kennedy breaks it. "Did you just say, 'Fuck Lanham'? As in, the unicorn you've been chasing your entire career?"

I ignore this, never looking away from Michael. "How is she?"

"She's like you'd expect," Michael says.

"What the hell does that mean?" My desperation is coming out in my voice, but I don't care.

I am desperate.

It's been more than a week since I've seen her.

Talked to her. Held her. And the absence of her feels like a gaping hole in my chest.

Her email that she was still available "per our contract" had only made matters worse, shining light on the fact that I don't want her that way.

I don't want her to spend time with me because it's in the contract, because I'm paying her.

I don't want her to pretend to be in love with me for the sake of my bosses and my damn reputation.

I want . . .

I want her to love me for real.

She does, you idiot. You were just too chickenshit to do anything about it.