34: The Future

4.3K 241 19
                                    




       

August 2013

C H A P T E R   T H I R T Y   F O U R

T H E   F U T U R E

"Yes, that would be great actually. I can meet any time next Tuesday." Katie smiled to herself as she spoke on the phone at her desk in the small cubicle she had become familiar with over the last year.

"Does noon suit then?" The women from HR asked.

"Noon sounds perfect."

"Great, I'll meet you at the front desk of the building then and don't forget to bring a form of identification and your resume. I look forward to seeing you."

"You too, thanks again."

"Goodbye." As soon as she hung up the phone, her smile beamed even brighter than before.

Katie couldn't believe it, she had just heard back from a job she went for last week at LOVE Magazine- she hadn't even excepted to get a reply from them yet there she was, organising a meeting for next week. She didn't want to think too fa ahead or get her hopes up, but she was really excited. She heard her phone ringing once again and answered immediately, afraid that it would be from the magazine again saying there had been some mistake. Instead, she was pleasantly surprised that it was Colin.

"Hi babe, I have bad news."

"Oh really? What's up?" she was immediately concerned. At this stage, Katie never knew what to expect next with Colin so every time he spoke she was waiting for bad news. Luckily this time, it was not the bad news she always dreaded.

"I might be a little late to lunch." She tried to hold back her sign of relief from the other end of the phone before replying.

"That's fine. I'm actually a little busy right now so I might be a couple of minutes late too. Call me when you're on the way there?"

"Sure. I'll see you in a little while."

"Bye." She called before hanging up. They had arranged to have a long lunch together earlier in the week, something they did often despite not working close to each other.

Katie was happy that Colin had finally went back to working for his dad, after months of taking the time he needed to get better. Of course, there had still been some slip-ups since his first time in rehab all that time ago after the crash, but there had not been one as big in a couple of months. This had enabled Colin to return to working for his father but not with the same amount of responsibilities as he had previously. He did not work a full week in work either, but was really trying his best to actually do his job this time around compared to when Katie had worked for him. She wanted to be happy for him, in fact, she was happy for him but at the time she always felt so on edge that he may slip back into old habits like he had done so many times before. Katie had become hypersensitive to his behaviour and over the past couple of days, she had noticed a change in him again like the one only a couple of months ago.

She thought about this all the way to the restaurant that day, wondering why she had not brought it up with him yet before anything could possibly escalate. The truth was that Katie wanted to believe he would never break the good cycle he had kept up for this long, so she had blatantly been ignoring all the signs. Her mind forced her look back on the early days, when she first started working for Colin and she was getting to know the type of person he was- before she knew... He had been letting people down back then too. This thought had crept up on her from what felt like nowhere, she didn't want to think about it anymore. She engrossed herself in another few tasks in work before grabbing her coat and bag and heading downstairs to exit the building.

The CEO's Secret✔️Where stories live. Discover now