Having a private office, no matter how small, had improved my time at the office tenfold.
I wasn’t sure if it was a silent gift from Damien or if it was simply a result of him putting pressure on my manager to curb the stares and whispers, but either way, it gave me space to escape the house and bury myself in work without worrying about whether or not Noah would get himself into trouble. But of course, even with Caroline watching him, even with the privacy to keep myself focused, and even with the pretty view out of my singular floor to ceiling window that looked out toward the Angel Island State Park, I hadn’t been able to stop worrying about the possibility of Noah having another seizure, and a private office wouldn’t fix that.
I knew deep down that it wasn’t my place to worry about him as extensively as I was. I was in charge of him when Damien or Caroline or his new school weren’t, but even still, I’d found it difficult to turn that off or put it out of my head. It was always there, a constant fizzling anxiety that Damien and I would need to rush to the hospital again.
Or Damien. Just Damien. I wasn’t guaranteed a spot there.
I sighed and deleted the last two paragraphs I’d written in the email I was drafting. Maybe a private office out of the house wasn’t the answer to all of my problems, considering I could barely fucking focus. I wanted to call Damien, wanted to ask him if he’d heard from Caroline, wanted to check up on Noah. I knew I needed to get through the emails that were piling up, but I just couldn’t bring myself to shift my attention.
I spun halfway around in my office chair and plucked my purse from the table behind me. My phone sat sideways inside up against the handful of just-in-case tampons I’d shoved in there this morning, and when the screen lit up as I lifted it out, a text notification sat there unattended on my lockscreen. It couldn’t have been that important if it hadn’t notified me out loud — Damien’s and Caroline’s calls and messages would have bypassed silent mode.
The moment it recognized my face and my brother’s name replaced the Text Message notification, though, my stomach sank.
James: What the fuck is this? Are you married? [Attachment: 1 Image]
Oh, fuck.
I opened up the messages and there, clear as fucking day and as nauseating as Noah controlling the spinning teacup at Disneyland, was a photo of me and Damien exiting the chapel in Vegas. I could barely remember him carrying me like that, like I was genuinely his bride — tucked up against him, an arm beneath my knees and another under my waist, my hair and makeup a mess and a cheap netted veil falling off my head. I was clutching a bottle of champagne in one hand and my heels in the other, and Damien, with the mismatched buttons on his shirt and his pocket square unfolded and hanging limp from his jacket pocket, was pressing a kiss against my temple.
If it wasn’t the most horrifying evidence of what we’d done, I might have actually found it adorable. But it was, and my breakfast was coming back up.
I reached for the little trashcan beside my desk and nearly threw my phone across the small, enclosed space in the process, my head only barely making it over the lip of the flimsy, carbon-neutral bag. I spilled the small amount of cereal I’d managed to down this morning into it and dry heaved once before placing it back down on the ground.
I needed to text him back.
Me: Where did you find that?
Me: It was a joke. Office initiation for the new hires.
Me: James.
Me: JAMES.
Three little dots finally appeared after what felt like hours but must have only been seconds — the time on the top of my screen hadn’t even changed.
James: It came up on Instagram.
A second later, a link to a post on Instagram from an obscure news site popped up. I made the horrible mistake of clicking on it.
Everyone’s favorite SanFran multi-millionaire seems to have tied the knot in a drunken Vegas escapade… but who is the far younger woman he’s holding? Visit the link in our bio to see more!
Oh my God.
Me: Don’t tell Mom and Dad. It’s not what it looks like.
James: Liv. You do realize that it’s weird to do photo-ops with new hires like THAT, right?
I grabbed my purse and stood from my desk before I could throw up again, sending the wheeled office chair careening back into the bookshelves. I didn’t dare meet the eyes of anyone from my team as I stepped out my door, didn’t dare to question who had seen it and who hadn’t. I needed to breathe, needed a ginger ale, but more than either of those, I needed to speak to Damien.
————
That idea went up in flames the moment I found his office empty.
I shot him a text as I hurriedly made my way back to the elevator, just sending a quick “need to talk to you ASAP. Not about Noah.” It was far too cold in the little metal box, and from the smell alone, I could tell someone had brought a banana to work before riding the elevator. The scent permeated the space, invading my nostrils, making my stomach churn all over again.
I stepped out into the less banana-heavy air of the Human Resources department. Across the wide open space filled with cubicles and hanging plants, Sophie sat at her desk, headphones in, blonde hair up in a tiny bun on top of her head. Her teeth were sinking into a fucking banana.
Instead of walking through the sea of cubicles, I shot her a text.
Me: Come here. Leave the banana.
Her brows furrowed as she glanced down at her desk.
Sophie: How do you know I have a banana?
Me: Because I’m staring at you.
Her head whipped in my direction before locking eyes with me, her grin spreading across her cheeks. She pushed back from her chair and got up, left the banana behind on a napkin, and squeezed between cubicles and desk chairs as she made her way across the space.
“What’s up? You couldn’t wait until lunch to see me?” she asked, leaning against one of the structural beams that cut through the edges of the room. The happiness that sharpened her features fell as she noticed my frantic, panicked state, rounding out her face and her lips popping open. “What’s wrong?”
“Some discount TMZ got ahold of a photo of us,” I said, my voice far shakier than I thought it would be as I flipped my phone around to show her. “I don’t know how, or why it took this long for something to come out. I don’t even remember it being taken.”
“Oh, fuck,” she mumbled, slipping the phone from my grasp and zooming in. “I mean, AI has gotten really good. You could probably claim it was that.”
“I don’t think my parents have a fucking clue what AI is.”
“Shit, I didn’t think about that.” She zoomed in on our faces, right where his lips met my temple, the crinkle of my eye as I was lost in the excitement of it all just there on the edge of the screen. “You look really cute. Really drunk, but really cute.”
“That’s so nice to hear when I’m panicking, Sophie,” I grumbled, snatching the phone back from her.
“You don’t even know if they’ll see it.”
“My brother is the one that informed me,” I challenged. “I made up some lie about it being a weird initiation thing for new hires, but I don’t think he believed me.”
“Initiation?” She asked, her nose crinkling with distaste. “Damien would never do that.”
“I didn’t know what else to say. How the fuck do you explain something like that away?”
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “No idea. But I don’t think your lie will work, and if it does, it won’t last long. I can raise it with the higher ups in PR but…”
“But what?”
“It’ll draw attention to it in the meantime,” she explained. “Though I guess that’s bound to happen anyway if it’s doing the rounds on social media. You should speak to Damien.”
“He’s not in his office. I know he was taking Noah to his first day of school, but maybe he got called into a meeting or something. I don’t know,” I sighed. “What I should do is call my parents and tell them what I told James before they can even see it.”
She shook her head ferociously, her blonde bun nearly coming loose, and looked me dead in the eye. “No. Nope. Absolutely not, Liv. You’ll raise questions and you’re a terrible liar. You will wait, you will speak with Damien, and you will hope that no one else sees it. That’s all you can do right now.”
“But what if that news site gets its hands on a copy of our marriage certificate? What if they come out with shit I can’t disprove before I can get a jump on this?” I urged, pocketing my phone with a shaky hand. My stomach was starting to twist again, and I swore I could still smell the lingering scent of banana on her. “We need this fucking annulment now. I don’t understand what the hold up is.”
She sighed and shrugged her jacketed shoulders. “I don’t know. This stuff isn’t always instant. You need to speak to Damien.”
