Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 65112 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65112 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
“Everything is fine,” she says again before she leaves.
I sit there for a moment after the door shuts, staring at the empty chair across from me. A low, familiar irritation settles in, though this one is aimed more at myself than anyone else.
She isn’t my problem to solve. I repeat that to myself with decreasing conviction.
I cross to the windows with a glass of water and look down at the parking structure below. The office tower has multiple levels reserved for executive and tenant parking.
Valentina is halfway across the top level, moving toward a dark-blue sedan parked near the outer edge. From this height, she’s just a slim, controlled figure. It’s unsettling to be watching her, and I know that. The knowledge isn’t enough to make me stop.
Halfway to her car, her stride slows. It’s subtle. Her head turns slightly while she moves forward, like she wants to check her surroundings inconspicuously. Then she stops altogether and looks over her shoulder toward the ramp entrance behind her.
I know that look. I recognize the precise alertness you feel when you think someone’s watching you. When you feel hunted.
To be fair, I am watching her, and maybe that’s what she senses. But she’s had to hone those instincts somewhere. At some point in her life, something bad enough happened that she feels the need to look over her shoulder in a secure parking garage.
Once again, I’m left with more questions about Valentina than answers, but the pieces are starting to come together. She had a bad breakup. I’d bet my entire fortune he hit her. Abuse rewires the brain.
I watch her get into the car safely, then sit there for a minute. I can’t see her through the tinted glass, but I imagine she’s catching her breath. Maybe even crying. I want to comfort her so badly it aches, but that’s not my place, and it never can be. Obsessing over her in private is bad enough. Actually inserting myself into her personal life would be a disaster.
7
VALENTINA
Work is the only thing that reliably shuts my brain up. My therapist would probably invite me to examine that. She’d tell me I’m using it to avoid the darker parts of my past. A classic avoidance technique. She’d say I need healthier coping mechanisms.
Except I don’t want coping mechanisms. I don’t want to face those dark things. So instead, I work.
Work rewards competence. It calms me down and gives me something concrete to do with all the restless, ugly energy that builds when I feel cornered. So I let the gala eat up my entire life.
I stay up nights fiddling with the seating chart because I’m still learning the personalities of the confirmed attendees. I change my mind a million times about which centerpieces will allow for seamless conversation. I build mood boards of flower arrangements until I’m sure I’ve found the perfect combination.
Weeks pass like that. In front of my team, and especially in front of Sebastian, I make it look simple. I pretend I haven’t spent hours agonizing over the smallest details. It pays off. They all think I’m effortless.
By the Monday before the event, my office looks like a war room. Fabric samples cover the conference table. Seating drafts are clipped to foam boards along the wall. Auction notes spread across one desk, floral revisions across another. My assistant is buried in donor meal restrictions and rental confirmations. Lila, my receptionist, has started screening my calls with the ferocity of a woman who thinks I’m one more email away from committing homicide.
Every hour brings a new minor crisis. A sponsor wants their logo placement adjusted. One of the board members decides she hates the first version of the donor gifting and wants something “more luxurious.” The hotel insists on updated loading dock timing because another event is turning over in the ballroom below ours. The auction house sends me a revised sequence and somehow manages to make it worse.
I handle all of it with as much grace as I can manage. Since I’m busy enough to think in fifteen-minute increments, there’s no room in my head for the things I don’t want there. I don’t think about Adrian or wonder if he’s somehow found me. I don’t think about how Sebastian’s attractiveness hasn’t remotely waned over all these weeks.
Unfortunately, the gala keeps dragging me into his orbit. I’ve spent more time with Sebastian in the last few weeks than with most of my old boyfriends. He’s annoyingly hands-on about this event. Unlike most of my clients, he insists on being involved in every single detail.
The longer we work together, the more I realize why all of his other event planners quit. He really is a nightmare, and I think he’s probably being extra nice to me. He isn’t rude or hard to work with. He’s just relentless in his need to know every detail, all the time.