38

Parker

I shove my phone in my desk and pretend I wasn’t texting Knox when Chase knocks on my door. Not because I’m afraid Chase will catch me texting on work hours—I work my ass off and he knows it, and now I know he knows it—but because I shouldn’t be texting Knox when my brain says Oh, sure, we can be friends while my heart’s saying If you want to extract me from my cozy little home in this rib cage one snip at a time until there’s nothing left of me.

I miss Knox. But I also know he’ll be better off with a low-maintenance, book-loving woman who doesn’t laugh so hard she spits margarita out her nose when he thrusts his hips and asks if she wants to go Knox Knox Knoxing on heaven’s door.

I promise I wouldn’t have laughed if he hadn’t had that unicorn blanket hanging from Mr. Happy as part of his strip tease. I’m the double-horned magical unicorn, he’d said.

He had been.

God, I need to quit thinking about that. About Knox at all. I just wanted to check on him and congratulate him on a great article in the Times, not go down this rabbit hole.

Especially since my boss is wearing a weird frown as he steps all the way into my office. That heart that’s in danger of being snipped apart almost stops.

This is it.

He’s firing me.

But Sia barges in behind him, slams my door, and shuts the three of us in, and I find my breath again. If he’s going to fire me, she’ll fight for me.

Fuck, I’ll fight for myself.

And Knox might be right—I need to get over this feeling that every time I fail, I’m going to be canned. I earned this position. If I didn’t have what it took, I wouldn’t be here. Chase wasn’t in the mood to do anyone favors when he put me here—especially me—and I’ve done some fucking awesome things since I moved up to this floor.

“I am so pissed at you,” Sia says. “What kind of friend doesn’t tell her friends she was married?”

Okay, not what I was expecting. But considering I told Chase everything this morning—about Randy, the truth about Knox, about me assaulting an overgrown jockhole at my reunion—I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, surprised to hear the easy cadence of my own voice. “Maybe the same kind of friend who tells people she’s from Pennsylvania when she really grew up in Minnesota with the number one dick on her dick list?”

It’s rare to see Sia blush these days, but there it is.

And Chase actually grins at the reminder that he’s still sitting at the top of Sia’s dick list. She says she’s waiting for a grand gesture to take him off, but I suspect it’s something they pretend-fight over so they can have wild, crazy make-up monkey sex.

“You said Randy was selling to Pure Green,” Chase says.

Oh, fuck. Of course. “Let me guess. You’re buying them next?”

“They’re a terrible investment,” Sia says. “That social media campaign with the narwhal and the tinkling kangaroo is going to tank them. And their house brand cereals taste like cardboard. Can’t fix bad taste.”

“You done?” Chase asks her.

“We could talk about that organic milk scandal they had last month.”

“Or I could tell you both that Randy Pickle just called me and wants to make a deal.”

My jaw hits my desk. Sia’s eyes bulge. “Are you serious?” she says.

“Said we have a much better corporate team than Pure Green.”

“Holy shit, you break a guy’s kneecaps for your ex-husband, and suddenly he’s willing to sell his soul to you.”

Heat flushes my face. “I’m sure it wasn’t—”

Wait. What am I saying? If I hadn’t gone to my reunion, Crunchy never would’ve gotten close to Randy’s Pickle Hops TM. “I’m sure it wasn’t just the broken kneecaps,” I amend. “The bloody nose and knee to the groin probably sealed the deal. Let me know next time you need me to beat someone up in your quest to make all food organic.”

Sia laughs.

Chase just shakes his head. “Good work, Parker. Now go home. You work too hard.”

Coming from a thirty-year-old self-made billionaire, that’s quite the accusation. “Like you don’t?”

Sia winces. “Parker, honey, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Chase and I don’t exactly work as much as people think we work. If you know what I mean.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “TMI, and I was already aware.”

“Great. So go home.”

Right.

Truth?

I have no idea what I’d do if I went home.

Other than a lot of self-reflection while eating cheesecake and contemplating just how much I actually like having my apartment all to myself.

Because I don’t think I like it nearly as much as I thought I did a month ago.

And not even Margarita Monday will help.