Page 55 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Strictly prohibited.
It doesn’t say discouraged. It doesn’t say please tell HR. It says prohibited.
“I can be fired for cause,” I whisper, reading the next paragraph. “Termination effective immediately… Immediate repayment of all signing bonuses and relocation stipends.”
I stop reading. The words blur on the page.
Immediate repayment.
I don’t have it.
I don’t have fifty thousand dollars. Not anymore.
I’m trapped.
If I stay, it’s a soap opera that’ll inevitably blow up in my face. The tension is unsustainable. Eventually, Harper will find out. The press will find out. Eventually, one of them will make me choose, and I’ll lose the other two, and the guilt will eat me alive.
But if I leave—if they fire me for cause? They’ll come for the money I already spent.
I clutch the contract, my hands shaking.
I didn’t just have a fling. I signed a legal document promising I wouldn’t do exactly what I just did.
If Ethan finds out, and Ethan always finds out, he won’t just be the angry older brother. He’ll be the CEO protecting his assets.
He’ll fire me.
I need this job—the salary to pay off my loans, and the career boost.
But more than that… I love the work here. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m building something that matters.
I traded it all to get laid and eat some goddamn pancakes.
My phone buzzes, dancing across the wood of the coffee table. I jump, dropping the contract.
A FaceTime request pops up. Harper.
The guilt hits me so hard I actually feel nauseous.
I can’t answer. I can’t look her in the eye. But if I don’t answer, she’ll know something’s wrong. Harper’s got a sixth sense for my disasters. If I ghost her now, she’ll send a search party.
Or worse, she’ll call Ethan.
I scrub my face, plastering on the pageant-girl grin I mastered at ten.
I accept the call.
“Bonjour, bitch!”
Harper’s face fills the screen. She looks radiant. She’s wearing a beret—ironically, I hope—and sitting at a café table with a croissant the size of her head. The Eiffel Tower is visible in the background, looking like a postcard.
“Harper!” I say, my voice pitching a little too high. “Look at you! You’re in Paris!”
“Of course I am in Paris!” she squeals, spinning the camera around to show me the street. “It’s amazing, Tess. The bread is better. The coffee is better. The men are… well, the men are rude, but they dress really well, so I forgive them.”
She turns the camera back to her face. Her green eyes—Owen’s eyes—narrow slightly.
“You look tired,” she observes. “Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Or is Ethan working you to death?”
