Page 26 of Shades of Grey & Gold

The universe has a very specific sense of humor to drop the word ‘date’ and Patrick to me in the same moment.

Cal doesn’t break his stride while mine falters briefly. He steps in, holds the door, and I follow because he’s already made the decision for us. And you know what? I’ve already taken the stairs countless times this month to avoid this.

We arrange ourselves in the small space with the careful geometry of people pretending not to notice each other or breathe the same air.

I stare at the floor numbers as the elevator doors take a painfully long time to close and hold my breath. Bart sits beside me, oblivious, and I wish I was a dog.

Beside me, Cal is very still. Unlike me, because I feel like I’m vibrating. I can feel it though—a slight shift in the air around him.

And it hits me all of a sudden. Something I hadn’t thought about once in the past month: he knows.

Cal knows who Patrick is and what Patrick did and he has known for a while. He knows what Brenda did, he probably knows how many women Patrick cheated on me with.

My face heats, and not in the glorious way it did minutes ago at Cal’s implications of a date. Because for the second time since being in this office, the embarrassment of Callan knowing I quit law school fills me. He knows Patrick was the reason. Knows of the humiliation I faced at this exact law firm when Patrick ripped our lives to shreds and that same mortification is suddenly a wave crashing on top of me, over and over again.

“Max.” Patrick’s voice. Careful and warm in the way he’s been whenever we’ve been in the same room this month. Trying. Why? I don’t know, because I’d rather hear nails on a chalkboard than any version of his voice. “You look great. Really.”

I stare straight ahead. Thinking about the conversation Monday morning that I will be having with Richard about a new stipulation regarding Patrick keeping his mouth shut around me.

“We should—” Patrick starts.

“She keeps a pretty full schedule,” Cal says. Easy. Conversational. Like he’s commenting on the weather.

Then his hand finds the small of my back—just his palm, flat and warm through the fabric of my jacket—and I feel my shoulders drop half an inch.

Then his hand moves. Small circles. Slow ones. Like he’s done it a hundred times. Like this is our normal. The warmth from his palm spreads across my back and through my body, and suddenly it’s all I can focus on. The place where he’s touching me. My eyes flick up to Patrick.

Patrick looks at Cal. Then down at Cal’s arm behind my back. Then back at me. He frowns almost imperceptibly. Then looks at the floor.

Chapter Eleven

Cal

Theelevatoropensonthe ground floor, and I gently press my fingertips into the small of Max’s back.

She doesn’t move away from it, she may even push back into it, and I see her shoulders come down just a little more.

I count that as a win.

“Excuse us,” I step forward and press into Max’s back again as she follows. “We have somewhere to be. Goodnight,Patty.”

I feel Patrick go very still beside me as I brush past him.

I slap my free hand on the front of his shoulder and then make a show—just for him and me—of wiping it against my pants before pushing open the glass doors in the lobby.

The cold hits us both and Max pulls her coat tighter with one hand, holding Bart’s leash with the other. I drop mine from her back because if I leave it there any longer, I’m going to have to think a little harder about what I’m doing and the consequences of it.

I don’t think I’m ready to do that on a Friday evening on a public sidewalk.

“He wants to talk to me,” she says.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“I know that too.”

She breathes out. The cold turns it to vapor, and I so badly want to reach out and touch her. I want to make up for every second she was away from me and every horrible thing Patrick did.