Page 36 of Dial F for Finance

“Cut the shit, Jenna. We’ve all been watching you and Dominic circle each other for years. If the rumors from Layla’s and my wedding are to be believed, that circle has become smaller and smaller. You just spent ten days in close quarters together, and now it feels like that circle has become a blast radius. Something happened.” He narrows his eyes. “Did he hurt you? He’s one of my best friends. But, Jenna, if he⁠—”

“He didn’t,” I say quickly, holding up my hand. As furious as I am with Dominic, that isn’t a possibility I’ll let sit between us for even a second. “I assure you, nothing happened in Tokyo except a signed agreement, a consolidated governance clause, and several metric tons of professionally managed jet lag.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m summarizing selectively.” I pick up a stack of folders and align them against the edge of my desk. “Dominic is in conference room three waiting to talk to you. Then you have a ten o’clock with Landon, an eleven-thirty call with Robert Carmichael, and a lunch you will attempt to cancel but shouldn’t because it’s pertinent to your next acquisition.”

Bennett frowns. I can tell he wants to question me more, but he lets it drop.

“OK. I hear you,” he says, pushing away from my desk. “But if you need anything. Even if it’s just to talk⁠—”

“I won’t.” The answer lands harder than I intend. I soften my voice by a fraction. “Thank you, Bennett. But I promise you I’m OK.”

With a curt nod, he disappears into the conference room where I sincerely hope Dominic isn’t making good on his promise to jerk off over me.

Actually, it’d serve him right if he was.

I try to get back to work. I open an expense report at random and stare at it intensely. The numbers settle into categories I understand: airfare, accommodation, client meals, ground transport. It’s the most soothing thing I’ve seen in a week. I flag a duplicate charge, question why compliance has rejected a legitimate client dinner, and for a minute, everything is fine. There’s an answer to every question as long as you remember that context is everything. Even the train wreck that was Tokyo can be rendered into sensible blocks, with the punchlines turned down to footnotes.

My phone vibrates in the drawer.

I ignore it. But it buzzes again.

DO NOT ANSWER:

Wondering what your hair looks like with my hand in it.

Wait. I don’t need to wonder.

All I have to do is close my eyes and I see it.

You on your knees.

My hand in your hair.

My dick in your . . .

I can’t breathe, or maybe I just can’t see straight. I can’t even read the words. Just memories burning behind my eyelids—his hand in my hair, my knees on the floor, my mouth full and busy—and now I’m reading the expense report as if it’s written in Cyrillic. I power my phone off, needing to break the connection and regain some sort of self-control.

When a few deep breaths don’t work, I get up, cross the hall, and power-walk into the women’s bathroom like a woman fleeing a crime scene.

In the mirror, my face is red enough to violate several codes of internal conduct. I turn on the cold tap and splash water over it, focusing on the shock.

It doesn’t help. I can still feel his hand in my hair, the scratch of his stubble against my jaw, the low sounds he made when he got close. Ten days of evidence my body refuses to let me file away.

I brace both palms on the sink and breathe.

The door swings open.

Before I can tell myself to hide in the last stall or dissolve into vapor, Dominic strides in, moving like the bathroom has been his destination all along. He locks the door behind him with a click—so deliberate it’s like a punctuation mark—and leans against it, arms crossed, gaze locked on me.

“What the fuck, Dominic?” I demand, but my voice betrays more than annoyance. I can hear my own pulse in it, jackhammering up my throat.

“Exactly,” he says, in a voice that should be illegal in places where decency is still a social norm. “You left Tokyo without speaking to me. Then you screened my calls for four days, ignored my messages, and now you’re still refusing to have a real conversation with me. I thought we had something, Pemberton.”

“In Tokyo,” I hiss. “We had something in Tokyo. Now we’re in Chicago and it’s over. I left you a note.”

“You left me a Post-it stuck to a legal document. And it didn’t say goodbye. Come to think of it, it didn’t say we’re over, either.”