“Or. Maybe he realizes he can’t breathe without you, and he’s finally gotten the guts to do something about it. I told you I’ve only seen him photographed with, like, one girl in the last several weeks. He’s not fooling around like he was. He’s pining.”
Again, I glared. I actually hadn’t put any thought into a future with Weston, but it was nice to be wanted. Did he actually want me? How different would things have been if Donovan had called after we’d been together? Even three months later. Even three years.
“Just answer it!” Ashley squealed impatiently.
I picked up the phone. “This is Sabrina.”
“Sabrina. It’s Weston.” His smile carried over the digital network. I could practically hear his dimple in his tone.
“Hi,” I said, unable to stop grinning myself.
“Hi to you. It’s good to hear your voice. Really good.”
“You too.” I swiveled back and forth in my chair, aware that Ashley was watching me like a hawk.
Listening too. Which meant this couldn’t turn into phone sex. Not that I wanted this to turn into phone sex. Not that I knew what I wanted at all.
I cleared my throat. “I’m surprised you called. This is out of the blue.”
“I know,” Weston said, suddenly seeming more official and less flirty. “I’m sorry. I probably should have made an appointment.”
“No, no. This is fine. Just. It’s unexpected.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about the more official tone. It wasn’t bad. It was different.
“It is unexpected. I’ve had a lot of unexpected things happen in my life lately, actually. And I’m going to shock you again now. Are you ready? Brace yourself.”
My muscles tensed automatically like they did when I was in a car and someone put on the brakes suddenly. “Okay. I’m braced.”
“I want to offer you a job.”
“He isn’t serious.” I’d said it so many times since I’d hung up the phone with Weston that Ashley had to think I’d gone into some state of shock.
I had gone into some state of shock. There was no other word for what this feeling was.
“He’s serious,” Ashley insisted as she stared at my computer screen. “I’m looking at the offer now, Bri. It’s on letterhead. This is serious shit.” Weston had emailed a formal offer over while we’d spoken, and she hadn’t hesitated to swivel my screen toward her so she could examine it in detail.
My eyes had been open too long without blinking. So I blinked. Then did it again. “But why?”
“He obviously followed up, checked out your resume, probably called some references and saw that you do good work. Because you do.” She bent to meet my eyes across the desk. “You deserve this, Bri.”
I held her gaze for several heavy seconds. I did want the job. That wasn’t a question. The pay was phenomenal. The offer even included relocation expenses. The title was exactly the one he’d promised before—turned out his last director of marketing strategy was transferring to London and had been planning to for a while now. Weston had known he might need a replacement when I’d spent the weekend with him. It was essentially the same job that I currently had, but Reach was so much bigger of a firm that it was a huge promotion.
There was absolutely no reason to say no.
Just.
Surely Weston had more qualified employees already on staff, waiting for advancement. If not, there were hundreds of people dying for a job like this. People who already lived in New York. People with much more experience.
“But why me?” I asked as I suddenly stood, pushing my desk chair with enough force that it went rolling toward the wall. I looked after it apologetically. I didn’t mean to seem angry. I wasn’t angry. I was confused. When Weston and I had been wrapped in a haze of lust, the smell of sex still clinging to the air, these kinds of overtures made sense. But now?
“Oh. Ohhhh.” Ashley drew the word out, finally understanding what I was really asking. “Because he wants to have a relationship with you. Obviously. Duh.”
That’s what I had been afraid she’d say. I shook my head. “That can’t possibly be true. It’s not what either of us wanted.” At least, that’s what I’d thought. Had I been wrong?
I didn’t know anymore.
Ashley wouldn’t let that slide. Leaning back in her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her brow. “Why did you even go to bed with him if you didn’t want anything out of it?”
“Is that something I have to actually explain?” I turned away from her and busied myself with straightening my computer screen so it was facing the right way again. It was easier to think without her reading into my every expression.
“Well, I know why I would go to bed with him,” she said to my profile. “He’s hot as fuck and has enough money to buy the whole state of New York, but as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never been as superficial as I am. You’re also not into flings, so yes, you must explain.”
With a sigh, I straightened and considered her question. I knew the answer—I just hadn’t had to put it into words before. “I went to bed with him because of exactly what you said,” I began. “He’s charming and attractive and nearly impossible to resist. But, okay, it was also because he was an unclosed door. I had a huge crush on him once upon a time. He stood for everything I once almost had. It was nice to finally be able to see what things could have been like.”
Also, secretly there was a part of me that had wondered if a night—or a weekend—with Weston could erase what had happened with Donovan.
Instead it had magnified it.
Ashley’s lips curled into a half smile, as if my answer had somehow been a victory for her. “Now that you know, how are you not dying for more?”
“Because it was just a weekend,” I said, crossing to retrieve my chair. “He’s a playboy. He’s moved on.”
“Except he hasn’t moved on. He’s still thinking about you three months later. He’s thinking about you so much that he called you and offered you a freaking amazing job at a freaking amazing firm. How can you be questioning anything about this?”
It was exactly the kind of thing I’d dreamed about when I’d gone to Harvard. The job. The pay. The boy.
I rolled the chair to my desk and paused, my hands still gripping the seat back. “Do you think a yes to the job automatically means a yes to a relationship?”
“Do you not want to say yes to a relationship?” Ashley’s tone said she didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want a relationship with Weston King, but she was trying to.
The truth was that I was trying to understand myself too.