And I should have been. Because it was my fault.
I’d pushed and advocated for this. I wanted to be with her, and I didn’t care about anything else. Of course, I never wanted her to lose her job. Never in a million years. But we hadn’t been careful. Hell, we’d never been careful. It was fucking amazing that no one had caught us before now, considering all the shit we had done together.
But I wasn’t going to let Heidi walk away from us.
We were meant for each other.
Nothing was going to stand in my way.
I drove over to Jensen’s with a blind determination. I broke at least three traffic laws on the way, but I could really give zero fucks about it all.
After pulling into the garage, I wandered into Jensen’s house and called out for him, “Jensen!”
“Up here,” he called back.
I found him sitting in his second-story office, staring at his computer screen. My hand was still on fire, but I slapped it down onto his desk.
“What the hell did you do?” I demanded.
He glanced at my hand. “You’re bleeding on my desk.”
“Let me repeat myself. What the fuck did you do?”
“Landon, I didn’t do anything. But I know what you’re going to say.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes, I think I do. Now, have a seat and talk to me about this.”
“I quit!”
Jensen sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sit,” he repeated, pointing at the chair.
“I’m not going to sit down and be a good boy, Jensen! This is outrageous. I told you I was seeing someone, and then Heidi got fired before I was even told about what was happening. Don’t you think that’s fucking ridiculous? I would never have let that happen to her, and now, you have lost one of your best employees,” I snapped at him. “So, yeah, I quit. I need the job, but I don’t need it this much. Give Heidi her job back, and let me fucking figure out my own thing.”
Jensen leaned back in his seat. “Are you done?”
“Am I fucking done? That’s all you have to say?”
“Well, are you going to clean up your hand, was second, but I thought I’d lead with the more important question.”
“Did you hear a word I said?”
“Of course I did, Landon. But you’re not quitting the company. I didn’t know that Heidi had been fired until it had already happened, and I’m working on discovering who is behind the videos that surfaced.”
“Who cares where the videos came from? What matters is that Heidi needs this job, and you stole it from her because of me.”
“I understand that you’re upset,” Jensen said calmly. He slowly got to his feet and put his hand on my shoulder. “But you can’t think clearly when you’re like this.”
I smacked his hand away and ignored the pain from that movement. “Heidi broke up with me because of this shit. I don’t need to think clearly. I need to fix this.”
“What happened to Heidi was…unfortunate,” Jensen said, carefully choosing his words. “It was handled poorly. I understand that the employees in her department believed they were doing the right thing to contain the situation and avoid a scandal. However, as you were not notified, no investigation was put into it other than to assume that the evidence hadn’t been doctored. We both know that this isn’t good for the company. And, obviously, it’s not good for your relationship with Heidi. And, by the way…Heidi? No wonder you didn’t want to tell me.”
“Yeah, well, I did want to tell you, but I didn’t want her to get fucking fired.”
Jensen sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, speaking as the CEO of this company and your boss, the evidence was pretty damning, and everyone reacted quickly to minimize the damage. Have you seen the videos?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know what they had.”
Jensen moved back to his computer and pulled up the email that he had received with the evidence of Heidi and me together. It was a series of videos and a couple of pictures of Heidi and me on the golf course, in the clubhouse, and even at dinner at the seafood restaurant that we had picked at random. Whoever had taken these shots had clearly been following us because no one else had known where we were.
“Well, fuck,” I groaned, finally sinking into the seat.
“I agree. After watching these, do you see why she was fired?”
I hated myself, but I nodded. “I know why they did it, but I still want to fix it.”
“The way to fix this is to figure out who sent these. It was anonymous. I already have someone looking into it. The way these images were sent to us feels like a threat. It was pointed. Not sent to me or Morgan, but directly to Heidi’s immediate supervisor. Does Heidi have any enemies? Anyone who would want to see her fired?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Wait, maybe this Matt guy who works in her department. He wanted the promotion that she got.”
Jensen drummed his fingers on the desk. “He has motive, but would he have had access to these videos?”
“Fuck, I don’t know.”
“And do you?”
“Do I what?”
Jensen averted his gaze, and that was when I realized he had already come to a conclusion. He looked back at me then. “Do you know anyone who would benefit from Heidi getting fired?”
I opened my mouth as the conclusion Jensen had come to dawned on me. “Miranda.”
“Yeah. That’s where I landed, too.”
“She was at the tournament,” I told him. “Heidi saw her briefly. She was trying to pick up a golf buddy of mine to replace me, but we didn’t see her the rest of the weekend. We skipped a dinner and everything to avoid her.”
“Didn’t seem to work,” Jensen said, touching his screen.
“Fuck. What a conniving bitch!”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Oh, I’m going to call her and give her a piece of my mind.”
“I’m certain that’s what she wants from you—a reaction. It’s best for us to dig a little deeper and see if we can nail her on something like this. Let’s make sure it’s really her and not this…Matt guy. Then, we’ll decide where to go from there. A judge will not look kindly on threats if she’s trying to get more money.”
“I could wring her neck.”
“I would also advise against that,” Jensen said with amusement. “Though I know the feeling well.”
I leaned my head back and stared at the white ceiling. “What the fuck do I do, man? Heidi freaked out on me and forced me out of her apartment. I’m head over heels for that girl, and she won’t even talk to me.”
“As your brother, I’d tell you to fight for her. If you’re willing to throw everything away for her, she must be worth it.”
“She is. She is worth it.”
“You know, Emery suspected something was going on with y’all back in December, but I thought she was crazy.”
“Yeah. She was right. I tried to deny that anything was happening back then and tried to say we were just talking a lot. But that’s a lie. I’d fallen for her, and I stopped talking to her when I realized I had feelings for her.” I shrugged. “Didn’t want to be a cheating douche bag.”
“I think that was smart. All things considered.”