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He did not like that.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to offer you a job.”
She blinked. “A job?”
“This past month has been hell. I cannot function without you. I need you.”
“You... You need me?”
“Yes. I have tried. I have been through one assistant every week since you left. Nothing works as it should. My life is disordered, and I cannot afford to have a disordered life. I need you.”
“You need me to do things for you,” she said.
Yes. He did. And yet, she made it sound as if it was inconsequential. It was not. It was everything to him. His work, his life, the way that it functioned. He felt as if he was crawling out of his skin without her there. As if he was going to have to unzip the essence of what he was so that he could find release by expanding to fill the room, escaping his human form.
It was terribly uncomfortable, and something he had not experienced since...her.
“I need you to come back and work for me.”
“I don’t want to come back and work for you. I have a job.”
“I will give you a promotion. I will double your pay.”
“Double?” She looked stunned.
“Yes.”
“That’s outrageous and astronomical.”
“It is not. I will make you second-in-command of the company if that’s what you wish. I will give you shares. Whatever it is you want, but I need you back.” He was on the verge of debasing himself, did she not see that?
“Luca,” she said, her gaze sparkling with fractured light. “We slept together. And you have come to my place of work to tell me that you need me...to come back and do a job for you.”
“Yes. I have thought of nothing else since you left.”
“You have to be kidding me. I’d... I gave my virginity to you, and you have been thinking of nothing but how I...used to bring you coffee?”
He didn’t know what to do with the first part of what she had said, so he let it filter past, and dealt with the comment about the coffee. “It is not only coffee. My notebooks are in disarray, no one has been able to anticipate—”
She howled. Like an enraged beast. “You have got to be kidding me!” She stepped away from him.
“Wait,” he said. He returned back to what she had said. About her being a virgin. “I didn’t know,” he said. “That you had not been with anyone before.”
“Well now you do.”
“Why?”
“Because my boss was such a demanding, controlling pain in the ass that I never had time to go on a date, never had time to get a kiss, much less get penetrated. The hilarity is, it had to be you.” She shook her head. “It had to be you because you’re the only man that I know, because you...” She stared at him, her breasts rising and falling as she seemed to be grappling with what to say next. And then she simply turned away from him. “I can’t do this, Luca. You’re you. And I have always respected that. You are a man who is infinitely complicated. A man who is meant for bigger things than getting his own coffee. I understand that. You’re trying to save the world. But I’m not. I’m just trying to save myself. I have to live. And I can’t do it with you. I cannot be your assistant.” She started to walk away, and he gripped her arm, stopping her, turning her to face him.
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
He saw all the color drain from her face, and then he noticed the circles under her eyes. That her lips were the wrong color. That her body had changed. Yes, her body had changed. She was wearing a sweater, different than the stark skirt suits that she had worn when she worked for him, but he could still see that her breasts were larger. There was a hollowed-out look to her, and yet her waist was not smaller. He frowned. “You don’t look well.” Terror overtook him. She looked exhausted. She looked... She could very well be a woman with the disease that he feared most. The disease that he...that he had spent his life fighting against. “You must go to a doctor.”
“I’m not unwell,” she said.
“Yes, you are,” he said. “You look remarkably unwell, and in fact you look like...” He found himself struggling to say it, and he was a man who was nothing if not matter-of-fact.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said.