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Jamie’s skin crawled. It had always crawled, but like so many other things she had pushed it aside for her career goals.

Or you accepted it because you think you deserve to feel bad,her mind added unhelpfully in her sister’s voice.

Jamie pushed it back. She could spiral later. And she knewshe would. But right now, she had to stick to her plan. And hope for the best. Except what hope she may have had in the past flitted away as she opened her mouth.

“I didn’t get the interview with Bunny and Piper.” She had thought about how to approach it—with an excuse or a justification. But none of that mattered.

“What?” His face grew instantly red as he leaned forward in his chair, using the momentum to push him to his feet. His hands, tobacco-stained and wrinkled, pressed hard enough into the top of his desk to turn their backs white.

“And the scoop I was preparing to present to you has already been leaked and published on our website.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He sat back down, picking up a pen from his desk only to throw it back a moment later.

“No.”

“Well, that’s it.” He looked up and narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re done. Grab your shit and get out. You’ve had too many chances as it is.”

“Yep.” Jamie nodded. She had anticipated this, but the reality still stung.

“That’s it?” Bossman scoffed.

“You’re right.”

“What?” He scowled as he looked her up and down again. His gaze might as well have been a grater. It tore away the very essence of who she was and turned her into nothing more than an object to glare at. “You’ve lost your grit, Kettlehouse. I suspected so, but gave ya a chance. Now I see it’s really gone. You’re no good to anyone without that spitfire attitude.”

Jamie didn’t say anything, because she had nothing to say.

When he scoffed again, he wheeled his chair back into his desk properly and started working on his computer. She turned and left his office. Dismissed. Terminated. Sacked.

Without a word, she went to her desk.

She’d expected this. She really had. She knew she waswalking in to end her career here, and when she’d stepped into that elevator, it had felt okay. But now? Now the devastation and reality were crashing down around her, and she wasn’t going to be able to hold her head high any longer.

Where was Siena’s fucking confidence when she needed it?

Jamie sneered at herself for that thought. She really shouldn’t be thinking about Siena at a time like this. That would just drag her down into the pits of hell and the spirals that she was avoiding.

“Everything okay?” Scott asked, looking up at Jamie as she remained standing at her desk, ignoring her chair.

“Take it easy, hey, Scott?” Jamie turned a smile to the kid. It wasn’t real or happy, and she knew it, but it was the least she could do. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he’d always been kind to her when they’d worked together. She couldn’t take her frustrations out on him.

Her trip home was a blur of the spiraling thoughts she had been pushing back to try and force herself to be the better person she wasn’t sure she could ever truly be.

As soon as she got inside her apartment, she collapsed into a heap of tears and snot and misery. The pressure of her closed front door against the small of her back the only thing stopping her from flying away altogether.

But none of the breakdown had anything to do with losing the job. At least, not really. It had become little more than a crutch she’d been using to keep herself from doing exactly what she wanted and taking the risks she’d have to in order to achieve her dreams. And she’d used it for far too long as an excuse or justification to avoid being a better person. It had allowed her a plausible excuse not to chase dreams she was too scared to fail at.

The tears and subsequent misery were all around Siena.

And betrayal.

She had never been so wrong about someone in her life.The one person she had let her guard down with, the one person she might have actually been able to believe and trust. Maybe not love. Never love. That was well beyond Jamie’s capacity. But that one person had ended up being the one she should have avoided and been the most wary of. She was the one who had fucked her over in the end.

For what?

Revenge?

Or was it more than that?