Page 82 of Between Hello and Goodbye

Chapter Fourteen

“Ms. Benson?”

I jerked out of a doze and lifted my head from my desk. “Hmm, what?”

My assistant, Jess, was standing over me. “Terrance wants to see you.”

I blinked and sat up. For a second, dopey déjà vu came over me, and I expected the pounding headache of a hangover to land on me. But it was plain, old-fashioned exhaustion that had me taking a catnap on my desk at four in the afternoon. I’d pulled three all-nighters in a row to finish a national commercial for Zuma, an athletic clothing brand based in Seattle, and submitted the final rough cut of the ad to Terrance earlier today. I must’ve dozed off waiting to hear the verdict.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Judging by the fact he can’t stop smiling, I’d say the opposite.”

I rose from my desk, smoothed my hair, and straightened my suit jacket—dark blue with white pinstripes. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck?” Jess smiled at me, disbelieving. “You’ve seen your ad, right? It’s…” She shook her head. “Let me put it this way, I’ve never teared up watching a commercial about snowboarders before.”

“Thank you,” I said and eased a breath, then headed for Terrance’s office.

Truthfully, I was pretty proud of the work my team and I had put in, but I hadn’t yet had the chance to fully grasp that it was finished. Four weeks of long nights, location shoots in Vancouver and Denver, and meetings all up and down the West Coast left me burned out. So burned out, that instead of wanting to celebrate with my usual brand of all-nighter—partying it up with Viv—I just wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and sleep.

That’s not exhaustion, that’s Kauai.

Since I’d returned from my leave of absence, I’d approached my job differently. Intently. The Nestle account was locked in but that was a huge, slow-moving barge of a campaign. Meanwhile, Terrance had made me creative director for the Zuma commercial, and I’d thrown myself at it, initiating an advertisement that focused on the personal stories of snowboarders, their triumphs and defeats, as they tried to make their Paralympic and Winter Olympic dreams come true. The focus had been family. The connections between the athletes and their teams, their coaches, their partners, and their parents who’d sacrificed so much to support their goals.

All the things I lacked.

Slow down, Freud. Let’s not be dramatic.

But two weeks in Kauai with my beautiful firefighter somehow scrambled my DNA—I hardly recognized myself and found I was examining my life as if it were the quartz prism around my neck, turning it over and over and seeing things differently.Feelingthem differently. Or maybe letting myself feel them for the first time.

“It’s all Asher’s fault,” I muttered and smiled sweetly at a passing colleague.

We don’t think about him at work,I reminded myself as I approached Terrance’s office. That’s likely why I was everyone’s favorite Employee of the Month—working my ass off until I passed out every night was the only way to keep from thinking about Asher Mackey.

Or touching myself to the memories of his body moving over and inside mine.

Or crying over him…

Nope! Not going there.

I knocked loudly on my boss’s door, then peeked my head in. Judging by his beaming smile that looked like a permanent fixture, I guessed Jess was right.

“Faith.” Terry shook his head, and I could hear the rough cut of my ad running on his desktop monitor. “Come, sit.”

“Turned out pretty good, right?”

“Pretty good?” My boss chuckled and shut off the ad. “This hasClio Awardswritten all over it. Josh Johnson—remember him? Zuma’s tightwad exec VP? He wants to throw a party in your honor.”

“Glad they like it.”

Terrance’s smile slipped. “You okay?” Before I could answer, he waved a hand. “You’re exhausted, and I don’t blame you. I know how hard you’ve been working on this, Faith, and I have to say, any and all hesitation about making you partner has evaporated. I don’t know what happened to you in…Tahiti?”

“Hawaii,” I said. “Kauai, Hawaii.”

“Right. Whatever happened there…I like it.”

Asher Mackey happened.