Page 5 of In Love and War

“Maybe you should call him?” Andrew looked at me, expectantly.

That’s exactly the opposite of what I want to do.

“Um, sure. Yeah, I can call him.” I took out my phone and scrolled down to his name, hesitating for a few seconds. But before I could press the call button, a text popped up.

Zackary Evans

Have 8 copies of the final JLN Miller presentation printed and on my desk in 20 mins. Meeting got moved from tomorrow to today at 11. No time for notes.

What?

I reread the message. The Miller presentation wasn’t supposed to be done yet—he wasn’t supposed to be meeting with them until next Monday. I still had six days.Right?

I opened my calendar to confirm.

Miller Presentation - meeting: August 9, which was what I’d expected. But before texting him back, I opened the original email just in case, wanting to make absolutely sure this wasn’t my fuckup.

From: Zackary Evans

To: Amelia Bloom

Cc: Andrew Trapasso

See attached JLN Miller proposal draft and presentation. Meeting with them on the 4th, please have edited and finalized the day before.

Andrew, can you make a reservation at Cactus for 7 on the 9th? Will be taking the Miller team out if we win and want to make sure we have a spot. Let me know if we can’t get in.

Z

I stared at the screen.

Shit.

My heart was beating so fast it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

This was the largest proposal I’d been allowed to work on so far. And I’d royally screwed it up.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I stood up and started to rapidly go through the folders around me, clumsily trying to find my notes on the presentation. My hands were shaking so much that a couple of the folders fell off my desk, their contents spilling onto the floor.

“What’s wrong with you? What happened?” Mai was staring at me with the straw of her green smoothie still in her mouth. I’d startled her mid-sip by standing up so quickly my chair rolled backward on the marble floors, knocking into the wall behind me.

“I didn’t realize the Miller presentation was due today. It’s not done, and I need to find my notes.” My voice was also shaking. This was the closest I had ever been to a panic attack. There was a ringing in my ear now, and my peripherals were starting to go dark.

He was going to kill me. For sure he was going to kill me. This was how I was going to die.

Finally, I found the notebook I was looking for. After grabbing my chair, I opened up the presentation and started frantically typing while Andrew and Mai exchanged silent looks.

Twenty-two minutes later,I had eight copies of the poorly edited presentation on Zac’s desk. I hadn’t even been able to get through 10 percent of the thing.

Now I was just sitting in my chair, feeling nauseated after having accepted my fate.

“Maybe you should have told him right away over text. He might be angrier now because he didn’t get a heads-up.”

She was right, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. “Are you seriously just saying this now, Mai? Where was this twenty minutes ago?”

She shrugged.