Page 69 of Mostly My Boss

Snot on a three-hundred-dollar blouse, because that’s how I dressed now, but I was still the poor girl from the farm who didn’t really fit anywhere.

“It’s okay, Carol,” he said, not looking at her, but looking at me instead. “Ask it again. We’re ready now.”

“All right. How long have you two been in love?”

A sob rushed out of me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. Ethan was breaking things open that couldn’t be put back together.

“I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time,” Ethan said. “So in love with her that it felt too big and too frightening to ever acknowledge it. So I didn’t. When my father died, and I reached out to her…that’s when I knew I couldn’t hide from it anymore. And it was as big and frightening as I thought. So I got on a plane and ran away to the other side of the planet. That was my mistake. I came back to fix it. We’re here now. And we’re going to push through this to the other side.”

“And you, Julia?” Carol asked.

“I can’t,” I panted. Breathing was too hard. The anxiety was crushing me. “What are you doing?” I shouted at him. “I told you I would come back. Now you’re ruining everything!”

“I don’t want you to come back to the way things were. That’s not what all this was about. You working for me again... I don’t know why I’m even discussing it. There’s nothing to come back to.”

I tried to think. I tried to breath. Nothing made sense anymore. He didn’t love me. He’d never loved me. If he’d loved me…

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I sold it. The company. Phoenix. All of it. It’s gone. No more job. And I’m not your boss anymore. That’s why I was late getting here today. There was an endless amount of red tape Daniel had to walk me through. Julia? Look at me. What are you thinking?”

“You. Sold. The. Company.” I shook my head trying to clear the buzzing in my ears. This was madness. The company had meant everything to Ethan. It was his life’s work. Money was like some secondary prize for him. What he cared about were the ideas. Always the ideas. He’d already revolutionized the medical industry. He was working on the airline industry. None of this made sense.

He nodded. “I thought that if we were going to do this, we should be equals.”

Equal. Equal with Ethan. That didn’t seem right.

“Julia, you haven’t said how you felt. About Ethan,” Carol prompted.

I looked at the counselor, so calm, so unfazed as she sat there pushing all my buttons to the point where I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.

“I feel…I feel…like...” I looked at the clock on the wall behind her. The clock I’d used as a focal point to see my way through this. A countdown until I could finally be free. Only, in the end, I’d nearly caved, offered him everything he wanted, which was for me to stay.

Only there was no place to stay anymore.

He sold the company. He said he loved me.

None of that could be true.

“I feel like the hour is up.” I stood, my legs barely able to hold me.

“Jules, don’t do this,” Ethan growled.

“You said one hour. I gave you that hour. Goodbye, Ethan.”

“Jules!”

He was shouting but I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of that office. I had to or I was going to fall apart. So I ran. On my fancy heels, through the lobby, to the elevators.

The doors were closing as Ethan came through the lobby still shouting my name. Ordering me not to go. Demanding that I come back and talk to him.

Because that’s how it had always been between us. He was the boss and I was his loyal servant. Until I wasn’t.

“You’re not the boss of me anymore!” I shouted at him through the closing doors.

And when they closed, shutting him out, I slid down the back of the elevator until my ass hit the floor, and I sobbed.

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