Page 22 of The Best Worst Mistake (Off-Limits #2)

My brain must think it’s seven in the morning, like it is on the east coast, but here in this absurdly comfortable bed, it’s only four o’clock in the morning. The sun isn’t even up yet.

I roll over, feeling stiff from the tension I carried in my body the last few days. Everything hurts, but most especially my shoulders, which were probably halfway up to my ears most of yesterday.

Yesterday .

I groan into my pillow.

Dax .

Seeing him in that negotiation room felt like a fever dream.

The dizzying whirlwind from running into him at the security check to walking down the hall with him, trying to make a plan for later, to realizing that we’re on the same deal — or rather, he’s infringing on my deal.

The deal that’s supposed to make me a partner at the end, if I can pull it off.

The same deal that his friend — scratch that, his client — the infamous Silas Davenport, is now trying to steal out from under our noses.

Fucking hell.

It’s all too much.

Considering how I walked back into the kitchen after settling my bags and ended up discussing this incredibly unfortunate turn of events with Starry well into the night, I really should have slept past four in the morning, me still being on New York time or not.

I hadn’t meant to stay up so late, but she was so easy to talk to.

“How long until another career-making deal comes along for you to prove yourself?” Starry had asked while I enjoyed her homemade chicken dish. I can’t even remember the last time I had a casserole.

“It’s not about another one coming along,” I said. “It’s about not losing my standing with the firm if fraternizing with the opposing counsel ever came to light. None of them can know that Dax and I have ever shared any sort of history.”

“Couldn’t you just get it out in the open with Brett now?” Charles — or Charlie, as he insisted on me calling him — had asked, after joining us in the kitchen. “Confess before it becomes an issue?”

I mulled that one over all night. But it feels like too risky of a move to tell Brett that Dax and I have history.

He would pull me off the deal, then tell the whole partner team back home that I’m incapable of finishing what we’ve worked on for months.

It would set the firm back hugely to have me taken off of this negotiation now.

The setback would make our client furious, and the firm would likely have to eat the cost on a good chunk of my billable hours leading up to this point.

It’s not an option.

Which leaves only one good option: to just carry on as we are, not letting any history I have with Dax get in the way of what I accomplish in that negotiation room. And never letting anything between us, past or present, come to light. I know I’m capable of doing that.

At the end of the night, Starry gave me a soft pat on my back and told me that I’d better get some good sleep before this morning came too soon. Charlie sent me off with a napkin full of cookies, saying that I might need a little midnight snack if I happen to wake up.

I feel like I’ve entered some alternate universe where two people living in the same house as me somehow feel like the type of grandparents one might want, but that I’ve never experienced.

Instead of falling asleep to the feeling of gritty liver-flavored toothpaste that wouldn’t wash off my gums, like I did all those years ago, last night I fell asleep thinking about what it was like to have someone prepare a plate of warm cookies for me after dinner, plus a glass of something to go with them.

I grab my phone on the nightstand and check to see if I’ve missed any texts from Dax, but the screen’s blank. He ignored my call last night, but I’d told myself that he was probably buried in work, much like me this week, and couldn’t find a spare second to call me back.

Right .

He wrote the ball’s in your court months ago, I remind myself. So . . . if he hasn’t answered now, doesn’t it mean that I’ve thrown it back to him?

I should have listened to Olivia and called him before I showed up in his city. But I still think I did us a favor by not even attempting a long-distance type of situationship.

By four fifteen, I give up on falling back asleep and drag myself out of bed. As long as I’m awake, I may as well just get back to work on some of the document review before heading into more meetings today.

But I can’t concentrate on my laptop screen, once I get it open.

“You don’t have to rush things,” Starry had said, topping my glass off the night before.

“Sometimes when you’re younger, it feels like everything important in your life is rushing toward the ending.

Like you want to wrap the complexities of life up with a pretty bow and call them finished as fast as you can.

Just to get to the next one. But when you get to be my age, you realize that the journey is the fun part. ”

Fine — maybe I was trying to rush a reconciliation with Dax because we were about to be in the same negotiation for the next couple weeks, but what was wrong with that? I don’t want him to feel hurt after what happened after he left New York.

But the whole thing had led to a restless night.

* * *

By the time I walk into the same conference room we were in yesterday, yawning, I realize I’ve already been awake for more than four hours. I look at the door to see if Dax is making his way in yet, hoping for a natural jolt of adrenaline to hit me once I see his face.

“Morning,” Brett says, eyeballing me. “You look like shit, Torres. Get any sleep last night over at your fancy new lodging?”

I bite my tongue so the things I want to say don’t come flying out at him, although imagining that my words might have the power to smack him across the face does make my heart feel just a teensy bit lighter.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I reply, keeping any bitterness stripped from my voice. “I slept alright, though it looks like you might have been hit by a bit of jet lag. Tossing around a bit last night, were you?” I point up toward his bald scalp. “Your hair’s a bit more mussed than usual.”

His naturally squinty eyes turn into narrow slits beneath his shiny forehead. He’s not finding my jab funny in the slightest.

I stifle a grin.

“Kidding, Brett. You look as spry as ever.”

“I slept fine,” he says, dryly. “I was up early to go over those pages you sent me — what was it — four thirty this morning? My goddamn phone wouldn’t stop dinging with each bloody email you sent.”

“Early bird catches the worm though!” I say, brightly. “Or in this case, that extra million or so that my findings just shaved off the top.”

I glance toward the door, wondering when Dax and Lila might walk in.

“You’re unusually chipper this morning,” he says, in his usual growly way. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Not enough coffee,” I chirp, stepping toward the coffee station at the back of the room. I really don’t want to have Brett’s attention on me when Dax walks in.

“Want me to grab you more?” I ask, nodding down at his mug.

Brett fingers the same navy-blue Yeti mug that he always has back in New York.

He must have brought it with him, which I don’t find the least bit surprising.

Sometimes I like to imagine that he’s just a little boy and that Yeti is his security mug — like a child’s blankie, except all hardened metal and full of caffeine.

Without it, he might throw a tantrum — even bigger than the ones he regularly tosses my way.

“I got some from the Starbucks on the way in,” he says, pinching his lips to the rim. “Better than the nasty stuff they served here yesterday.”

“Thanks for offering to grab me one,” I joke. “Do you have the barista fill that thing for you?” I nudge his cup with my pinky, knowing it’ll rile him. “Or do you get the to-go cup and fill it up yourself?”

He pulls the mug back to his chest, out of my reach, looking as if any contact from me is going to render his special mug unusable.

I smile. I love ribbing this man almost as much as I hate working for him.

He frowns. “They fill it because I ask them to fill it,” he says in a monotone.

“Ah, suit yourself.”

Without waiting for another word, I make a beeline for the coffee station set up across the back wall.

I’ve worked under Brett since barely being out of law school.

As my supervisor at a top-tier firm, he’s treated me like a thorn on the bottom of his pillowy, calfskin loafers since my very first interview, which was the worst interview I’ve ever had.

After asking me to complete a complicated math problem — something he swore I’d need to be able to do while working in mergers and acquisitions — he tossed a pen across the table at me.

His pen bounced off my chest — off my breasts , if one is to use more visually clear terminology — and landed squarely on the floor to my left, before skittering to a stop.

The stony silence that followed between us was epic.

He waited, silently, for me to pick it up, and I waited, silently, for him to apologize for such abhorrently disrespectful behavior during an interview.

I should have left the pen on the floor and walked out of the room, since he’d clearly just demonstrated what he would be like to work for.

But I didn’t. I reached down and picked the pen back up, then finished completing the set of math calculations correctly and calmly, proving to both of us that not only was I skilled enough for the job, but also that my nerves could be unshakable when I needed them to be.