Work For It (Naiad Novels Book 1)

“He’s such a dick,” Nikki grits out, slamming her coffee cup down on the table.

I’m almost obtuse enough to ask who she’s talking about, but there’s only one answer. Daniel. She’s just left a meeting with him and Jim to discuss the new projects they’re dumping onto her plate soon. Based on her reaction, she didn’t get good news.

It’s Monday morning, and I’ve been awake since dawn, stressing about how today will go. It took entirely too much restraint to keep from sending Daniel a message on Slack when I got into the city last night. Somehow, I managed to hold back, and I’ve kept my distance this morning, even though we’re both in the office today. Considering he disappeared into a conference room the second our morning meeting ended, it’s been a relatively easy task.

As much as I want to, I can’t deny it anymore—I’m into this man more than I should be, and it’s going to hurt to pull myself back out.

“What did he do this time?” I ask her as I open my next round of edits on my laptop. The fan immediately kicks on as my overloaded device tries to manage the copious documents loading.

She grumbles as she throws herself into the chair next to mine, sulking like a toddler. I can’t blame her; I’ve had the same reaction to the shit Daniel pulls too many times to count. And while I might have a very small crush on him (gross), I’m not about to defend him over something he’s likely done wrong.

“The timeline he gave me for this project is completely unrealistic,” she rants. “I can’t launch a continuation in less than three weeks. Like, I know we’re trying to make a return on our investment as quickly as possible, but he doesn’t understand the sheer amount of effort creative work requires. All he does is look at the fucking numbers and shell out money to these authors for rights to their books without thinking about the work our team will have to put into them. And since Daniel believes it can be done, so does Jim. I’ve got no one in my corner on this.”

She lets out a strangled scream as she pulls her laptop closer, looking like she wants to throw it clear across the room. Her workload is just as heavy as mine—maybe even more so now with what Daniel has handed over to her. “God, I’m tempted to go sock him in the fucking jaw.”

I’ve been there before. As production leads, we’re responsible for pretty much everything required to get a story up and running—and continued—on the app. That process, when done correctly and given the proper attention, takes months. So expecting her to launch this project in a matter of weeks is outrageous.

“He’s such a condescending prick, and he doesn’t care about anything except the bottom line,” Nikki says. “I’m genuinely shocked you haven’t fought him yet, considering the shit he’s put you through.”

I’m pretty shocked by it too. Business-wise, Daniel and I are still pure enemies. But personally…I don’t know what we are. All I know is that I want him in my bed tonight.

“Unfortunately, I realized I’m no match for him.” I sigh. “He’s kind of…big.” If only she knew in how many ways.

“Let’s tag-team him,” she offers, lifting her fists like a professional fighter. “You hold him down, I’ll pummel him.”

I snicker, about to tell her that I’ll start planning the ambush, when a whistle rings out. Behind us, Ella is gripping the doorframe to the nearest conference room, leaning just far enough out to get our attention.

“Come here,” she says in a stage whisper. “I have gossip.”

Nikki and I exchange a quick glance before we’re pushing out of our chairs and giggling as we hustle into the conference room with Ella. Zoe is in there as well, smirking like she’s already been let in on the secret. If I wasn’t curious before, I certainly am now. We’re an office full of writers; we thrive on drama.

“Spill,” Nikki demands, rubbing her hands together. “I need a distraction to keep me from fighting Daniel.”

Zoe shoots me an amused look. “Isn’t that your job?”

“I’ll take the help,” I answer, though the idea of anyone else laying a hand on him doesn’t sit right with me. I want to be the only one to touch him. Fighting or otherwise.

Ella motions for us to lean in. “The gossip I have is about him,” she whispers, looking directly at me.

My stomach drops. Oh God, she knows. She knows about Daniel and me and what we’ve been doing.

But there’s no way. She wouldn’t have pulled me into the room with Nikki and Zoe to expose me. She’s a good friend; she wouldn’t put me on the spot like that. And how would she have even found out?

Are there cameras in here? My own words come back to me. The flash of Daniel on his knees, his lips on my skin. If there really were cameras…

“I saw Daniel out on a date over the weekend.”

Nikki makes a sound of interest beside me. “Oh shit, really?”

After that, white noise in my head threatens to drown everything else out.

Daniel. On a date. Out with someone else when I was home in Baltimore, fantasizing about the next time I’d see him.

It’s a punch to the gut. A blow I have to be careful not to react to. But the air has been knocked from my lungs and the little voice in the back of my head is saying I told you so.

I absolutely should not feel betrayed. Number one, I have no claim to him. This is nothing more than hate-fucking when it’s convenient for us both. And number two, like Ella said, this is gossip. There’s a chance it’s not true.

“You’re sure it was a date?” I ask when I manage to find my voice, but the words are scratchy in my throat.

She nods like a bobblehead. “Oh, for sure,” she says, and my stomach sinks even further. “She was all up on him. The girl practically had hearts in her eyes. I was kind of embarrassed for her, to be honest. Like, whatever, I’ll admit he’s kind of cute, but that asshole is not worth the trouble.”

I swallow back the bile inching into my throat. “Did he seem into it?”

In my periphery, Nikki shoots me a pointed look, but I ignore her. Ella merely shrugs, oblivious to the reasons behind my line of questioning. “I don’t know. I can’t read the guy,” she answers. “It wasn’t like he was pushing her away or anything. But that isn’t even the juicy part.”

It’s hard to brace for the next blow, though I try.

“I’m pretty sure I recognized the girl,” Ella continues conspiratorially. “She works for JotNote.”

Nikki gasps at our competitor’s name, thankfully shifting her attention from me to Ella. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“I definitely think he would,” Zoe pipes in. “That guy would do anything to get ahead. He’s willing to fuck all of us over with our workloads in order to do it, so what’s a little sexy corporate espionage?”

“Unless she’s the one getting information out of him,” Ella counters.

I can already see the ideas forming in her head. We’re creatives through and through; the plotlines come to us with the slightest spark of inspiration.

“Maybe she’s pretending to be in love with him so that in their moments of pillow talk, he’ll accidentally spill what we’re working on and JotNote can steal it.” Ella’s eyes go wide. “But then he finds out and is heartbroken, and—”

“That man is a closed book,” Nikki interrupts before Ella can weave a whole novel for us. “She probably doesn’t even know where he works.” Her eyes cut to me, but my head is spinning so fast that I barely have time to make sure my true feelings don’t show on my face. “What’s your take on it?”

My take is that I don’t want any of this to be true. I want it to be pure fiction because this can’t be the way things between Daniel and me end.

“He better be the one getting information out of her,” I finally say, relieved that my voice doesn’t waver even though my heart is up in my throat. “JotNote is right behind us on the charts, and if they get just one new hit story, it’s over for us.”

There’s a communal grumble of annoyed acceptance. We’re not the only good fiction app on the market anymore. Our competitors are growing too close for comfort, and we all know it. We’ve shown the book world that our serialized model works, and now everyone else wants to get in on it, including the company that shares its name with a rainforest.

I don’t actually give a single fuck about that right now, but it’s a good way of shifting the conversation away from Daniel. If we keep talking about him, I’m afraid I’ll say something I can’t take back.

More than that, though, I’m afraid I might be falling for a man who’s already in a relationship.

But for the time being, I have to believe it’s just gossip. All wild imaginings and fictionalized scenarios.

As the girls debate which of our competitors could surpass us first, I pull out my phone and open the Slack app, finding Daniel’s name near the bottom of my contacts. Our chain of messages is short, but I add another.

Can we talk?

Daniel hasn’t responded to my message.

In the two hours since I sent it, I’ve only managed to edit a handful of chapters. If I don’t get my act together, I’ll fall behind and have to make this up later, but I can’t focus. Dread sits heavy in my stomach, churning and threatening to come up and out. As much as I want him to respond, I don’t know that it will ease my anxiety any.

But I have to know. I can’t stay in this limbo, unsure of whether our arrangement has come to an unceremonious end and whether I’ve been complicit in cheating. The guilt will eat me alive if I don’t get to the bottom of it.

When the girls invite me to lunch, I beg off, claiming I have too much work to do to take a break. The truth is that I can’t take any more of their gossip; if I have to listen to another word about Daniel’s supposed date, I might lose my mind. I also don’t want to miss the moment Daniel steps out of the back conference room, the only one without a wall of windows—the same one we were in when he went down on me just a few weeks ago. Right now, that feels more like a lifetime ago.

Like a lovesick loser, I’ve been counting the moments until I could see him again, while he clearly hasn’t thought twice about me. He told me to never fantasize about anyone but him, only to be off with someone else. It feels manipulative. It feels like I’ve been tricked.

You don’t even know if it’s true, the angel on my shoulder scolds. I should probably listen to her. I’m hurting my own feelings by overthinking and jumping to conclusions. But, as humans, that’s what we do when we don’t have all the answers—we fill in the blanks based on the limited information we have. Whether they’re filled in with something good or bad is all based on personal experience.

And with my history of men and cheating, it always skews bad.

What feels like eons later, the door to the conference room swings open and Daniel steps out. His laptop is resting on his palm, and his eyes are glued to it as he moves to one of the tables on the opposite side of the room, away from everyone else.

I wait until he’s settled before I pull up Slack on my computer and scroll through my messages to see if he’s responded yet. My heart squeezes when there’s nothing new from him, though I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been anxiously listening for the grating notification sound that hasn’t come.

Still, I stare at his name, waiting for the three dots to pop up beside it to indicate that he’s typing. It’s not like I’ve asked a difficult question, so why hasn’t he at least given me a simple yes or no yet? Is it really that hard?

Maybe he opened the message and got distracted before responding. Should I message him again? Or will that make me look desperate? Do we even really need to talk?

Jesus, that’s a stupid question. Of course we do. Otherwise, I’ll never rein in my focus and get shit done. And there’s a lot I need to do, most of it put on my plate by him in the first place.

Before I can overthink further, I push back my chair, smooth out my sweater, and take a deep breath. Then my feet are moving, taking me past all the communal tables to where Daniel is seated with his back and laptop screen angled toward the wall.

Do I have any idea what I’m about to say? Absolutely not. But I can’t blurt out something like hey, do you have a girlfriend you’ve been cheating on with me for the past couple of months?

So when I find myself standing next to his chair, I clear my throat and ask, “Can I talk to you about the Donna Pascoe deal later?”

It’s a weak excuse to talk—the deal we have with Donna is all but settled, and I’m not even working on the project, but it’s the best I can come up with, and it won’t draw suspicion from anyone who might be listening.

I hate the way my voice shakes as I say it, but what I hate more is that his attention never leaves his laptop. I swear he even shifts away from me slightly, like I’m already being dismissed.

“I don’t have time,” he says distractedly. The brush-off stings a little more than it should.

Biting my bottom lip, I watch him for a moment, clinging to hope that he’ll at least glance up at me and suggest we talk about it tomorrow, but his concentration stays firmly on his screen as he furiously types. And when I ask him if he wants anything from Starbucks, since Jim is about to make our usual afternoon run, all I get is a vague head shake.

I figure I might as well be direct at this point. So, keeping my voice low, I ask, “Are you coming over tonight?”

“No,” he replies, still not looking at me. “I’m in the middle of something important. I’m going to be here late.”

Rooted to the spot, I watch him, waiting for him to say more. This is the man who once told me to steal all his time, that he’d make it for me if I wanted him to.

My breath catches when he finally looks up. But his eyes are distant, and there’s an annoyed crease to his brow. “Is there something else you need?”

The terse, impatient question shocks me out of my stupor, leaving me to shake my head and turn away. I’ve been shut down and rejected. But at least I have my answer.

This is over.