Semua Bab Taste Me Like It's Our Last Day On Earth : Bab 21 - Bab 30

Phoenix I woke up with a jerk, my heart thumping in my chest. My neck hurt and my eyes felt raw from sleep, but someone had put a coat over me while I slept. I looked down and realized it belonged to uncle Victor. The black wool smelled just like him, dark cedar, rain, and scotch. I pulled the fabric closer to my nose and breathed in deep and my mind went straight to him. I hated how much I wanted a man who spent half his time acting like I did not exist and the other half treating me like a problem he has to fix. But smelling his coat brought back the memory of his hands on my waist. My stomach twisted with a heavy heat. I wanted him to come back downstairs, pull me out of this chair, and touch me again. I knew it was dumb, but my body did not care about logic anymore. Then I looked down at the floor and my mood completely got ruined. My bag lay tipped over on the ground and my old notebooks had fallen out, and one of them sat wide open under the lamp. Not again. I s

Phoenix I don't remember walking out of his office. One second Octavia is sliding that envelope into his coat pocket, purring something about my father finding out why I'm really here, and the next I'm three floors down in the stairwell, gripping the railing so hard with my breath coming in short, useless pulls that don't seem to be reaching my lungs at all. He didn't deny it. That's the part I can't get past. Victor Crowe corrects people mid-sentence when they get a fact wrong in front of investors. He doesn't let inaccuracies live in a room he's standing in. And he just stood there and let her say it, let the words hang in the air between us, and said nothing back. I press the heel of my hand against my sternum like I can hold my ribs together by force. Fine. He wants to play it that way, he can play it that way. I am not going to fall apart in a stairwell over a man who can't be bothered to defend me in his own office. I make it as far as the lobby bathroom before I actual

Phoenix "You leaked client work. People don't get second chances for that." Octavia says it loud enough for the interns near the printer to hear, the way she says most things to me now, and keeps walking before I can even answer. I don't answer. Three weeks of this has taught me that answering only makes it worse. I'm elbow-deep in a box of zoning permits, sorting them by year like I've sorted the last two hundred boxes, when my phone buzzes. "Mr. Crowe wants you in his office," Jenna says, not bothering with hellos. "Now, not later." "Now as in right now?" "Now as in I'd stop what I'm doing if I were you." My stomach drops. I take the service elevator because I'm not cleared for the main one yet without an escort, and nobody stops me on the way up. Apparently probation doesn't cover whatever this is. Victor's standing at the window when I walk in, not behind his desk, which is worse. Jenna's in the leather chair with a folder in her lap. "Sit down," he says. I

Phoenix I can't stop replaying three feet of the kitchen floor. Not the Vanderbilt approval. Not Octavia's cold little smile in the elevator lobby. Just his knuckles against my jaw, and then the sudden, brutal absence of him stepping back like I'd burned him. *We wait. We watch her. We don't give her anything else to use.* I understand the logic. And I hate the logic. My whole body is still humming like a struck bell hours later, and logic has never once talked a struck bell into going quiet. I give up on sleep around two and head for the kitchen for water I don't actually want, just to have somewhere to put my restlessness that isn't this bed. His study light is still on. A thin gold line under the door, exactly like the night I found the envelope. I knock before I can talk myself out of it. A long pause. Then, "Come in." He's at his desk, jacket gone, sleeves rolled, a glass of whiskey he hasn't touched. His eyes come up when I step inside — dark, guarded, and a look under

Phoenix "You understand what you're walking into," Victor says, adjusting his cufflink in the elevator mirror. "The historical board rejected three senior architects on this exact building. They will not go easy on you because you're twenty-two." "Twenty," I correct, straightening my blazer. "And I don't want them to go easy on me. I want them to approve the draft because it's right." "Good. That's the answer I was hoping for." The board room at the preservation office is exactly as intimidating as I expected — dark wood, portraits of dead men who apparently cared very much about window moldings, six board members already seated when we walk in. Victor takes a chair at the back, deliberately, letting me stand at the head of the table alone. "Miss Veyl," the chairwoman says, not unkindly, "your firm submitted a preliminary draft three weeks ago that solved a load-bearing problem three previous architects couldn't. I'll admit, we were curious to meet you." "Thank you for the