Three Days Was Plenty

I had spent three years getting Grant Whitmore to date me. Seventy-two hours into our relationship, he looked straight at me from a hospital bed and asked, "Who are you?"

His mother stood beside the window. His father occupied the chair closest to the bed, one hand resting dramatically over his chest. His younger brother, Owen, stopped turning a paper coffee cup between his palms.

Everybody waited.

Apparently, I had become the difficult question on a family exam.

I gave myself three seconds.

I could explain. I could cry. I could spend another three years persuading this man to let me love him, which sounded approximately as appealing as eating a stapler.

I smiled.

"I'm your executive assistant. Miles Bennett."

His mother exhaled. His father's hand dropped an inch. Owen looked at the floor.

Grant kept watching me.

He had a small dressing at his temple and a bruised cheekbone. Even in a hospital gown, he looked like a man who expected good lighting to follow him around. That face had caused me a great deal of trouble.

I had first seen it at a bar I half owned. A month later, I had applied for an actual vacancy at his company with actual qualifications, because apparently being an idiot did not prevent me from having an excellent résumé.

During the first year, I fell for the rest of him. When my mother needed help after a fall, he quietly rearranged my schedule and drove me to her apartment. When a client shouted at a junior employee, Grant stepped between them and ended the meeting.

There was steadiness in him. I liked having somewhere solid to stand.

Unfortunately, dating him involved standing outside a locked door while he occasionally slid a compliment underneath it.

By the second year, I had tried to stop knocking. He brought me coffee for a week and asked why I was distant.

By the third, I had started training my replacement.

Then, last Thursday, he said, "I want us to be together."

I had been embarrassingly happy.

Now it was Sunday, and I was being asked to introduce myself.

"Were we close?" Grant asked.

"I maintained your calendar. Intimacy doesn't get much more frightening than that."

Owen made a strangled sound into his coffee.

Grant did not smile.

I set the leather document case on the bedside table. Caroline, our operations director, had asked me to deliver a file before I knew the patient had developed such a selective relationship with his own life.

"There's a supplier amendment in here. Caroline can handle it tomorrow if you're not up to reviewing it. Nothing is urgent."

"Leave it with me."

"Certainly."

I put his glasses beside the folder. He reached for them, then stopped before his fingers touched mine.

That tiny hesitation hurt more than his question.

I had already noticed the performance.

When I entered, before he remembered to look bewildered, his eyes had dropped to the silver band on my right hand. I had bought it on Friday. He had been with me. He had held my hand under the restaurant table and turned it around my finger.

He had also called Owen by name, asked after his parents, and told his mother where to find his phone charger. None of that proved anything medical. I wasn't a doctor.

But I knew Grant's face when he wanted something difficult to disappear without having to say it aloud.

I had watched him wear it for three years.

"I'll let you rest," I said.

"Miles."

My name came out automatically. No question attached.

His mother shifted by the window.

"Yes, Mr. Whitmore?"

Grant's jaw tightened. "You're just my assistant?"

I gave him the most professional smile of my career.

"That's what you need me to be."

Then I left before anybody could ask me to make the lie more comfortable for them.

In the parking garage, I sat in my car and waited for my hands to stop shaking.

I hadn't expected that part. In my head, walking away involved sunglasses, an excellent soundtrack, and probably a breeze. In reality, I had a parking ticket and a stomach full of broken glass.

I opened the candy tin in the console and put a lemon drop on my tongue.

At least one thing in the vehicle was committed to being sweet.

My phone displayed a photo from Friday: two glasses of wine, half of Grant's sleeve, my own ridiculous smile reflected in the window.

I deleted it.

Then I went home and wrote my resignation.

I addressed it to Caroline. As operations director, she could organize my departure without a man recovering from a concussion deciding the fate of my notice period.

Twenty minutes later, she called.

"Miles, is everything all right?"

"I'm leaving the company. My proposed last day is two weeks from tomorrow. Most of the handover materials already exist."

"Because of Grant?"

She was one of the few people at work who knew we had finally started dating. She sounded cautious, which made me briefly want to crawl under my desk.

"Because I need my life to have more than one thing in it."

Caroline was quiet.

"Are you asking me to talk you out of this?"

"God, no. I have other plans. They involve very little spreadsheet maintenance."

"I'll arrange coverage. Grant should hear it from you."

"He will. Let me handle the personal conversation."

"All right. But don't tell me you're moving to a farm. I cannot imagine you respecting a rooster."

"I would sleep with its owner and negotiate different hours."

She laughed, and I felt the first small crack in the awful tightness behind my ribs.

After we hung up, I opened the handover folder. There it was, neatly labeled and almost complete, because the version of me who had been ready to give up on Grant had apparently possessed a functioning brain.

I wished I had listened to him sooner.

My phone buzzed again.

Tessa: Are you alive, gorgeous? Blink twice if the billionaire has you alphabetizing his emotions.

Me: He would need to have more than one emotion.

Tessa: Come to the bar. New dancer. Excellent shoulders. You can criticize his technique and pretend that's why you're looking.

I glanced at the company laptop on my kitchen counter.

Usually, Sunday night meant preparing Grant's Monday briefing. Tonight, Caroline had it covered. Next Sunday, somebody else would cover it. The world would apparently continue rotating without my personal supervision.

Me: Is my half of the bar still there?

Tessa: Unfortunately. I've spent three years trying to sell it to a handsome stranger, but everybody insists on meeting you first.

I stood and opened my closet.

Behind six navy shirts hung one in dark red satin.

I had forgotten I owned it.

No. That was too generous to me.

I had stopped giving myself reasons to wear it.

Me: I'll be there in thirty minutes.

Tessa: Wear something that makes poor decisions.

I took the red shirt off its hanger.

For the first time in a very long time, nobody else's calendar mattered.