Cat and Mouse

“Is this a joke?!”

Mr. Clark slams the article down on his desk, and I flinch even though I saw it coming. Papers slide off the edge and land by my shoes. Neither of us picks them up.

"Fourth one, Luke." His voice is flat, but his face is red. "Fourth article in a row that nobody reads. Nobody clicks. Nobody cares."

"Because you cut it to pieces before it even runs." I don't back down, even though my stomach is twisting. "I wrote a real story about the housing scandal. You took out every name. Every number. What was I even supposed to publish, a blank page?"

"I took out what could get us sued!" He stands up now, palms flat on the desk, leaning toward me. "You think I like doing that? I need this paper to survive. I need people to open the article, not just the headline."

"Then let me write something worth opening!" My voice is too loud for the office, and I don't care. "You keep asking for something big, then you gut it the second it lands on your desk. You can't have it both ways."

"Watch your tone." He points a finger at me, hand shaking slightly. "I'm still your boss."

"Then act like one." The words are out before I can stop them, sharp and stupid, and I watch something in his face go cold.

Silence between us settles for a long, furious minute.

"One month." He says it quiet now, which is worse than shouting. "One month, Luke. Bring me something real, something with teeth, something people will actually talk about. If you can't, you're done here. Fired. I mean it this time."

I open my mouth to argue again, but there's nothing left to say that won't sound like begging, so I shut it. My hands are shaking as I grab my bag off the chair. I don't look at him again on my way out, because I'd rather he think I'm angry than broken.

The hallway outside is bright and busy, phones ringing, people rushing past with coffee cups. I walk fast, jaw clenched, and almost don't notice Claire until she's blocking the way. An annoying colleague is the last thing I want to see right now.

"Hey." Her clipboard is pressed to her chest, eyes doing that soft, worried thing they always do around me. "Are you okay? You look like you're about to punch a wall."

"I'm fine." It comes out sharper than I mean it to, and I step around her without slowing down. Behind me, I hear her sigh, but I don't stop, because if I let anyone be kind to me right now, I'm going to fall apart in the middle of this office.

By the time I push through the door of the lounge bar three blocks down, my jaw still hasn't unclenched. The place is dim and loud in a comfortable way, glasses clinking under low conversation. Zein's already at our usual table by the window, two beers sweating rings into the wood, and one look at my face tells him everything.

My best friend knows me best.

"That bad?" He slides a glass toward me.

"One month." I drop into the seat and wrap both hands around the beer without drinking it, just needing something solid to hold. "One month or I'm out. He wants sensational, he wants teeth. I have parking permit exposés and school board drama nobody reads, Zein. I don't have teeth."

"You have talent they won't let you use." He says it plainly, like it's not up for debate, because he's said it a hundred times before. "That's not the same as not having teeth."

"Doesn't matter what we call it if I'm unemployed in thirty days." I finally take a drink, and it does nothing to loosen the knot behind my ribs. "I've wanted this since I was a kid, before I even knew what a byline was. And I'm about to lose it because some editor is too scared to print anything with real weight."

"So we find you something with weight." He shrugs, easy, like this is a problem he solves on an average Tuesday. "There's always something out there. Some CEO cheating, some politician lying, some—"

"Zein." I cut him off, too tired for his optimism right now. "I'm not asking you to conjure up a scandal out of thin air."

"I'm not conjuring anything, I'm scrolling." He already has his phone out, thumb flicking through job listings, the way he does when he's trying to fix me instead of sitting with me in it. "Half these companies are drowning in things nobody's supposed to see. You just need to get close enough to see it."

"Close enough meaning what, I apply to be someone's assistant and hope they confess crimes over coffee?" I mean it as a joke, but the second it leaves my mouth, something in my chest goes still, like my body already knows something my brain hasn't caught up to.

Zein snorts, still scrolling, completely oblivious. "I mean, if the opportunity fell in your lap—"

He turns the phone toward me without looking up, more to prove his point than anything else, and I take it out of his hand just to have something to do with mine. Listings blur past, generic and forgettable, until one heading stops my thumb cold.

Personal Assistant to Sam Wellington, CEO, Wellington Industries. Immediate hire. Discretion required.

I freeze.

The noise of the bar goes muffled and far away, like someone's dropped a glass wall between me and the rest of the room. My grip on the phone tightens until my knuckles ache.

"Luke?" Zein's voice cuts through, closer now, worried. "You just went white. What is it?"

I don't answer right away. I can't.

My ex, the man who used me like a five-minute distraction and threw money at me like I was something he'd rented for the night, is staring back at me from a screen, asking strangers to come work by his side.

"Luke, you're kind of scaring me."

Zein leans in to see the screen, and I turn it toward him, my hand not quite steady.He reads it, and I watch his face shift from confusion into something darker, something protective.

"Isn't that—"

"Sam Wellington." I say the name out loud for the first time in two years, and it tastes like copper in my mouth. "Yeah."

"No." Zein shakes his head immediately, already reaching to take the phone back, like distance from it might undo what I've read. "Whatever's happening in your head right now, no."

But it's too late. Something in me has already shifted.

Sam Wellington wants an assistant.

My ex, the worst man to walk this earth, the heartless CEO, the man I wanted to never see again - and I see his face for the first time in 2 years because he wants an assistant.

The memory comes fast, the way it always does when I'm not ready for it.

Two years ago. New Year's Eve, some club with more gold trim than sense, champagne sliding down my throat like it's water. My friends are somewhere in the crowd, laughing, and the bass is so loud it lives inside my ribs instead of my ears. I'm drunk enough that the lights blur into ribbons, drunk enough that when a stranger steps into my space on the dance floor, I don't think twice about it.

He's tall, dark-haired, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and he moves like he owns the room even wasted. Neither of us says much. We don't need to.

I don’t know his name - he knows mine.

His hand finds my waist, mine finds his collar, and for a while it's just heat and rhythm and the reckless kind of happy that only exists at midnight on a night nobody remembers clearly.

"You're trouble," he says against my ear, voice low and rough, laughing like he means it as a compliment.

"You started