Watch Me Fall (Ross Siblings, #5)(49)

Starla rubbed her temples, where her pulse was beginning to throb. The words just came out. The words she’s been stewing over for weeks, the words hung up in her throat all this time… They just erupted. “I have to quit.”

Silence, absolute and postapocalyptic, stretched out for a full ten seconds—which didn’t sound like much but was really an eternity. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t breathe through the burning in her lungs. She was going to throw up.

When at last he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost dangerously so. “Quit what exactly?”

“Here. This.” She gestured around her, indicating the building as a whole. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Starla, don’t do this to me,” he said, still quiet, but now…Jesus. Destroyed.

No matter how she tried to hold the tears at bay, they welled in her eyes anyway, a cruel testament to the truth she’d just spoken. She had to go. It was the only solution. “I have to.”

“Did I do something? Because you’ll have to refresh my memory if I did. I know that shit yesterday wasn’t cool, but we’ve had worse, haven’t we?”

“Yes. No. I mean…it wasn’t something you did.” He’d done nothing except find the love of his life, nothing except drive home what a failure, what a complete f*ckup she was.

“Did someone else?”

“No!”

Ghost took that inopportune moment to stroll into the room. He looked at Brian, looked at Starla’s streaming eyes, held up both hands in surrender, and walked back out.

“It’s not him, is it?” Brian asked once Ghost was out of earshot.

She scoffed. Admitting he was part of the problem would lead to admitting to her feelings for Jared, and she wasn’t ready to hear Brian’s opinion on that either. “I became immune to his bullshit years ago.”

“You have to talk to me. I can’t just…accept this.”

“As my boss, you’re gonna have to.”

“What about as your friend?”

I can’t be your friend anymore.

She couldn’t be his anything. The shot of pain through her chest at the thought was so severe that she winced. If she was going to move on, if she ever had a chance at getting herself together and getting past this, leaving here was the only option. The game was over. It had lasted too long, gone into overtime, and the sole player was exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically.

Brian saw he wasn’t making any headway with the near-sobbing female in his company, so he sighed and shifted his weight, getting fidgety like he always did when he was upset. “Are you at least giving me some kind of notice?”

She could do that, couldn’t she? He only came in two or three days a week—surely she could suck it up that much, but only if he could promise not to put her through this every time she saw him. “I’ll stay a couple of weeks. Maybe even more, I don’t know—maybe I can stay until you find a replacement. I just wanted you to know where my head is at.”

“I don’t know where your f*cking head is at,” he snapped.

“Brian—”

“This is bullshit, Star. We’ve been through too much together for you to leave me hanging without any kind of explanation.”

“I can’t. Please.” She didn’t think she’d ever been so close to begging in her life. The look in his blue eyes… She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take it and couldn’t make it better, so her only option was to flee from it. But he stood between her and the door, and he didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon.

This was the problem, she supposed, with being close friends with the people you worked with. When everyone was happy and getting along, there was no better situation. But once hurt feelings entered the equation—and those were inevitable at some point, weren’t they?—it was a recipe for disaster. Before, they’d all been able to scream at each other, then hug it out and carry on. Not this time.

“If I crossed a line yesterday—”

“You didn’t. It’s not that. I said leave it alone. Why can’t you just leave it the f*ck alone?”

“Because you’re wrong to do this, and you know you’re f*cking wrong. But, hey, whatever you want. Walk away. Go ahead.”

They’d gotten loud enough that conversation up front had died out. Whether everyone was intentionally eavesdropping or simply uncomfortable with the unfolding argument, she didn’t know.

“Brian,” she said softly, attempting to catch her breath, “I’ll promise you this. If there was anything you could do to make this better, I would tell you. I promise. But it’s unfixable. You are…you’re wonderful. You’re…” Everything I want in life? Everything I can’t have? “You’re the best boss ever, and you’ve been one of my best friends since we both got started in this business.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t get it.”

It almost pissed her off. No, it kinda did piss her off. All this time, and he didn’t know? He didn’t realize just a little, he didn’t have one single suspicion? What the hell? She’d had roughly three conversations with Jared before he figured it out. Not that she wanted Brian to know. She’d never wanted him to. But it suddenly became clear to her that the alternative was that he wasn’t paying attention in the slightest, or even worse: he knew, he saw it, and he didn’t care.