She searched my face for a long moment, making me frown. Then, her lips tugged up, breaking into a sunny grin. “Wow. You have it so bad.”

Maybe I do, I thought, biting into my bagel. “So, what did I miss, Rosalyn?”

“Nuh-uh.” She popped open a metallic container, revealing a rice salad, topped with some greens. “No time to talk about my boring life or work. Things are the same. Start talking right freaking now, friend.” She dug a fork into her food, a little too forcefully. “I want all the details. And don’t leave out the cheesy, swoonworthy ones.”

My mouth opened with a complaint.

“Again, no. Don’t you even dare tell me there aren’t a few movie-worthy moments because I’ll unfriend you.”

Plopping my bagel on the table, I sighed dramatically.

“Spill the beans, Catalina Martín.”

“Damn, since when are you this bossy?” I asked her right before she pointed at me with her fork while she shot me a dagger or two with her eyes. “Okay, okay.” I lifted my hands in the air, took a deep breath in, and then started reciting every single thing that had gone down between Aaron and me. Keeping the name of our soon-to-be boss out, just in case.

Once my friend was all caught up—and if her shit-eating grin was saying anything, she was more than satisfied with what she had heard—I snatched back my bagel and resumed my lunch.

“Fuck, Lina,” she said through her ear-to-ear smile.

I flinched. “Rosalyn, did you just swear”—I blinked—“while grinning like a Cheshire cat?”

“Fuck yes, I did, you goddamn idiot.”

Jaw hanging open, I watched her look around, lifting the few things we had lying on the table and putting them right back where they had been, an unconvinced expression on her face.

“What the hell are you doing?” My throat worked, trying to pass down my bagel.

“Looking for something I can throw at your head,” she answered nonchalantly. But that grin was still there.

Is this angry Rosie? It was unsettling.

“Maybe if I did, I’d knock some sense into your hard head. Although from what you are telling me, you are not only stubborn, but also pretty darn blind. So, really, I am at a loss here. I just want to smack you and see what happens.”

My mouth snapped shut. “Smack me? That’s where your loyalty lies, so-called friend?”

She leveled me with a look that immediately sobered me up. “Lina.”

As I released a breath, my shoulders fell with defeat. “I know, okay? I deserve some of that smacking.” I knew how fucking dumb I had been. How blind and stubborn. I knew she was right. But I was also starting to understand what I felt for Aaron and how big and scary it was. “Rosie, I think … no. I know that I—”

“Oh no,” she cut my words off.

And at the same time, a head popped up in my field of vision.

“Hi, Rosie, Lina. How are you ladies doing?”

As of right now, not too well anymore, I wanted to tell him.

“Hello, Gerald,” I muttered instead.

Neither of us bothered to answer his question.

Not that he cared, apparently, because he stayed rooted in place.

“So, how was the vacay, Lina?”

The vacay. It hadn’t even been a holiday—I had just taken three days off, for Christ’s sake—but there was no point in correcting him.

Turning in my chair and facing him with what I hoped wasn’t a grimace, I braced myself for a few tortuous minutes of small talk. “Wonderful, thank you.”

He gave me a knowing nod, followed by a blatant smirk. I frowned.

“Big day tomorrow with Open Day, huh?” He leaned a hand on our table, the buttons of his shirt struggling under the change in position.

Why did he have to stuff himself in clothing two sizes smaller? Someone should tell him. He didn’t deserve the courtesy, but the world didn’t deserve this kind of sight either.

“You have an outfit picked out and all? I know you girls take your time, deciding.”

My teeth grated together with the sheer effort of not turning the table over and flipping him off. “Yes,” I answered through my teeth. “Now, if you don’t mind, we were having lu—”

“Did you have trouble putting everything together?” Gerald asked, not caring about my brush-off.

I thought I’d heard Rosie mutter something that sounded a lot like jerk under her breath.

Damn, she’s ragey today.

“A little. But it’s all sorted now,” I told him with a neutral expression.

“I bet you managed to find some help.”

That last word—help—the way he had said it, accompanied by a twitch of his eyebrows, sounded as if it meant much more than it was supposed to.

I felt the blood rushing out of my face, a chilly sensation slowly advancing in its place. “Yeah, I did.”

I hadn’t thought to hide that Aaron had helped me; there wasn’t a point, but of course, that had happened before Spain. Now, there was something between us. Something new and wonderful and so very fragile.

“Yes, I just bet,” Gerald commented casually. “I guess it’s as easy as batting your eyelashes and asking nicely, right?”

Cold—glacial, icy cold—started seeping in all across my body. I shuddered.

“Things are easy for girls who ask nicely.”

My spine stiffened. Nicely. “Excuse me?”

Gerald laughed, waving his hand. “Oh, I’m just chatting, honey.”

“Lina.” My voice was frosty, but how could it not be? The chill had penetrated, made its way into my bones. Don’t let him get to you, I told myself, begged of myself. “Not honey. My name is Lina.” I watched his eyes roll. And it bugged me. It fucking angered me like it had never before. “I’ve always been very polite to you, Gerald.” My tone dripped with fury now, so much that I almost couldn’t listen to the petrifying fear beneath it. Threatening to come out. “So, I’m going to invite you to leave our table.” I didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say. If I did, everything would quiver, shake so violently that it would break. “I don’t have time for you and your sexist crap.”

His cackle traveled across the whole room, and heads turned in our direction. “Oh, honey.”

“Gerald, please leave.” Rosie stood up from her chair, but her voice hadn’t been heard by him.

No, a man that wore a face of someone who was about to leash out didn’t listen to anybody. “Well, well, well.” Gerald’s mouth curled in a grim mock. “Look at that.” He raised his voice. “Gets cozy with the boss and thinks she can go around, telling off people. Calling me stupid names.”

My whole world came to a halt. It simply stopped spinning. All that icy anger melted to the floor. The fear roared like a beast let out of a cage after an eternity in captivity.

There was a sharp beeping in my ears. My vision blurred. Memories from a past I had thought was left behind came rushing back, smacking into me with the force of a truck.

Whore. Slut. You fucked your way through college. Sucked some dick to get those grades.

I had done it again, hadn’t I? Stumbled upon the same fucking rock. Although this time, I hadn’t just scraped my knees. This time, I had gone down with everything I had. And I didn’t think standing back up, brushing it off, and moving on was something I’d be able to do. Not this time.

My career. All these years I had worked my ass off in a field that wasn’t exactly easy for a woman. Everything I had accomplished. All lit on fire by a vile man who had turned a beautiful thing—one I had just found—into gruesome mud and used it against me.

The warm grip of a hand against my arm. Delicate. Soft too. Familiar in a way that was contradictory because it felt like I hadn’t had enough time to learn. To tattoo it on my skin, so I wouldn’t forget.

“What’s going on, Lina?” a deep voice that spoke directly into my heart came through the chaos in my head.

My gaze wandered around, finding pairs of eyes upon more pairs of eyes staring at us. Eating it all up like one looked at a train wreck. How morbid. How very sad.