Deliciously Damaged

by Winters, KB

The whole realization struck me as odd.

  “So, Clay, remind me again, what it is that you do?” I asked. It was a good change of topic, as well as a little sneaky recon.

  He cleared his throat and took a sip of his iced tea. “I’m actually in the tech game myself,” he said.

  I nodded, hoping he would proceed and I wouldn’t be forced to dig.

  “Clay’s being modest. He’s a genius,” Bryce filled in, his eyes full of admiration as he looked over at Clay, who was obviously more subdued.

  “That’s really cool. What kind of stuff do you do?”

  “Mostly consulting, at this point. I branched out on my own a few years back.”

  He didn’t elaborate, so I dropped it. We waited for the server to come drop off the bill and I tapped my fingers along the tabletop, mentally debating whether or not it would be wise to ask if Clay had been at the Plush launch party. I was burning up with curiosity, but I didn’t know how to ask—or if I even should. Maybe Bryce didn’t know that Clay had been there? Maybe he’d been on a date with someone else? I knew they were committed, and had recently purchased a condo together, but still…people cheated all the time.

  That was a life lesson I knew all too well.

  When the server came, Bryce snatched up the check before I could get my fingertips on it.

  “Absolutely not, Allie. It’s my treat. I’m the one who invited you out.”

  “Thank you,” I said, forcing aside my questions and letting myself relax.

  Twenty minutes later, I was back at my apartment, having said goodbye to Bryce and Clay at the cafe. I’d barely laid my head down on the couch, before I was zonked out.

  When I woke up, it was dark outside the windows. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. It was seven p.m. I was suddenly wide awake from my afternoon nap and decided to go in to the office and get some work done. I knew Cooper would be gone for the evening, and I had a key card to let myself in at any time, so I figured it would be a good time to go and be productive without any distractions. In the back of my mind, I was also well aware that whoever had hacked the system the day before may have been plotting another attack and I would rest easier knowing the data was all safe and accounted for, even though I figured Cooper would have already seen to it that someone was watching the data like a hawk, 24/7.

  I got on Cherry Bomb and drove downtown. I parked in the garage and hurried to the Brighton Enterprises tower. As suspected, everything was dark and quiet as I slid my key card into the front door of the building. I rounded the corner to the elevator banks and waited for a car to descend. It was almost eerily quiet as I stood there, the sound of me nervously tapping foot echoing around me.

  Finally, the elevator arrived and I punched the button and rode up.

  As soon as I stepped off, I realized I’d made a mistake. I’d accidentally pushed the button for the floor that Cooper’s office was on, not the IT department.

  “Smooth, Allie. Get your mind off of him for two seconds…” I chided myself under my breath.

  I spun around again and was about to board the elevator, to go down one floor, when I heard a sound down the hallway.

  I stopped, frozen in place, at the sound of voices drifting from somewhere nearby.

  My heart raced as I instantly recognized one as Cooper’s, but the other voice, I couldn’t place.

  It was definitely female…and giggling…

  That son of a bitch.

  Chapter Nine

  The elevator doors slid open but I stepped away and let the doors close again, without me inside.

  If that two-timing filth thought he could fuck me in the morning and then bring some hoochie up less than twenty-four hours later to bang in his office after hours, he had no idea who he was messing with.

  I’d put up with a lot of shit from men in the past. My most recent ex, Marx, had been crowned the king of douche bags—or so I’d thought.

  He might have some competition now. I crept down the hall towards the voices, staying as close to the wall as possible. The hallways were only halfway lit up, as if in some kind of energy saving, night mode. Light enough to see, but there were shadows that made it a lot easier to sneak around.

  “Oh, Mr. Brighton, you are a bad boy,” the female voice trilled.

  “You are a bad boy,” I mocked under my breath. Hot waves of rage coursed over me as I heard Cooper’s throaty laugh in response. My hands fisted at my sides and it took a whole lotta willpower to keep from sprinting the rest of the way and tackling whoever the bitch was that was daring to flirt with Cooper.

  Logically, I knew I should be far angrier at Cooper, but the sound of her voice was like nails on a chalkboard to me and drove me to a new peak of anger that I hadn’t imagined myself capable of before.

  “Now, now Tessa, all I’m asking for is a little discretion,” Cooper said.

  I held back a gag. A horde of scenarios were whipping through my mind as I crept closer and closer to the voices. I needed to see who he was talking to, to see what they were doing, but a part of me also wanted to turn and run. The idea of finding him fucking—or about to fuck—another woman would be more than my fragile heart could take. Especially knowing that this morning, we had been together and it had been so intense and full of meaning.

  At least, for me...he probably hadn’t even showered yet. Yuck!

  “All right, I promise to keep our little meeting a secret. Now, tell me, what can I do for you, Mr. Brighton?”

  Whoever this woman was, she could teach a master’s level course in seduction. Just the sound of her voice and the carefully placed inflections were probably more than enough to get most guys crawling on their knees.

  I cringed with the next steps, closing in on them.

  “Well, I’ve heard about you and what you’ve been up to, and I wanted you to tell me more. Maybe we can help each other out.”

  “I can do that,” she purred. “Let’s go into your office, so we can…chat.”

  I held my breath and peeked around the corner. Recognition hit for the second time that day, as I found myself staring at the retreating form of Tessa Greenwood. I remembered her striking beauty and charm from my brief stint at Spotlight.

  I whipped back around the corner and ducked out of sight again, right before the door of Cooper’s office closed.

  I pressed my eyes closed tight and counted to three before releasing the breath I’d been holding. I repeated the process again, trying to head off the impending panic attack that was rapidly building inside my chest.

  A click triggered my internal alarm and I dashed back towards the elevators without stopping to look back. I got on the first elevator and pounded the buttons to get the doors to close. I knew I was in no condition to ride home. My eyes would be blurred with tears, so I resumed my original plan and went down to my office. I used my key card again to get into the IT department and thankfully found it empty.

  I went to the staff lounge and made myself a cup of hot tea. My hands were shaking as I added honey from the bottle in the cupboard. I took a sip, barely noticing the scalding effect on my tongue, and then traced the path to my office.

  Only once I was safely tucked inside my own silent box did I release the tears that had been building since fleeing the floor above.

  “Fuck him,” I said, wiping away the tears before they could even make it past my lower lashes.

  I nodded, as if agreeing with myself—briefly contemplating whether or not I should check myself into some kind of mental hospital—and turned my attention back to my computer.

  I set aside my cup of tea and started to pull up the database, peeling away layer after layer to see if anything had been compromised since the early morning hours.

  It looked untouched.

  Well, at least one thing was working right, I told myself.

  I tapped my fingers along the edges of my desk and my eyes rotated to the ceiling. I wasn’t sure that Cooper’s office was directly above mine, but it was somewhere near
by. As I listened, I swore I could hear footsteps. My imagination went back into overdrive, wondering what was going on up there.

  First, the actress, and now Tessa?

  Maybe Cooper was one of those sex addicts.

  I shook the thought away and tried to refocus on my work.

  “Allison.”

  My head snapped up so fast, I feared that I’d inadvertently given myself whiplash. I found myself face to face with Cooper-fucking-Brighton as he stepped from the shadows and into my office.

  “Holy shit, Cooper, you scared me to death!”

  “Apologies.” His voice was dry and held no emotion.

  It was like talking to a cyborg.

  What the hell was he even doing down here? Wasn’t California Barbie upstairs, waiting for him to fuck her senseless?

  Maybe he already had.

  Damn, that must have been one hell of a quickie!

  I cringed at my own train of thought.

  “How did you even know I was here?” I demanded as he stepped closer to my desk.

  “You used your key card at the door,” he replied, as if that answered my question.

  “Okay…and?” I prodded.

  “I get alerts on any after-hours activity so that I know who is coming and going, and when,” Cooper explained, sighing as if he was teaching a particularly slow student.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes at his explanation. Of course he was tracking all comings and goings. He wouldn’t be the world’s biggest control freak if he wasn’t.

  “Well, for your information, I’m actually here to work.”

  “So am I,” he said, his face unchanged.

  “Right. That’s what you were doing. Working,” I scoffed and dropped my gaze while I mindlessly shuffled the stack of pages in my hands, desperately hoping that he would give up and go away.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  I forced my eyes back to his and steeled myself for the flood of rage he would hurl at me once I busted him. “Cooper, let’s cut the bullshit. I saw you with your blonde bimbo upstairs in your office.”

  He stiffened and his jaw locked in place as he thought for a moment.

  “Not that I owe you an explanation,” he said, leering over me. “But that was Tessa Greenwood. She worked at Spotlight,” he said.

  “I know who she is, Cooper. I used to work there, remember?” I injected as much scorn into my voice as possible. I was being mouthy with him, but I didn’t care. My body was flooded with venom and I had to release some of it. “That she was up in your office, just the two of you, in the dark, after everyone has gone home was more my point. We’re both adults here, Cooper. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  He leaned forward and braced himself against my desk, bearing down on me and forcing my attention. I raised my eyes and nearly reared back at the look of fire in his dark eyes. He was angry. I could see it within every fleck of gold and copper, as if his brown eyes were slowly heating to a molten metal.

  I did my best not to shrink away from the waves of anger that were radiating off of his impressive form. I held his stare and kept my lips tightly pressed together, ready with a quick comeback to whatever he was about to say next.

  But then, something shifted in his eyes and he straightened. He stood before me and tugged his suit jacket as if it had gone askew.

  “Have a good night, Allison. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  With that, he swept from the room and disappeared into the shadow-filled hallway outside my office.

  I waited a few minutes to ensure he was gone before releasing my breath and flopping back in my chair.

  “What the fuck was that?” I whispered to myself.

  My heart was still racing long after he was gone. No matter what I did to calm myself, it seemed to make little difference. My body was still reeling from the encounter and my mind was still racing to figure out what had happened.

  It was hard to believe that he’d been fucking Tessa in his office. For one thing, it hadn’t been nearly long enough. Cooper was a man who liked to take his time. Then again, perhaps he’d received notice that I’d used my key card and he cut things short to come and talk to me. But why? He hadn’t said anything of importance. He hadn’t really said much, period.

  The whole thing was so weird and jarring that it took me at least another forty-five minutes—and another cup of chamomile tea—to settle back down to the point where I could continue working.

  I pushed all of the evening’s events out of my mind and pulled up the virus data that I’d captured from the night before. I wanted a chance to study it. Alone. No Cooper hanging over my shoulder, making my brain fuzzy and mushy.

  It took me awhile, but then a pattern emerged and I noticed something I hadn’t seen the night before.

  I printed off pages and studied the hard copies, confirming what I’d seen. After every chunk of malicious coding, there was a symbol. One I hadn’t seen before in any type of code. I sat back down at my desk and logged into the hacking group I was a member of online. Within minutes, I had uploaded a screen capture of the symbol and had my answer.

  The symbol was a signature. It belonged to the hacker who had infiltrated our system.

  Apparently, some hackers created symbolic signatures to identify their work and garner respect in the hacking community. I started a new thread, asking if anyone knew the identity of this particular signature, but didn’t receive any immediate responses.

  It seemed odd to me. I knew hacks and could find my way around the cyber world with relative ease, but I would never dream of using my skills for anything evil. Even the task Cooper had set before me, to gather information, was pushing my moral boundaries. However, now that I’d seen first-hand the damage the competition was willing to do, to take out Plush and hurt Brighton Enterprises, I was less upset about the whole thing and more eager to get the information Plush needed.

  Not for him. But because someone needed to punish these hackers.

  I tapped into their database and started compiling data. Soon, my screen was filled with bars of information that was downloading to my computer. Once everything was up and running, there wasn’t much for me to do besides wait. Unfortunately, waiting left my brain too much room to roam and my mind became engulfed with thoughts of Cooper again.

  Since meeting him, my world had become turned upside down. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find a way to return to normal. Whatever that looked like, anymore. I’d never felt normal. I’d always been the odd one out, the misfit, the rebel. I’d never been able to blend into society and lead a normal, everyday life. I supposed that moving back to Kansas would be a step towards normalcy. It was becoming painfully clear that the longer I stayed here, trapped in Cooper’s intricate web, the farther from normal I was getting. And at some point, it would be too far and I wouldn’t be able to get back if I wanted to.

  Something on my computer beeped and drew me from my spiraling thoughts. I leaned over the keyboard and reviewed the progress.

  Everything looked good and I’d made quite a step in retrieving the information Cooper wanted. Satisfied, I unplugged my USB and carefully closed everything down.

  I went back to the parking garage. My head was down, focusing on the steps in front of me, and when I looked up, I gasped.

  Cooper was standing right next to Cherry Bomb.

  Chapter Ten

  “Cooper, what the hell are you doing?” I demanded as my steps turned to strides as I crossed the parking garage.

  “It should be pretty obvious,” he said. “I’m waiting for you.”

  I rolled my eyes. I planted myself three feet from him, knowing that my brain would go on the fritz if I got even one inch closer. No matter how furious I was with him, he seemed to always manage to get me right where he wanted me. Which, most of the time, meant on a flat surface that he could fuck me against.

  I shook the stars from my eyes, not wanting to even dwell on those memories.

  It would only m
ake things more complicated than they already were.

  “Why? What could we possibly have left to say to each other?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  He looked completely unshaken as he watched me. “I figured by now you would have cooled off, but I can see that was the wrong conclusion.”

  He was still talking like some kind of Rico Suave robot and I wanted to knock him on his ass. “Cooper, I have nothing to say. I have played this game too many times and I give up. I am not yours—you can fuck whoever you want. You win.” My voice faltered at the last part of my speech and I kicked myself for letting my emotions seep through. I needed to keep it together long enough to get away from him. Then, I would allow myself one more long, ugly cry session and then, that would be the end of it.

  I was over Cooper Brighton.

  To think that morning I’d been laying in his arms, feeling like the center of his universe.

  What an idiot.

  Stupid, stupid girl. Didn’t Marx teach you not to fall in love?

  “Ugh!” I groaned, more to myself than at Cooper.

  “What?” he asked. “What is this all about?”

  My fingernails pinched into my bare arms. “Just tell me why, Cooper? Why did you have to get me involved in any of this? I could have grown to be happy at Spotlight. Maybe, someday.” I winced, even as I said it. I knew it was bullshit. “But no, you had to swoop in and take over my whole life. I know how you did it, even though you deny it, but what I don’t understand is why. Why did you do it? Why did you get me fired? Or, haul me out of Marco’s? Why did you take me to your lake house? Why go out of your way to make me feel special and significant, only to bring me down less than a week later?”

  Tears were freely rolling down my cheeks and I did nothing to stop them.

  Cooper stood still, watching me come undone, without any movement. Even as my emotional walls were clearly crumbling in front of him, he refused to let even one layer peel back on his own barricade.

  Something snapped and I had to get away. Even though there was tons of fresh air all around me, I felt like I was suffocating. Cooper’s very presence was sucking all the oxygen and leaving me desperate to breathe.