Faking It With the Boss

by Nikki Chase

  I don’t want to come off like a maniac just sprinting after her wildly, but I can’t let her go. I can’t let this be how things end, with some humiliating misunderstanding that would make us both miss out on something incredible.

  But Claire is so damn fast—she’s got a head start on me and she’s running with all her might. She’s already halfway across the parking lot to her car when I rush out after her.

  I can barely keep up, even though I hop over one of the hoods of an employee’s car and stick the landing as I close the distance.

  Within seconds, she’s in her car and turning the ignition on.

  I push my body to its limits, trying to get to the passenger door, but before I can get to it, Claire peels out of the parking spot.

  Her headlights are facing me, and right this second, I know no amount of bravado on my part will keep her from mowing right on over me. I dive out of the way as her engine roars, and she jets forward.

  “Shit—Claire, stop it!” I yell as she leaves me in the dust and screeches out onto the road.

  I chase her, running out of the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. But she’s not waiting for anything, much less me.

  I watch her gun the engine down the road toward the first stoplight, and as she goes, my heart jumps to my throat.

  It’s red, and she isn’t slowing down.

  Horns start blaring from all directions as soon as she zooms into the intersection, and everything that happens next is a blur. One car barrels toward her side of the car, but it veers out of the way at the last second.

  Claire must have seen the second one coming at her passenger’s side, because this time, she careens out of the way, tires screeching and leaving skid marks on the asphalt as the two cars barely avoid each other . . .

  . . . and Claire’s car slides head-first into the traffic-light pole, metal and glass crumpling together with a hellish, sickening sound.

  “CLAIRE!”

  Everything seems surreal as adrenaline courses through my veins. I sprint out into traffic faster than I’ve ever moved in my life.

  This can’t be real.

  This can’t be happening.

  It transitioned from bad to unbelievable in a matter of seconds.

  Something in me just can’t accept what I’m looking at. Claire’s car looks about a third shorter than it was, like a giant shoved it into the pole as hard as he could. Smoke is slowly rising up from the engine. Some bystanders are already getting on their phones, probably to call 911.

  None of that registers as totally real, though, not in my mind.

  To me, everything else in the world doesn’t matter.

  It’s just Claire. I need to get to her, and fast.

  As my long legs clear the asphalt-covered intersection, there’s ringing in my ears. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it everywhere, every pulse in every vein.

  When I get close to the car, I crunch over broken glass. But still, I don’t even think about slowing my pace until I’m right at the passenger door.

  I feel faint at the sight inside.

  Claire isn’t moving.

  Her airbag deployed, but I see blood on it.

  I grip the driver’s side door and yank on it as hard as I can. The metal is groaning, but there must be something jamming it. I curse as I climb over the hood to get to the passenger’s side door.

  Not like this. Not like this. Don’t you fucking go out on me like this, Claire!

  I wrench the passenger side door open and pick up a shard of broken glass to pierce the airbag. I shove it out of the way and unbuckle Claire’s seatbelt, then do the same to the bag pinning her against the seat. Once the air deflates and gives her some room to breathe, I reach out to caress her, but I hold myself back from moving her, in case doing so would make her injuries worse.

  It’s torture, letting her sit there like that, but I have no choice.

  “Claire! Claire, can you hear me, baby? Claire, stay with me! Say something, please!” My voice sounds distant, like I’m a spectator to my own life, holding the woman I love and wondering whether she’s dead or alive.

  I can’t think about the former. I can’t let that kind of doubt grip me. But it does, and I feel my whole body shaking in anger and frustration.

  Claire’s face is pale, and I see the trickle of blood is coming from a cut somewhere on her head. People are gathering around me, craning to get looks at her while I try to get some kind of response from her, any at all.

  I watch one of my tears hit her face, and I hear the droning sound of sirens in the distance coming our way.

  Claire

  I am so lost.

  My mind has been wandering through a dark, frightening labyrinth, coming up hallways and down corridors, looking for a safe place to rest.

  My body is somewhere else. Somewhere far away from here. I know somehow distantly that there is pain.

  I’ve been hurt, I guess, but it’s like my mind can’t quite access that information. My memory is full of holes.

  All I know is the ache of my heart as I wander around in the permanent darkness, calling out for the one soul I want to meet, the one face I long to see through the shadows. I wonder if I will ever get to see him again.

  Wherever I am right now, it’s lonely. And I have so many regrets.

  I wish I could apologize. I wish I could go back. Maybe that’s why I keep searching so hard . . .

  “Claire.”

  I stop short and look around.

  There was a voice in my head. I know it. That can’t have been a hallucination or a trick of the shadows. It was too authentic. Right down to the details. The emotion in the voice.

  Who is it who calls for me? How can I find the source?

  “Claire, wake up. Please.”

  The voice sounds so familiar to me now. My heart pulses.

  It’s him. He’s calling my name.

  But how do I get to him?

  Suddenly, I feel a physical sensation along with the voice.

  A hand, warm and strong, squeezing mine. I focus on that sensation, on the warmth and the sense of comfort.

  Stability. Safety.

  The shadows can’t reach me now. I’m going home.

  “Wake up,” says the gently pleading voice, and I do. I wake up.

  My eyes flutter open and start to sting under the bright, glaring fluorescent lights above me on the tiled ceiling. It’s all too bright.

  Next, I can detect the smells of disinfectant, sickness, sweat.

  I can hear the clicking of pens, the scribbling on clipboards, the clunk-clunk of heels on linoleum, the beeping of a machine off to my left.

  And beyond that, the ecstatic murmurs of a small gathering. I squint in the light, finally letting the scene before me fold into view.

  To my surprise, I’m in a hospital cot, with a scratchy blue blanket pulled up to my waist. There are wires connecting parts of me to a machine. And there are smiling, tearful faces beaming at me.

  My parents. The Grahams. And sitting next to me, holding my hand, whispering my name through the dark, is Ben. I manage to smile weakly.

  “She’s awake!” gasps my mother, who immediately goes limp in my father’s arms. She weeps against his chest while he holds her, gazing at me in disbelief.

  The Grahams clasp each other with joy, looking down at me. Ben lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it softly. There’s a look of pure love and relief on his face.

  “Why . . . what’s all this?” I croak out hoarsely.

  “You had us pretty scared for a minute there, gorgeous,” Ben tells me in a low, gentle voice. “I thought maybe I’d lost you forever.”

  “Oh, my sweet baby. She’s alive,” my mother sniffles as a tear rolls down her cheek.

  “You’re going to be alright. It will take some time for you to fully recover, but you’re out of the woods now,” Dad says to me, nodding. “The doctors are taking good care of you.”

  “Doctors?” I repeat, confused. “Why? What happened?”

>   “You really don’t remember?” asks Mrs. Graham.

  I shake my head ever so slightly, and I feel a little dizzy when I do, as if I’ve had a concussion or something. “Not really. I just feel—ouch. Some pain. And weakness. Like I’ve been asleep for a long time,” I admit. “There are bits and pieces of memory still in my mind, but it’s hard to put it all together. I remember yelling at you, Ben. And then I got in my car and I tried to drive away. But my eyesight was all blurry because . . . because I was crying. There was a red light, and I don’t remember anything past that.”

  “Probably for the best,” Mom says.

  “Yes, what a traumatic thing to remember. It’s better you don’t,” agrees Mrs. Graham.

  Ben leans in and squeezes my hand reassuringly. “You had an accident, Claire. You hit a pole. Head-on collision,” he explains, wincing a little. “The airbag deployed and it saved your life, but you were pretty badly hurt.”

  “Is that why I’m hooked up to this thing?” I ask, looking down at the IV in my arm.

  Dad chuckles. “Yes, sweetie. Morphine. The good stuff. It’ll take the edge off so you can rest more comfortably while you recover. How do you feel?”

  “Tired. Confused, I guess. I-I didn’t hurt anyone else in the accident, did I?” I ask, suddenly worried. I try to sit up straighter, but a head rush knocks me back with a groan.

  “No, no. Just yourself,” Ben says quickly. “Don’t worry. Everyone is fine. You just focus on getting better, okay? You’ll have to take it easy for a little while. Don’t push it.”

  “How long was I out?” I inquire, flinching at the flash of pain in my head.

  “All night, you were unconscious,” answers Mr. Graham.

  “It was very scary,” Dad says. “I thought . . . well, I thought the worst.”

  “The doctors said you’d wake up, but we weren’t sure. You looked so weak. So fragile,” Ben says, pain etched in his eyes. It’s clear that he’s had a rough time.

  “And Ben here never left your side. Not even to leave and take a shower,” Mom says.

  “Yeah, so if you smell anything weird, it’s probably just him,” Mr. Graham jokes.

  Ben rolls his eyes even as he looks away in embarrassment. I smile at him warmly, letting my eyes take in each of his gorgeous features one by one, appreciating how handsome he is.

  It hits me that I might have come close to never seeing his face again. If the accident had been a worse one . . . who knows what could have happened to me? To us?

  Both sets of parents exchange meaningful nods, noticing the way Ben and I are staring at each other so fervently.

  “Well, we are going to make a quick coffee run,” Mom suggests.

  “Mm-hm. Yes. That sounds like a great idea,” agrees Mr. Graham.

  “We’ll be back later, sweetie,” Dad tells me, pinching my foot through the blanket like he always used to when he’d tuck me in at night as a child. I smile at them and nod, careful not to make myself dizzy again.

  “Okay. Bring me a croissant,” I tell them.

  They all chuckle and Mom says, “Sure, sweetheart. I’m sure we can sneak one in.”

  “See you in a bit. We love you,” says Dad as the four of them walk out, leaving me alone with Ben.

  As soon as they’re gone, he leans forward and kisses me on the forehead softly.

  “Ouch,” I mumble, feeling like he’s just lightly pressed on a bruise.

  “Oh! Sorry,” he says, sitting back down. “In fact, I’m sorry for just about everything. All of this is my fault, Claire. I am so, so sorry.”

  “No, you don’t have to. It’s fine.” I shake my head ever so slightly, but he’s totally unconvinced.

  “I have to, Claire. I need to say what’s on my mind because I thought—for a minute there, I thought maybe I would never get a chance to apologize. And if I let our last conversation together be a fight, well, I would never be able to forgive myself. I fucked up. Royally. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a way for me to totally make it up to you. The way I treated you—it was unfair.

  “You were completely right to call me out. It’s never easy to hear criticism of your own actions, but I deserved it. In fact, I’m ashamed that it took you shouting at me for it to get through my thick head. It shouldn’t have gone down that way,” he rambles, shaking his head and looking even more exhausted than I feel right now.

  “And I’m sorry for yelling at you in front of your whole staff,” I murmur. “That wasn’t the classiest way to address the situation.”

  Ben smiles and gently cups my cheek, stroking my face with almost reverent affection. “No, it was exactly what I deserved. I had my head in the sand. I let work and ego control me and I pushed you away. I was an idiot. I still can’t believe how foolish I was not to see what was right in front of me the whole time. I should have been more careful about letting it slip to my parents that you and I were together. That was such a careless mistake on my part. I replay that conversation again and again in my head, and it drives me crazy how flippant I was. How cocky to assume that I knew what was best for us.

  “And in my mind, the domestic partnership form just seemed like a pointless detail. I kept putting it off again and again because supposedly more important stuff came up. And then I just held onto it because I—well, I wanted to be with you, Claire. And I was afraid to do anything that would jinx that or jeopardize our relationship.

  “But I wasn’t listening to what you wanted. I put myself first when I should have been putting you first. We should have been making those decisions together, not on my own,” he confesses.

  “Seems like you’ve done a whole lot of soul-searching since yesterday,” I tease gently.

  He smiles and kisses my hand again. “Yeah. Turns out that sitting by the bedside of the woman you love, keeping vigil all night and worrying that she might never wake up, is a surefire way to knock some sense into your head.”

  My heart skips a beat and I repeat quietly, “The woman you love?”

  Ben smiles adoringly and nods. “Yep. I should have told you sooner, but like you said, I had my head up my ass. But I love you, Claire. I love you.”

  I grin back at him, feeling my cheeks flush hot. “I love you, too.”

  “You have no idea how amazing it is to hear you say those words,” he chuckles. “Especially considering the fact that I was starting to worry I might never hear you say anything ever again.”

  “What can I say, I’m a trooper,” I giggle.

  “Yeah. You sure as hell are,” Ben agrees. “But Claire, I owe you an explanation for the way I’ve been acting. It’s not an excuse, but it might help you understand why I’m . . . the way I am. So, you know how I opened Mojave Blue before Ocotillo?”

  “Yes, of course,” I reply.

  “Well, that’s not my first restaurant,” he reveals sheepishly. “It’s the second one. The first one I opened up years ago in Los Angeles.”

  “Wait, what?” I ask, blinking in surprise.

  He nods slowly. “Yep.”

  “Well, what happened to it?” I ask, thoroughly intrigued.

  “It’s not mine anymore. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if it ever belonged to me in the first place,” he begins. “So after I graduated high school, I left Vegas for California. I enrolled at UCLA. I was so excited to finally be out of my hometown. I thought the best way for me to succeed was to leave home and strike out on my own, go where nobody knew my name, where nobody cared who my parents were. I, like you, wanted to prove my worth to the world without having to ride my parents’ coattails to get there.

  “I got my degree in business and decided that my first big foray into that world would be opening a restaurant. I went into it as a partnership with a college buddy of mine. We were roommates through part of our degrees, and we were pretty close. I trusted him, and he trusted me. Or so I thought. I see now that I was naive,” Ben sighs, shaking his head.

  “What did he do?” I press him gently.

  “L
ike I said, I trusted him. Completely. So I didn’t mind relinquishing some control. I delegated more and more responsibilities to him, since he kept asking for more work to do, for me to share the load more equally. I took it as a sign that we were a good fit as business partners; I never had to hound him to get things done. He’d jump right on it. Over time, he started taking initiative even more, until finally he was running the place himself, leaving only some of the little details to me. It all happened so insidiously.

  “And I was just starting out, so I had no idea what was going on. The situation came to a head when he filed for full ownership of the restaurant,” Ben explains bitterly. “He just cut me out of the deal entirely. It was no longer our project. It was solely his. This man I had trusted with my dream turned around and betrayed me. He stole my own restaurant out from underneath me.”

  “Holy shit, Ben,” I murmur, giving his hand a squeeze.

  He nods and continues. “I was so stunned and confused that I just abandoned ship. There was nothing left for me there in Los Angeles. Not anymore. So I did what any miserable failure would do: I came home to Vegas, where I was in my element. I decided that going to L.A. was a mistake, that I had pushed it too far. I figured that it would be easier to establish myself and succeed on my own home turf.

  “So I took the safe choice. With what was left of my savings, I took a calculated risk on Mojave Blue. In that neighborhood, during that particular ebb and flow of the market, I knew it’d be a success. And I was right,” he says.

  “Yeah, that place is so hip and well-known,” I compliment him.

  He smiles. “Blue was just the boost of funds and confidence I needed to pursue a more ambitious dream: Ocotillo. Back when I was in Los Angeles, I missed seeing those bright red ocotillo flowers in my front yard. So when I came home and decided to make my living here, I chose the name Ocotillo as a sentimental nod to my childhood here, to the comfort of coming home.

  “And of course, I had Jorge Alonso on my team now. After hearing about what my former business partner did to me, Jorge was eager to get the hell out of Los Angeles and the cut-throat, shallow environment there. And then I found the rest of my dream team— including you, Claire.