Off-Limits

Chapter Eight: The Client

The email came in on a Tuesday, forwarded from the agency's new business inbox with a subject line that read RE: Winslow Group Product Launch — Creative Direction, and Veronica almost didn't think twice about it until she opened the attached brief and saw the name at the bottom of the signature block.

Marcus Winslow, CEO.

She sat with her coffee going cold for a full minute before she picked up her phone and called Cassidy, who by now had become less a sister-in-law and more the person Veronica actually wanted to talk to first when something knocked her sideways.

"You're not going to believe who just became a client," Veronica said, the second Cassidy picked up.

"Please don't say it's someone's ex."

"It's my ex."

"Oh, Veronica." Cassidy let out a low whistle, equal parts sympathy and delight. "The one from before Jake? The one you dated for, what, a year?"

"That one."

"Do you want it, or do you want out of it?"

That was, Veronica thought, exactly why she'd called Cassidy first instead of anyone else — no panic, no drama, just the practical question underneath it. In the year since Jake had told Mason the truth, Cassidy had become the person Veronica ran things past before she ran them past anyone else, including, occasionally, her own husband. They'd started as an obligation — family dinners, forced proximity — and turned, somewhere in the last twelve months, into an actual friendship neither of them had been expecting. Wine on Sunday afternoons while the guys watched whatever game was on. Cassidy showing up unannounced with takeout the week Veronica's biggest pitch fell through. A closeness that had surprised both of them with how easily it had settled in, the two of them finding each other funnier and more honest than either had anticipated from a relationship that started as "my husband's sister" and "my brother's wife."

"I want the account," Veronica admitted. "It's a huge launch. It'd be the biggest thing my team's landed all year. I just don't want the history that comes with it."

"So take the account and manage the history," Cassidy said, like it was obvious. "You're a professional. You've handled worse men than an ex with a launch budget."

"I have."

"Then handle him. Just — maybe give Jake a heads-up before he finds out some other way."

Veronica meant to. She really did. But the launch prep swallowed the next two weeks whole — client calls, venue walkthroughs, a hundred small fires that ate every spare hour — and somewhere in the chaos, the conversation she meant to have with Jake kept getting pushed to tonight, and then tomorrow, until the night of the launch arrived and she still hadn't said the words my ex is the client out loud to the one person who probably deserved to hear them first.

• • •

The event was, by any professional measure, going beautifully. Veronica moved through the venue — a converted warehouse space downtown, restored brick and dramatic lighting exactly the way she'd pitched it — checking timing with the caterers, confirming the AV cues, the particular controlled chaos of a launch night she'd run a hundred times before and still loved every second of.

Marcus found her near the stage during a lull, two glasses of champagne in hand, the easy, confident smile she remembered clearly enough that seeing it again didn't land with the punch she might have expected a year ago. Mostly it just felt like looking at an old photograph — familiar, but flat.

"You outdid yourself," he said, handing her a glass she hadn't asked for. "I forgot how good you are at this."

"It's my job to be good at this."

"I mean it, Veronica." His hand found her lower back, light, familiar in a way that assumed permission it hadn't actually been given anymore, and he leaned in slightly, voice dropping. "I forgot a lot of things, actually. Being around you again this month has been — a reminder."

She stepped back, just enough to make the hand fall away, already forming the sentence that would shut this down cleanly and professionally — she'd navigated worse from clients before, this wasn't new territory — when, over Marcus's shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Jake near the entrance.

He hadn't been on the guest list. He'd meant it as a surprise — she'd find out later, once things had calmed down, that he'd finished a strategy deck early and decided to swing by and watch her work, proud of her in the specific, quiet way he'd gotten better at showing over the last year — and instead he'd walked in just in time to see another man's hand on his wife's back and her leaning in to hear something said close to her ear.

Veronica watched something shut down behind his eyes, fast and total, and before she could so much as say his name across the room, he'd already turned and gone back out the door he'd just come through.

"Veronica?" Marcus said, following her gaze, frowning slightly. "Everything okay?"

"Excuse me." She didn't wait for a response, setting the untouched champagne down on the nearest table and moving through the crowd as fast as professional composure would allow, weaving past caterers and clustered guests, the warehouse's converted-brick walls suddenly feeling much longer than they had ten minutes ago.

She found him outside, in the cool night air past the loading entrance, standing with his hands braced on the railing, staring at nothing, the noise of the party muffled behind the heavy door.

"Jake."

He turned, and the look on his face wasn't anger — she'd half-expected anger, was already bracing for it — it was something closer to shock, raw and unguarded in a way she'd rarely seen on him.

"Jake, that was Marcus. The client. He's not — nothing was happening."

"I know." His voice came out rough. "I know that, logically. I just — I saw his hand on you and I couldn't —" He shook his head, exhaling hard, like he was trying to physically shake the image loose. "I didn't want to make a scene in there. I didn't trust myself not to say something I couldn't take back, in front of your entire launch, so I just left. I'm sorry. I should have found you first instead of just walking out."

"You should have," she said, but her voice had already lost its edge, softened by the sight of him standing there genuinely rattled instead of performing anger at her. "Why didn't you say anything to me? You just left."

"Because the version of me that used to say something in a moment like that isn't someone I trust anymore," Jake said quietly. "I didn't know if I was about to be someone protecting his wife or someone starting a fight because his ego got bruised, and I didn't want to find out in front of a hundred of your clients. So I left instead."

Veronica studied him for a long moment, the anger she'd been ready to have dissolving into something more complicated — not quite forgiveness yet, but the beginning of it.

"You could have just told me you needed a minute," she said. "Instead I had to notice you were gone and chase you outside in four-inch heels."

"In my defense, you run very fast in those."

"Don't make jokes right now."

"Sorry." He raked a hand through his hair, some of the shock finally draining out of his shoulders. "For what it's worth — I'm not actually angry at you. I want to be clear about that. I was angry at the sight of it, not at you. I know you didn't do anything wrong."

"I should have told you Marcus was the client," Veronica admitted. "The second I saw his name on that brief. I kept meaning to and the launch just ate every conversation I meant to have, and that's on me. You shouldn't have had to find out by walking in on it."

"No," Jake agreed. "I probably shouldn't have."

They stood there for a moment, the cool air and the muffled bass from inside the only sound between them, something unresolved still sitting in the space but no longer sharp enough to cut.

"I have to go back in," Veronica said finally. "I have a launch to finish."

"Go. I'll head home. We'll talk tonight, when you're done."

"Okay." She hesitated, then reached out and squeezed his hand, brief but real. "Thank you for not making it worse in there."

"I'm trying," Jake said. "I'm really trying."

She went back inside. He watched her go, then headed for his car, replaying the last ten minutes on a loop the entire drive home, the image of that hand on her back still sitting uneasily behind his eyes even as the rest of him understood, clearly now, that it hadn't been the threat his body had reacted to like it was.

• • •

Cassidy found Veronica twenty minutes later, back on the floor doing a final walkthrough with the caterers, composure fully restored on the surface even if her hands weren't quite steady yet. Mason had texted her the moment Jake left the venue, some garbled version of Jake just bolted, I think he saw something with Veronica's ex, going to check on him — enough to make Cassidy abandon her own conversation and go looking for her sister-in-law instead.

"Mason said Jake left. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Veronica exhaled, setting down her clipboard. "He saw Marcus's hand on my back and just — left. Didn't say a word to me, didn't make a scene, just walked straight out. I had to chase him down outside in these shoes to figure out what was even happening."

"That doesn't sound like the old Jake," Cassidy said carefully. "The old Jake would've thrown a punch first and asked questions never."

"That's what he said, actually. That he didn't trust himself not to make it worse, so he left instead." Veronica pressed her fingers to her temples, half exasperated, half something softer she wasn't ready to name yet. "Which is — I don't know. Better than a scene, objectively. But it still means I spent the biggest launch of my year chasing my husband into a parking lot because he couldn't handle looking at my ex for five seconds."

"Marcus is still the client, though," Cassidy said. "That part didn't blow up, at least. Nobody in there even noticed anything happened."

"No. That part's fine." Veronica let out a short, humorless laugh. "It's just — I've spent ten years being the person who doesn't need rescuing, Cass. And I know he didn't make a scene, I know he actually handled it better than he could have. But some old, stupid part of me still felt like it needed rescuing tonight, for about thirty seconds, watching him walk out like that. And I hated that feeling. I don't know what to do with it."

Cassidy didn't rush to fix it. She just leaned against the table beside her, quiet for a moment, letting Veronica sit with it before offering anything.

"For what it's worth," she said eventually, "I've watched you handle everything else in your life with terrifying competence. This is the first time I've seen you actually rattled by something that wasn't a work problem. I don't think it's really about Marcus, or even about Jake walking out. I think some part of you is still bracing for the version of him that used to make everything about himself, and tonight he very deliberately didn't do that — and you don't quite know what to do with a Jake who handles it right."

Veronica was quiet for a long moment, watching the party continue smoothly around them, entirely unaware of the ten minutes that had just passed at its edges.

"When did you get so annoyingly perceptive?" she said finally, the faintest, reluctant edge of a laugh in it.

"I married into the family therapy no one asked for," Cassidy said, and Veronica actually laughed then, real and a little unsteady, leaning briefly into her before straightening back up, smoothing her dress, rebuilding the composure she needed to finish the night.

"I have to get back to the launch."

"Go. I'll go find Mason and make sure he's not hovering outside worrying about nothing." Cassidy squeezed her arm. "Call me tomorrow. Tell me how the actual conversation with Jake goes, not just the parking lot version."

"I will."

• • •

Chapter Nine: Later that night — the real conversation between Jake and Veronica, and what they each still need from each other.