Hate Me Better

POV: Amara  I smell him before I see him. That's the thing nobody tells you about a man who has ruined you — your body never forgets. Cedar and smoke and something darker underneath, something that has no name but lives permanently in the part of your brain that makes terrible decisions. I stop walking. My new assistant, a sweet-faced boy named Tom who has been chatting nervously for the last four floors, nearly collides with my back. "Ms. Osei? Is everything—" "Give me a second." I breathe. Once. Twice. I smooth my blazer — deep red, fitted, chosen this morning like armour — and I tell myself I'm imagining it. It's been two years. Two years since I deleted his number, burned his hoodie in my kitchen sink, and cried so hard I burst a blood vessel in my left eye. Two years since I swore his name would never taste like anything in my mouth again. I push open the glass doors to the executive floor. And there he is. Rafael Voss. Sitting at the head of the conference table like he was carved specifically to make women forget their own names. Dark suit, open collar, one button undone at the throat because he has always known exactly how much of himself to reveal. His jaw is sharper than I remember. There are new lines at the corners of his eyes — faint, barely there — and they make him look less like a boy who broke my heart and more like a man who'd do it again without blinking. He is already looking at me. Of course he is. The whole room fades. Six executives in expensive chairs, floor-to-ceiling windows bleeding London grey behind them — all of it becomes wallpaper. There is only his face and the way something moves across it the second our eyes meet. Not surprise. He knew. He knew and he said nothing and— Breathe, Amara. "Everyone," says the outgoing director from somewhere on my left, "meet Amara Osei, our new Creative Director. Amara, this is the leadership team." Names are offered. Hands are shaken. I perform the whole ritual on autopilot while my heart bangs around my chest like it's trying to escape the building before I do. When I get to him, Rafe stands. He's taller than memory too. "Ms. Osei." His voice is the same. Low. Unhurried. The kind of voice that used to say my name in the dark and make me feel like it meant something. He extends his hand. "Welcome to Crest." I look at his hand. I look at his face. I smile — the particular smile I've spent two years perfecting, the one that is warm enough to be professional and sharp enough to cut — and I take it. His grip is firm and brief and when he lets go I feel the absence like something stripped from my skin. "Thank you," I say. "It's a pleasure." The lie sits beautifully in my mouth. I get through the meeting. I take notes I won't need and ask questions I already know the answers to and sit at exactly the opposite end of the table from Rafael Voss, where I have a perfect, unobstructed view of him being devastating to every person in the room. He commands space. He always did. When Rafe speaks, people lean forward. Not because he raises his voice — he never does — but because he withholds just enough that you find yourself reaching toward him without meaning to. I spent two years learning not to reach. When it's over, I'm the second to leave. Almost. "Amara." His voice catches me three steps from the door. I close my eyes for exactly one second before I turn. The room is empty. Just us. Tom is waiting in the hall — I can see his silhouette through the frosted glass — and Rafe is standing close enough that if I breathed too deep, I'd get cedar and smoke and him again, and I cannot afford that. "Don't," I say quietly. "I just want to—" "I said don't." My voice is steady. I'm proud of it. "I don't know how this happened and I don't care. What I care about is doing my job and keeping this professional. So that's what we're going to do." Something shifts in his jaw. A muscle tightens. "You didn't know I was here," he says. It's not a question. "Of course I didn't know." I almost laugh. "I would have burned the offer letter." That lands. I see it land — the slight contraction around his eyes, the way he exhales through his nose. Good. I want it to land. "Amara—" "Rafael." I say his full name deliberately, slowly, like I'm introducing him to someone new. "We are colleagues now. That is the only thing we are." I pick up my portfolio from the table. "I suggest you remember that." I walk to the door. "I remember everything about you." His voice is so quiet I almost think I've imagined it. I don't stop walking. I don't look back. I push through the glass door into the hall where Tom is waiting with my coffee, and I smile at him, and I let him walk me to my new office, and I do not think about the way those four words crawled beneath my skin. I sit behind my new desk. I look at the skyline. I remember the night I found her in our bed — his hands in another woman's hair, the specific sound he made that used to belong only to me. I remember walking out without a word and never going back. I look down at my hand. The one he shook. I close it into a fist. I remember everything too, I think. That's exactly the problem.