Dating My Brother's Best Friend .

Chapter 2 : The Morning After.

I found out about the video at 7:43am.

Zara sent it to me with no text, just three fire emojis and a crying laughing face, which told me everything I needed to know about how bad it was before I even pressed play.

I pressed play anyway.

There I was. On the screen. At the company welcome event last night, in the middle of the rooftop terrace with the city lights behind me and a glass of sparkling water in my hand, turning around too fast, catching the edge of a tray that a waiter was carrying past, and sending six glasses of red wine directly onto the white shirt of Marcus Hale — senior brand director, fifteen years at the company, the kind of man who wore his seriousness like a second suit.

The sound of the glasses. The red spreading across the white. Marcus's face going through approximately seven emotions in two seconds. My own face doing something that looked like I was trying to decide between apologising and running.

Twelve seconds of video.

Already at four thousand views.

The caption said intern szn is DIFFERENT this year with a laughing emoji and a tag to the company's public social page.

I put my phone face down on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

Then I picked it up and watched it again because apparently I enjoyed suffering.

The welcome event had been fine up until the tray incident.

That is the thing nobody would ever know from the video. The first two hours had been genuinely fine. I had worn the right outfit — dark blazer, simple top, trousers that said I am professional and also I went to arts school and I contain multitudes. I had talked to people. I had been charming, or at least a reasonable impression of charming. Zara had found me within the first ten minutes and we had stood near the windows watching the city and feeling, just for a little while, like we actually belonged in a place like this.

Then I turned around too fast and destroyed Marcus Hale's shirt and the last hour of the evening had been a quiet exercise in wanting the rooftop terrace to open up and swallow me whole.

Marcus had been professional about it. Coldly, precisely professional, which was somehow worse than if he had just been angry. He had accepted my apology with the expression of a man filing it away for future reference. Someone had handed him a company branded jacket to wear for the rest of the event. He had spent the remainder of the evening on the other side of the terrace not looking at me, which felt like its own kind of statement.

And someone — I did not know who, I still did not know who — had filmed all twelve seconds of it and put it on the internet.

I checked the view count again.

Six thousand, two hundred and seventeen.

I put my phone in my bag and got dressed for work.

The thirty-eighth floor was quieter at 8am than it had been the day before. Most of the brand strategy team did not arrive until half past. I had come early because arriving early was the only thing I had any control over this morning and I needed to be in control of something.

I sat at my desk — second from the window, good light, I had noticed that yesterday — and opened my sketchbook and tried to look like someone who was calmly reviewing their notes and absolutely not thinking about a twelve second video that now had eight thousand views.

I was definitely thinking about the video.

"You saw it."

I looked up.

Roman was standing at the entrance to the open floor. He was already in his suit, already looking like the morning had not inconvenienced him in any way, holding a coffee that was probably his second of the day. He was looking at me with that steady, unreadable expression that I was beginning to understand was just his face.

"Good morning," I said.

"You saw it," he said again. Not a question.

"Everyone saw it," I said. "It has eight thousand views. Eight thousand, Roman. I have been at this company for one day."

Something moved across his face. Not quite sympathy. Something more contained than that.

He walked across the floor towards his office and then stopped beside my desk in a way that felt deliberate. He looked down at me and then out at the floor that was beginning to fill with people arriving, bags dropping, computers waking up. People who had also, presumably, seen the video.

"It will pass," he said quietly.

"Marcus Hale looked at me this morning in the lift like I had personally ended his career," I said. "It is not going to pass."

"Marcus Hale has been in this industry for fifteen years," Roman said. "He has survived worse than a wine stain."

"The wine stain was on his shirt," I said. "The video is on the internet."

Roman was quiet for a moment. He was looking at something across the floor, not at me, and I had the distinct sense that he was thinking about something he had not decided to say yet.

"Stay at your desk until nine," he said finally. "Don't check the view count."

"It's at nine thousand now," I said.

He looked at me.

"I checked on the way up," I said. "In the lift. I know. I know."

He made a sound that was not quite a sigh and walked into his office.

By lunchtime it was at fifteen thousand.

Someone in the comments had found my name. Someone else had found the company page and tagged Vale & Associates directly. A gossip account that covered city corporate culture had reposted it with the caption new intern making her mark at Vale & Associates and that one had another three thousand shares on top of the original.

I ate my lunch in the small kitchen on the thirty-eighth floor because Zara was stuck in a meeting on twelve and Kai had texted to say he would find me tomorrow and the alternative was the main canteen where I was fairly certain people would look at me.

I was halfway through my sandwich when Roman walked in.

He opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water, and then leaned against the counter and looked at me in the way that meant he was about to say something he had thought about.

"I need to ask you something," he said.

"Okay," I said carefully.

"And I need you to hear the whole thing before you react."

That was not a reassuring opening. "That's also not a reassuring thing to say before asking something."

"The video is not going away," he said. "The account that reposted it has half a million followers. By tomorrow morning it will have been seen by people who know this company, who work with this company, who are clients of this company."

I put my sandwich down.

"I know," I said.

"Right now the story it's telling is that a new intern caused a scene at the welcome event," he said. "That's the narrative. Clumsy intern, embarrassing moment, company gets dragged into it."

"I know that too," I said quietly.

"There is a way to change the narrative," he said.

I looked at him.

Roman Vale was standing in the kitchen of his own company looking at me with those dark, careful eyes and something in his expression had shifted into territory I could not quite read.

"What kind of way," I said.

"The simplest kind," he said. "We change what the story is about. Instead of a clumsy intern the story becomes something else. Something that makes the video irrelevant."

"Roman."

"If you were with me," he said, "none of it matters. The video becomes a non-story. An intern bumped into a tray at a company event. Her boyfriend — who happens to be the CEO — helped her handle it. Story over. Nobody is interested in a clumsy moment when there is a relationship to talk about instead."

The kitchen was very quiet.

I could hear the coffee machine in the corner doing something to itself.

"You're asking me to pretend to be your girlfriend," I said.

"I'm asking you to consider a professional arrangement that protects both of us," he said. "My board has been making noise about my personal life for the past six months. They think I work too much. They think I'm not—" he paused, choosing the word carefully— "balanced. A relationship changes that conversation."

"So this helps you too," I said.

"Yes," he said, without any hesitation. "It helps both of us."

I stared at him. At the absolute straightforwardness of him standing there in this kitchen making this offer like it was a business proposal, which I supposed it was.

"Kai," I said.

"I'll handle Kai."

"He's my brother."

"I know who he is," Roman said. "I'll handle it."

"What are the rules," I said.

Something shifted in his expression. Like he had expected more resistance and the lack of it had surprised him slightly.

"Public appearances when necessary," he said. "The office, any company events, anything that might be photographed or talked about. Outside of that, nothing changes. You do your work. I do mine. At the end of your internship the relationship ends quietly and professionally and we both move on."

"How long?"

"Twelve weeks. The length of your internship."

I thought about the video. I thought about fifteen thousand views and Marcus Hale's face and the gossip account with half a million followers and the way people on the brand strategy floor had looked at me this morning like I was already a story they were telling each other.

I thought about my portfolio. About four years at Crestwood and every late night and every project and every moment I had worked towards being here, in this building, doing something real.

I thought about all of it.

"Fine," I said.

Roman looked at me.

"Fine?" he said.

"Don't make me say it again," I said. "We have rules. It's professional. Twelve weeks and then it's over and we both move on. Fine."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded once, the way he nodded when something was settled.

"One more thing," he said.

He pushed off the counter and walked to the kitchen doorway and then turned back to look at me. And for just a second, standing in the doorway of that small kitchen with the afternoon light behind him, he looked at me with something in his expression that I could not name. Something that came and went so fast I almost missed it.

"From tomorrow," he said, quietly, "as far as everyone in this building is concerned — you're mine."

He walked out.

I sat at the kitchen table with half a sandwich and the ruins of every plan I had made for this internship and thought one very clear thought.

Twelve weeks.

I could survive twelve weeks.

I was going to be absolutely fine.

I checked the view count one more time on the way back to my desk.

Twenty-two thousand.

I closed the app.

I opened my sketchbook.

I drew Roman's office door seventeen times without realising it.