The 21st Time He Forgot to Bring Me a Gift

Chapter 2

I waited for Nolan that night, but eventually fell asleep alone on the couch.

In my dreams that night, I was 18 again.

Nolan looked at me, his eyes full of love.

"Tess, I know you can take care of yourself, but will you give me a chance to take care of you, too? I swear I'll only ever love you, for the rest of my life!"

I lowered my head, blushing from my cheeks all the way to my earlobes.

"Okay."

My pillow stayed wet all night.

The next morning, I checked my phone and found a message Nolan had sent in the middle of the night.

Nolan: I don't feel right letting Ellie go home alone. Go to bed without me. I'm taking her home.

There was also an account alert from the bank. That woke me up in an instant.

I was just about to call Nolan when the door opened and he came home.

I looked at him.

"Nolan, what happened to the 500,000 dollars in our joint account?"

I'd saved that money by winning project after project and working through more nights than I could count.

He briefly avoided my eyes.

"The company has a new project. I used the money to fund it for now."

"A new project?"

I opened Elise's social media feed and held my phone in front of him. She'd posted an hour earlier.

My first independent project is finally underway! Thank you for your support, Mr. Voss. I promise I won't let you down!

After a couple of seconds of silence, Nolan began to speak slowly.

"Ellie's talented, but she's just graduated. She needs a chance to prove herself. You're the company's design director. You have a portfolio, experience, and me. All this means is you'll open your own studio a little later. Without this opportunity, she might never get her break."

I gave a small laugh.

"So my dream can wait, but her chance can't."

"Besides, this is an investment in the company's growth. Whatever it earns will still be ours, won't it?"

He spoke as though he had every right to do it, as though one more question from me would mean I didn't support his career.

I stopped arguing.

I simply saved screenshots of our joint account's transaction history and Elise's social media post in a folder.

When Nolan saw that I'd fallen silent, he pulled a bracelet from his pocket.

"Here, this is for you. Don't be mad anymore."

I recognized it at once. The bracelet was a free gift with a handbag purchase.

I was so angry I laughed. 'He's given me a freebie. How can I possibly say he hasn't thought of me?'

I ignored him after that and went to work as usual.

That day, I was giving the final presentation for a project I'd been working on for 6 months.

Winning it would bring the company tens of millions of dollars in profit and secure my place as a partner.

But halfway through the meeting, the conference room's large screen suddenly went black.

Then an animation of a pink heart and bubbles popped up.

I recognized it with a jolt. Elise had made it for an activity she was planning for the company's holiday party.

The client's expression darkened at once.

The IT staff rushed to fix the problem, only to discover that someone had formatted my USB flash drive, erasing everything on it.

The meeting had to be suspended.

I stormed out of the conference room and found Elise handing out snacks in the staff lounge.

"Did you touch the USB flash drive with my proposal on it?"

She went pale and dropped the chips she was holding, scattering them across the floor.

"Ms. Merritt, I didn't mean to. I just saw your USB flash drive still plugged into the computer and wanted to unplug it for you. I didn't know..."

"There were several USB flash drives plugged into my computer. Why did you happen to take that one?"