-POV Derby
The rumors had grown wings by midday.
They no longer hid in quiet corners or half-finished sentences. They flew openly now — carried in lowered voices across the open-plan floor, in the way conversations died the moment I walked into a room, in the sudden politeness that felt more like pity than respect. I kept my head down, laptop open, fingers moving across the keyboard even though the words on the screen had stopped making sense hours ago. Every notification on my phone made my stomach tighten. Every glance in my direction felt like a finger pointing.
I was the girl who might be involved with Jordan Vasquez.
And the office had decided it was interesting enough to talk about.
I slipped into the ladies’ room on the tenth floor just to breathe. The mirror showed a woman who
