Obsessed With My Father’s Boss

Attempts and Failures

Rhea’s POV

The light hit me before I was ready for it.

I squeezed my eyes shut, groaned, and pressed my palm flat against my forehead like that would somehow hold my skull together. It didn’t. My head throbbed with the kind of pain that made me question every single decision I’d made after 10 p.m.

I sat up slowly, one inch at a time, and when the room finally stopped tilting, I noticed the bowl on the nightstand. Steam was still curling off it faintly. Next to it, a folded piece of paper.

I picked up the note first.

Drink this. It will make you feel better. And don’t ever go to the club again without my security personnel.

I read it twice, then sighed. “Like he cares.”

The soup was warm and it did exactly what it promised, settling the chaos in my head enough for everything from last night to start filtering back in. The music. The dancing. The way I leaned in and kissed him, my hands probably somewhere they had no business being.

And then nothing. A complete blank.

Had he kissed me back? I pressed my memory as hard as I could and got nothing. I was in my room. I was in my own clothes. Had he changed me? Had he carried me here? Had anything happened at all or had I simply embarrassed myself completely and passed out before I could even find out?

I grabbed my phone.

Lyra picked up on the fourth ring sounding exactly as rough as I felt.

“If this is not an emergency,” she said, voice like gravel, “I will end you.”

“Did you see us leave?”

A pause. Then a long exhale.

“He picked you up. Like, physically. Scooped you right off the seat and carried you out. Had his friend drop me off at home.” Another pause. “Why? What happened?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek.

“I think we kissed.”

Silence.

“Lyra.”

“I’m processing.” Her voice had changed completely — no more hangover, fully awake now. “You think?”

“I kissed him. I just don’t know if he kissed me back. Everything after that is just… gone.”

“Okay but listen,” she said, and I could practically hear her sitting up in bed. “That dancer? The one who was all over you? He came out of the restroom looking like he’d had a disagreement with someone’s fist. And when Rowan walked past me on the way out, Rhea — the look on his face.” She paused for effect. “That was not an unbothered man.”

I was out of bed before she finished the sentence. I didn’t even fully realize I was dancing until I caught my own reflection in the mirror — grinning like an i***t, shuffling in my socks across the hardwood floor.

Maybe. Just maybe.

But the days that followed said otherwise.

No Rowan. No eye contact, no accidental hallway run-ins, nothing. It was as though the kiss had never happened and we were back to being two strangers sharing a house that was far too large for either of us.

And every other night, without fail, I could hear through the wall.

I pressed my pillow over my face and screamed into it.

“We haven’t even made eye contact since that night,” I told Lyra after class, dropping into the chair across from her with zero grace. “It’s like the kiss reset everything back to zero.”

“Maybe he’s embarrassed,” she said, unwrapping her straw. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to handle it.”

I gave her a look.

“Rowan Langston. Embarrassed.” I let that sit for a second. “The man brings women home on a Tuesday, Lyra. Plural. He is not sitting in his room replaying the moment and blushing.”

She winced sympathetically and rubbed my shoulder. Then something shifted in her expression and she grabbed my hand. “I have more tricks up my sleeve.”

And she absolutely did.

The first attempt was the office visit. I would show up at his company under the pretense of dropping lunch for my dad, accidentally leave one for Rowan, and look effortless doing it.

I spent forty minutes on my appearance. Forty.

The secretary looked me up and down from behind the reception desk with the slow, deliberate energy of someone who had seen this exact move before and found it exhausting. Her lashes were so dramatic that they cast actual shadows on her cheekbones.

“He’s out with a client,” she said. “He won’t be back today.”

I smiled. Nodded. Turned and walked back to the elevator with the lunch bag still in my hand.

In my head, I was snatching every individual lash off her face one by one.

The second attempt was the car situation. I tracked the approximate time he left work, conveniently claimed I didn’t feel like driving, and engineered a shared ride. It should have been twenty minutes of close proximity and charged silence.

It was twenty minutes of him on his phone and me staring out the window.

The third attempt was Lyra’s most creative offering and I committed to it fully. I showered, oiled my skin until it glowed, pulled out my best lingerie, set up the lighting in my room with the precision of a photographer, and took the pictures.

They were jaw-dropping. Even I had to admit that.

I sent them to Rowan. Then I sat very still and watched the ticks turn blue.

Seen.

I counted to thirty, deleted the message, and typed a new one.

Sorry, that wasn’t meant for you. Was sending it to my boyfriend.

I put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down again.

Seen. No reply.

I screamed into my pillow for the second time that week.

The fourth attempt involved the pool. Zoe had become my inside source by this point, and she came through on a Saturday morning with the information that Rowan was outside swimming. I was in my most dangerous swimsuit within four minutes.

I will say this, I had absolutely no idea how to swim. But that was not the point.

I walked in slowly, letting the water rise around me, feeling his eyes follow me even though I refused to look directly at him.

“Good morning, Mr. Rowan.” I lowered myself into the water one slow inch at a time. “Hot one today, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t look away either.

At some point I picked up the glass I’d set at the edge and took a slow sip.

His reflection stared back at me from the surface.

There you are, I thought.

I gave it another ten minutes before I climbed out, toweled off without hurrying, and went inside like nothing had happened.

But that was as far as it went.

And so the days stacked up. Attempt after attempt, week after week. The results were inconclusive at best and humiliating at worst. One small mercy though — the women stopped coming around. No more voices through the wall, no more pillows pressed over my ears. I chose to count that as progress.

I had one move left.

Zoe had mentioned, almost in passing, that he always came down for water late. Every night, at a particular time.

So I stayed awake.

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and waited until I heard the familiar sound of his door. Then I got up, went to my mirror, and looked at myself in nothing but a short bathrobe, loosely tied, nothing underneath. I looked for exactly three seconds.

Then I went downstairs.

I poured a glass of juice I didn’t want. Counted to twenty. Turned toward the hallway.

And walked right into someone.

The juice sloshed. Hands caught my arms to steady me.

“Oh so sorry.” A deep voice said.

I stepped back nervously.

That was not Rowan’s voice.