Page 57 of Pressure

"Probably Thursday, why?" Eli asked.

"I want to get her to ask a couple of questions if she can find a way to work them in. Sebastian said something that has me on edge."

"I'll pass it along and have her call you. She's in Canada overnight and will be back in the morning."

Lance whistled. "Do you two ever see each other beyond the weekends?"

Elijah laughed. "Not as much as we want to. But we make it work."

Lance couldn't imagine traveling as much as they did. He flew to Colorado on the weekends and once or twice a year he went to major tech conventions but otherwise he stayed in Chicago. Elijah and Holly practically lived on planes and they were rarely going in the same direction.

When he ended his call with Elijah and Patrick, he went to the conference room which had become their command center and found Marissa cursing and hurling a sheet of paper.

He snagged it out of the air and strode to her. Standing behind her chair, he tossed the paper into a nearby trashcan and pressed his palms into her shoulders.

"What's wrong, Riss?"

"I can't make this work. No matter how many ways I write it, I'm still throwing error codes. It's pissing me off."

"Let me take a look," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Sitting in the chair next to her, he pulled the laptop away from her and looked at what she was working on. It was an intricate piece of code that was beautifully developed, but he spotted her issue in ten seconds.

His fingers flew as he corrected the mistake. As he finished and pushed the machine back to her, she punched him in the shoulder.

"What was that for?" he asked, rubbing the sore spot.

"This is why we can't work together."

He lifted an eyebrow. "You're in a fine mood this morning. I was just trying to help."

"No. You were just taking over. That's your fucking problem. You think you have to control everything."

"Whoa, Riss. Calm down. I'm sorry, OK? I spotted your mistake and I just wanted to help."

Marissa sighed and stood. "Helping would have been pointing out my mistake and letting me fix it myself. You do understand that's what ultimately led to our breakup, right?"

He furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure I follow."

“The initial problem that had you taking over the project you thought I stole. It started out as a coding error I made. Instead of fucking pointing it out, you just fixed it and took over."

She shoved her chair away from the table and stood, sending the chair flying into the wall.

"I'm going upstairs. Don't follow me."

♦♦♦♦

Marissa scrubbed at her face in the shower. She'd retreated there after blowing up at Lance. Maybe her explosion hadn't been fair, but they still hadn't really talked about their relationship yet, and all of her emotions were bubbling beneath the surface.

How could she trust him again if he wouldn't talk and he wouldn't listen?

Turning off the water, she pulled a towel from the rack and dried herself off before flipping her hair over and wrapping it up.

She wrapped a second towel around herself and went into the bedroom.

Lance was waiting for her.

"I told you not to follow me."

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