Page 5 of Filthy Promises

Gone is the view. Vanessa’s moans are back to the muffled but admirably enthusiastic volume they were at when I first exited the elevator. It’s just me out in the hallway again, as if that whole thing never happened.

But it did, didn’t it?

He winked.

The papers sigh as they settle around my ankles. My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I’m sure the entire building can hear it.

He winked.

What does that mean? Is it a wink likeDon’t tell?Or is it a wink likeYou’re next, if you want to join?

No. Don’t even go there, Row.

Men like Vincent Akopov don’t notice women like me. I know that from bitter, first-hand experience.

I’m the girl that guys always befriended to get close to my prettier friends. The dependable one. The “you’re like a sister to me”one.

And besides, I remember how Vincent looked at me the day I was hired. He saw me. Sawinme. Sawthroughme.

Then he glanced away as if I’d suddenly ceased to exist.

As if, by tearing his gaze away without remorse, he was telling me,You are insignificant.

I drop to my knees and try to scoop the papers back into proper order, or at least something close to it. But I’m shaking like a lunatic. I feel like one, too.

I peek up at the door. It’s still closed, stubbornly and resolutely.

Did I imagine the whole thing?

No. Impossible. The memory of those blue eyes is too vivid. The amused sneer of his lips. The heat in his gaze when he looked at me.

I clutch the now-disorganized folder to my chest and back away.As I go, the sounds from behind the door grow louder.

I’ve spent five years watching Vincent from afar. In the cafeteria. At company events. Once, memorably, at the gym in our building, where I nearly fell off the treadmill when he walked in wearing no shirt and running shorts that left little to the imagination.

For those counting at home, that means five years of constructing elaborate fantasies in which, via some heaven-sent miracle, Vincent suddenly noticed me. Where we had a meet-cute straight out of a rom-com. Where he looked at me the way he’d just looked at me through that door.

Except that, in those fantasies, I was confident. Sexy. Not a sweaty, stammering mess with ink on my fingers and a coffee stain on my blouse that I tried to hide this morning with a strategically placed scarf.

I flee toward the elevator, my cheeks redder than ever.

Vanessa’s cries reach a crescendo just as the elevator doors seal closed between us.

Only then can I breathe. I lean against the mirrored wall, my reflection showing a woman I barely recognize. Eyes wide. Cheeks flushed. Lips gaping.

Then I laugh, a hysterical sound that bounces off the elevator walls and returns to my ears magnified, intensified, worse and more terrifying in every way.

He winked.I can’t stop asking myself the same question:What could that mean?In what universe was that wink an invitation?

The universe where my mother hadn’t gotten sick, maybe. Where we hadn’t lost our house paying for her treatments. Where I’d been able to take that design internship in Paris instead of the first steady job with health insurance I could find.

A universe where Vincent Akopov would see past the quiet marketing associate who blends into the wallpaper and notice therealme instead.

The elevator dings as it mercifully descends below the thirtieth floor. It’s like the journey I took to get here, but played backwards. Déjà vu all over again, but in reverse.

By the time the elevator kisses the ground, I do what I’ve always done: left the hope behind me.

It’s safer than askingwhat if.

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