“No. Taylor told him. I only found out a little while ago.”
Everything about him, from the way he’d squared his shoulders to the look in his eye told me he didn’t believe me.
“I have nothing to say. I'm not going.”
“Fine,” I said. “If you want to make this worse for yourself, that's up to you. I'll tell Richard you can't be bothered to give your side of things.”
I began to walk away from him, wishing with every fibre of my being that he’d be fired over this incident so I wouldn't have to spend every hour of my working day being so completely pissed off.
His footsteps followed mine and I walked faster, hoping to dive into my office before he could say anything else.
“Why did you trust what she told you?” he asked, catching me up before I could escape.
The stupidity of the question nearly floored me.
“Why? Because you left her in a quivering mess! It's about time you understood that when a woman says no, they're not playing hard to get, they just don't want anything to do with you!”
“Oh, like you didn’t want anything to do with me?”
I looked around, hoping to hell that nobody was nearby to hear what he’d said. The words echoed around us.
“Get over yourself,” I hissed. “I didn't ask for that kiss, you-”
“You responded! So before you start pretending you're innocent-”
“I'm not pretending to be innocent, I'm saying that forcing yourself on women isn't something you'd be above doing!”
“You're gonna bring that up in front of Richard, are you?” he taunted. “To prove Taylor's telling the truth? You're gonna tell him I ‘forced myself’ on you? I'm sure he'd be interested to hear how you handled it!”
My insides burned with anger at the way he kept bringing the kiss up every time I challenged him. Was this how my life was going to be now? Forced to remember my mistake, waiting for McCoy to spill it to Miguel if I pushed him far enough?
“If you weren't guilty of throwing yourself at Taylor, you wouldn't be going to so much trouble to try and unsettle me,” I said. “If you want to tell Richard what happened between you and I, go right ahead. Even if I lost my job, I’d be happy if it meant you got what you d
eserve!”
Instead of waiting for him to respond, I slipped back into my office, slamming the door behind me, and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw that Freya was gone and Miguel was sitting on my desk.
He smiled, so he couldn’t have heard the argument I’d had with McCoy. When he took in the expression on my face he said, “It’s too early in the morning for you to be this mad.”
Like a small child seeking comfort after a nightmare, I slunk towards Miguel and let him wrap me in his arms.
“What’s wrong, angel?”
“Really bad day,” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“What happened?”
I took a deep breath and informed him of the situation with McCoy. Again, even though I wasn't supposed to divulge any of the information, I needed to tell him. Since we'd been dating, I'd softened. Whenever things started to fall apart, I wanted to cuddle up to him and talk about it instead of pretending everything was fine. It was something I always had in me, I'd just never been with anyone who allowed me to be so openly honest and soppy.
“What a way to start the morning,” Miguel said.
“Yep,” I sighed. “I could really do without anymore run-ins with McCoy, but now this has come up …”
“You don't have to fight with him,” Miguel pointed out. “Why don’t you try walking away from it.”
Raising an eyebrow, I said, “Don't you know me at all?”
Miguel began to laugh. “Leah, you're not an argumentative person. You could do it if you tried.”