Falling for the Fire

Chapter 12

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief at Brooklyn after the comments she had made.

"You're unbelievable," I hissed, "I don't know why I ever -"

I stopped myself before I said anything that I'd regret.

"Why you ever...what?" Brooklyn asked, the small smirk continuing to play across her lips, "hooked up with me?"

"Brooklyn," I quickly said, louder than I had intended to.

"Shut the hell up," I continued, bringing my voice back down to a whisper, "I thought that we agreed we weren't going to discuss that."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," she started, "but I think you're the one that brought it up."

There was a glint in her eye as she watched me and waited for my response.

"I didn't mean to," I responded, "and I didn't even finish the thought."

"Alright, fine," she finally said, "my fault."

"But listen," Brooklyn continued, "I realize that you think that I'm just saying no to all of your ideas, but there's a reason that I have the job that I do, I know what I'm doing."

"You're still nixing literally everything that I say," I told her, feeling my irritation grow again, "I know what I'm talking about too."

"You might know what you're talking about with smaller events," she said, "but you and I both know that this is a whole different thing, and that I have more experience when it comes to events of this scale...so maybe you should listen to me."

Her arrogance was infuriating, but unfortunately she wasn't exactly wrong. I narrowed my eyes slightly at her, and she stared back, her gaze unwavering.

"The difference is that I can listen to you without being a bitch about it," I said under my breath.

"Oh really?" She asked, raising her eyebrows in response, "real professional there."

"Oh please," I scoffed, "you're really going to say something about me being professional after what you just brought up?"

"I think that's a little different than calling someone that you're supposed to be working with a bitch," she said as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I don't - okay let's just work on this," I responded, "I'm done with this conversation."

The more I got to know Brooklyn, the bigger of a mistake the hookup felt like. I don't think it would've made much of a difference with how she was acting either way, but it was still making me feel like more and more of an idiot.

"You realize that you haven't been the easiest person to work with either, right?" She asked me quietly.

"I said I was done with this conversation," I repeated, "let's just do what we need to do."

"See?" she said as she raised her eyebrows at me again.

"Jesus Brooklyn," I exhaled, "sorry, I - I just need this to go well."

"Well that's what I'm trying to help you with," she responded.

"Right, I get it," I said, "tell me which locations you think would be good then."

"I'd be glad to," she said with a slight sarcasm in her voice, "we still have plenty of options, don't worry."

I nodded in her direction as she began to go over the information with me. As much as I hated to admit it, she did have a point with all of this.

All of the locations that she suggested seemed to fit with everything that we needed.

Once we had it narrowed down to our top three, she sat back in her chair again and looked up at me.

"Are you glad that you listened to me yet?" She asked.

"You don't have to try and rub it in just because you got your way," I told her as I rolled my eyes.

"And you don't have to sound so irritated since we have three great options here," she retorted.

Damn it, why did she always have to make a good point.

"Yeah, sure," I said begrudgingly, "just glad that we're done for the day."

"Seriously?" She laughed, "I don't know how you could possibly talk about me being difficult when you're saying shit like that."

I kept my eyes on the papers in front of me as I gathered them up, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a response.

She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up, but she leaned her head down next to me before she walked away and spoke quietly in my ear.

"If you're going to insist on trying to babysit me every day, then you better get used to this."

I felt my body tense up at the feeling of her breath near my neck, and I clenched my fist tightly in my lap.

This was going to be damn near impossible to get through.

I stayed late at my office that night, trying to get some extra work done and keep my mind off of everything. Whether it was Owen, Eliana, Brooklyn...I didn't want to think about any of it.

I still couldn't decide if Brooklyn actually was trying to be helpful or not. Maybe she was and she just had a shitty way of going about it.

She needed to get it through her head that I was in charge, and then I'd maybe be more accepting of her ideas.

I shuffled through the papers on my desk as I tried to push the thoughts away, this was supposed to be distracting me from all of that.

I got to the pile of locations that Brooklyn and I had been arguing about earlier, and I looked through them again.

Fuck, of course she was right about all of this. Why hadn't I thought of any of the things that she'd brought up earlier?

I shook my head to myself as I put the papers back and started to clean everything up for the day. I was one of the last ones left in the office, and it had almost become too quiet to work.

I grabbed my bag and walked towards the parking lot, already feeling my eyelids growing heavy after the long day that I'd had.

I got out to my car and grabbed on to the door handle, but I stopped before I got in. I could've sworn that I had seen Owen across the lot.

Was I seeing things now? Or had he really shown up here for some reason?

Maybe he was just trying to meet Eliana or something and had come at the wrong time.

It was probably nothing.

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