After My CEO Forced a Kiss on Me

Two weeks. That was how long I spent building the pitch for the Miller account. It was my lifeline. If I landed this deal, Castiel couldn't justify firing me without looking like a fool to the board.

It was eleven o'clock on Wednesday night. I sat on my living room floor with my laptop. I just needed to review the slides one last time. I clicked the shared drive folder.

The screen blinked. Then a gray box popped up.

*Access Denied. Contact System Administrator.*

My stomach dropped to the floor. I refreshed the page. I clicked it again. Same message. I checked my email. Nothing. I tried to log into the main server. *Credentials revoked.*

I stared at the glowing screen. The apartment was dead silent. He did it. Castiel waited until the night before the biggest presentation of my career, and he locked me out. He wanted me to walk into that boardroom empty-handed. He wanted me to panic, to fail, to look incompetent in front of the clients. He wanted me to need him to fix it.

My hands started to shake. I felt the familiar burn of tears in my eyes. I pressed my thumbnail deep into my palm until the pain snapped me out of it.

*No,* I thought. *I am not giving you this.*

I didn't sleep. I grabbed a pen and a legal pad. I closed my eyes and pictured the slides. I wrote down every statistic, every strategy, every timeline from memory. I paced my tiny apartment until the sun came up, reciting the numbers over and over until my throat was raw.

At nine o'clock the next morning, the glass boardroom was packed. The Miller executives sat at the front, wearing sharp suits and expectant smiles.

Castiel sat in the far back corner. He leaned back in his leather chair. He looked completely relaxed. His dark eyes locked onto mine. A faint, cruel smirk played on his lips. He was waiting for the crash.

I stood at the front of the room. My hands were empty. No clicker. No notes.

"Good morning," I said. My voice shook for a fraction of a second, but I cleared my throat and pushed the fear down. "We had a server malfunction this morning. So, we will be doing this the old-fashioned way. No slides. Just the strategy."

Castiel’s smirk vanished. He sat up a little straighter.

I started talking. I pitched from memory. I walked them through the market analysis. I stumbled once on a budget projection, my mind going blank for two terrifying seconds. But I caught myself. I smiled, made a joke about inflation, and kept going.

The clients leaned in. They were nodding. They weren't looking at a screen; they were looking at me. By the time I finished, the lead executive was smiling broadly.

"That was incredibly clear, Mira," he said. "You really know this material inside and out."

"Thank you," I breathed.

I looked to the back of the room. Castiel was perfectly still. His hands were flat on the table. The anger in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else. He looked stunned. For a fleeting second, it looked like pure, involuntary admiration. He was amazed by me. But just as quickly, the mask slammed back into place. His jaw hardened. The admiration turned into a cold, dark resolve. I hadn't just survived. I had defied him. And that made me a bigger target.

After the room cleared, I walked to the breakroom to get some water. My legs felt like jelly.

Sandra slipped through the door right behind me. "You are a total badass," she whispered, her eyes wide.

"I almost threw up," I admitted, leaning against the counter.

Sandra pulled a small black notebook from her blazer pocket. She clicked a pen and jotted something down.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Documenting," she said flatly. "The server lockout. The basement office. The pen incident. Everything."

Panic flared in my chest. "Sandra, stop. You can't do that. He's the CEO. He'll fire you too."

"Let him try," she muttered. She snapped the notebook shut and shoved it back into her pocket. "I'm not letting him gaslight you out of a job. HR might be useless right now, but paper trails matter."

She looked at me closely. Her sharp eyes softened. "You're holding up better than I thought. You actually look... alive today. Is it Elliot?"

My breath caught. "What?"

"Your therapist guy," Sandra said, a knowing smirk on her face. "Whenever you mention him, you stop looking like you're bracing for a punch."

"He's just helping me with a strategy," I said quickly. I looked away, but I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

"Right. A strategy," Sandra laughed softly. "Just be careful, Mira. But whatever he's doing, it's working."

At one o'clock, I walked across the street to a small coffee shop. The wind was biting, tearing through my thin coat. Elliot was already waiting at a corner table. He wore a dark gray sweater. He looked up and saw me, and that calm, steady warmth filled his eyes.

I sat down across from him. This was supposed to be part of the plan. A staged public outing. But the moment I sat down, the office and Castiel felt a million miles away.

"You survived the pitch," Elliot said. It wasn't a question.

"I did," I said. I let out a long, shaky breath. "He locked me out of the drive. I did it from memory."

Elliot’s jaw tightened slightly. A flash of something dangerous crossed his face, but it was gone before I could read it. "And how do you feel?"

"Tired," I admitted. I reached into my tote bag to get my wallet. As I pulled it out, my book snagged on the zipper and tumbled onto the table.

It was my copy of *The Great Gatsby*. The paperback was battered. The spine was taped together, and the edges of the pages were soft and yellowed. It was the only thing I took from my adoptive parents' house the day I left.

I reached for it quickly, feeling suddenly exposed. But Elliot’s large hand moved first. He placed his fingers lightly over the cover.

"You carry this everywhere," he said softly. He didn't move his hand. He just looked at me. "Why?"

I gripped the edge of the table. "It's just a book. I like the ending." I forced a dry, dismissive laugh. "Rich people making messes. It's funny."

Elliot didn't laugh. He didn't accept the deflection. He looked down at my hands. I was squeezing the edge of the table so hard my knuckles were turning white. The instinct to hide, to curl inward like a hedgehog, was screaming at me.

He gently slid the book back across the table toward me. He didn't push for the real answer. He didn't force me to open up.

"It's a good book," he said quietly.

I relaxed my grip on the table. I looked up at him. He was watching me with a quiet, patient intensity. He noticed everything. The white knuckles, the frayed book, the dry laugh. He was filing it all away. Not to use against me, but to understand me.

For the first time in my life, I realized someone was paying attention to the things I didn't say. And it terrified me just as much as it saved me.