Page 15 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
My plastic fork snaps in my hand.
I stare down at the decapitated utensil resting in my half-eaten kale salad, fighting the urge to scream.
You’re a liability, Tessa.
The words echo in my head, bouncing around my skull like a pinball. Ethan’s voice was low, rough, and terrifyingly intimate when he said it. He leaned into my space, his expensive cologne clouding my senses, and basically told me that I am a walking disaster zone.
And then he ordered me to eat my lunch like I’m a toddler.
“Arrogant, controlling, infuriating jerk,” I mutter, stabbing a cherry tomato with the jagged remains of my fork.
I shove the salad away. I’m not hungry. I’m wired. My blood is humming with a mixture of caffeine and adrenaline. I want to quit. I want to pack up my leather tote, march into his office, throw my badge on his black marble desk, and storm out.
But I can’t. First, because Harper would be devastated. Second, because I have never walked away from a challenge in my life. And third… because he’s right.
I look at the dual monitors in front of me. I’ve spent the last four hours digging into the backend of Mosaic, and the data doesn’t lie. The app is brilliant. The matching algorithm that Asher wrote is a thing of beauty; it connects people based on micro-interests and communication styles in a way I’ve never seen before. But the branding is clinical. It’s cold. It feels like a piece of software, not a community.
It needs me.
“Talking to your salad is the first sign of a corporate breakdown,” a voice drawls out from above me.
I look up. Owen is standing there, leaning his hip against the edge of my glass partition. He’s ditched his suit jacket, rolling the sleeves of his white dress shirt up to his elbows to reveal forearms that have no business being that muscular for a guy who works in tech. He’s grinning. It’s the same grin he gave me at the party right before he told me I made a bold choice.
“I’m not talking to the salad,” I lie, sweeping the plastic container into the trash bin. “I’m brainstorming.”
“Aggressively?” Owen raises an eyebrow. “You looked like you were trying to murder that tomato.”
“It looked at me wrong.”
Owen laughs, a rich, easy sound that draws the attention of a few developers across the aisle. “Come on. Ethan banished me from your desk earlier, but he didn’t say I couldn’t kidnap you.”
I stiffen. “Kidnap me?”
“For the tour,” Owen clarifies, pushing off the glass. “You’ve been chained to this desk since you walked in. You haven’t seen the rest of the kingdom. And as the Lead Brand Strategist, you need to know what you’re selling.”
I glance toward Ethan’s office. The blinds are drawn. He’s hiding. Or working. Or brooding about liabilities.
“Is this an official onboarding activity?” I ask skeptically. “Or are you just trying to avoid the budget meeting?”
“A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.” Owen winks. He extends a hand. “Come on, Tess. Let me show you the magic.”
I hesitate, looking at his hand. It’s large, broad-palmed. I remember the text message. You better have good security, because you’re going to cause a riot.
Every interaction with them feels like walking a tightrope. One slip, and I fall back into the memory of Friday night. But I can’t hide at my desk forever. I stand up, ignoring his hand.
“Lead the way.”
The Mosaic office is deceptive. The main floor, where my desk and the executive offices are, is all glass, chrome, and hushed efficiency. It screams “High-Stakes Tech Company.”
But the floor below is chaos.
“This,” Owen announces as the elevator opens, “is where the actual work happens.”
The noise hits me first. Music is thumping from invisible speakers, some kind of lo-fi hip hop. The space is wide open, cluttered with whiteboards, beanbag chairs, and desks covered in action figures and tangled wires. It smells like coffee and dry-erase markers.
“Design and UX on the left, front-end Devs on the right,” Owen explains, guiding me through the maze. He walks close to me. A little too close. His arm brushes against mine as we navigate around a cluster of standing desks.
“Everyone,” Owen claps his hands. The room quiets down. About twenty heads turn toward us. “Eyes up. This is Tessa. She’s the new Brand Lead. She’s the one who’s going to make us look cool so we can finally buy that island we talked about.”
