Page 22 of Carter

“Seriously. Five-thirty tomorrow. I’ll save you a bike in the back.”

I stare at Sasha. She has every reason to be jealous and every opportunity to make a new employee pay for it. She chooses not to.

It is a small thing. With Sasha, small things are rarely small.

She tugs her arm to free it but I don’t loosen my grip. I open the office door. I pull her into the room. I dump her in the chair that sits across from my desk. I close the door, locking it.

She’s fuming. Her arms cross over her chest.

I stand behind the desk, directly across from her. I let the incident with Tiffany slide. Sasha won’t be working here much longer, so it’s irrelevant. “We need to talk.”

She’s not meeting my gaze. Her shoulders hunch as she slouches down further into the chair. “I’m under contract. You’re not firing me.” Her voice is so quiet, I’m not sure I heard her right.

“Come again?” I say.

“You. Can’t. Fire. Me. I knew when Leslie said you were waiting to talk to me, that you were going to try and get rid of me. But you can’t. I’m under contract.” She peeks up at me. Her gaze quickly falls back to her lap.

“What contract?”

“The one you made me sign when you first hired me,” she says.

I calculate the time that’s passed. “Two years ago? That thing can’t still be good.”

She raises her chin to meet my eyes. “It was for three years. A commitment made in exchange for paying off a percentage of my student loans. I still have six months left.” She’s not budging.

We Bachmans are wealthy. We try to be generous. I’d forgotten all about the program I’d created to help kinesiology students fight their way out of debt. Sasha was the last person I took on. I scanned my mind, thinking over the terms of the contract. They were solid, locking the employee in for the entirety of the term.

I’m infuriated she won’t leave. And I’m livid with myself because now there’s a deep welling brewing in my chest at her stubbornness—a feeling of wanting. It makes me more unsettled. I take a breath. I run my fingers through my hair. “Then I release you from it. I’ll call my lawyer and have him draft a document stating⁠—”

She speaks calmly, calculated. “I don’t want to be released. I want to finish out my time.”

“I’ve already paid off your loans—the day I proposed, in fact. So there’s no need for you to stay on.” I glance at the clock over her head. It’s eleven-thirty. I’ve got to get out of here. I need to get onto that plane and as far away from her as possible.

I can feel the sun on my skin. Taste the icy piña colada⁠—

Her eyes lock on mine. “No. No way in hell. I’m not leaving.” Her hands go to the arms of the chair. Her fingers curve around the wood. Her knuckles turn white.

I can’t take it anymore. I’m inches from her face. She flinches as I shout, “Damn it, Sasha. You can’t work here. Don’t you understand?”

She has the audacity to raise her brow at me. “I’m good at my job. I love it here. If you can’t handle me being here, why don’t you leave?”

She is right, which makes this harder. Barbells may be legally mine, but Sasha built half of what people love about it. Her spin program has a waiting list. She mentors instructors, programs classes, handles schedules, and knows members I still call by the wrong name. She is not merely my employee, and heartbreak does not give me the right to erase what she built here.

Unbelievable. “Leave Barbells? The business we built with our blood and sweat?” The words stop me because they are true. I may own the controlling share, but this place carries both our fingerprints. “No. Neither one of us gets to erase the other from it. But right now, you need to stop pushing me.”

Her eyes flash as she dares me. “Make me.”

I no longer care that she’s my ex.

That she broke my heart.

That legally, she’s an employee of mine.

I’m going to make her cry.

I come around the desk. I grab both her arms and rip her from the chair. She’s so surprised by the force, her hands slip right off the armrests she was holding onto so tightly.

I rest my glutes on the edge of the desk. I plant my right foot onto the seat of the chair. I fling her over my right thigh. She’s grabbing at the desk, trying to maintain her balance. My hand comes down on the center of her spandex-covered curves with a loud thwack! My palm stings, but not nearly as bad as her ass must. She howls.