The Orc from the Office (Claws & Cubicles Book 2)

I return to my office and clean myself up as best I can.

For several minutes, it’s all I can preoccupy myself with, because otherwise something in me is going to fracture. My heart’s racing, but I feel like I can’t think. I don’t want to.

Maybe the cameras don’t work, I try to reassure myself after a bit, mostly so I don’t start hyperventilating as my brain desperately tries to switch into problem solving mode. Problem solving is what I do, everyone always turns to ‘Janice from HR’ to solve things.

But sitting alone in my office, the answer never comes.

“How are those personnel file updates going?” Melanie greets me at the door for our next meeting.

I stare back at her, unable to come up with any real answer. That’s the last thing on my mind right now. When I realize I don’t really have an answer for her, I make a noncommittal noise that leaves it open to interpretation.

“It looks like it,” she returns, before she hits the lights and begins a slideshow.

The next hour and a half passes slowly, me nodding along whenever someone pauses, making thoughtful noises whenever someone asks a question. I don’t contribute anything real and I don’t think anyone notices.

Who really checks those cameras anyway?

I chew on my nails for a few minutes, not even partially convincing myself. I remember when some monitors suddenly went missing from the office a few months ago, they had checked the elevator tapes to find the culprit.

In some part of my gut, I knew this was coming. I’ve been so stupid, so reckless. I should never have given in to everything I was feeling with Khent. It wasn’t ever going to be all flowers and sunshine, I shouldn’t have wanted to think that it could have been.

Would sneaking back into the elevator and hitting the camera with my stapler make it all go away?

I marinate on the thought for several minutes, and as cathartic as it seems like it would be, that wouldn’t work. They probably store the footage in one of the security offices.

I think on it for a while, each crossed off half-baked idea sinking me further and further into depression.

“…And from the elevator–”

“What?” I snap, and my head turns to look at my coworkers so fast my glasses slide down my nose.

They kind of stare back at me, surprise across their faces.

“I said the email from the systems administrator,” Bill repeats for me, a creak of concern in his ancient voice.

“Oh,” I say weakly, realizing I misheard.

My coworkers exchange glances and internally shrug it off. Conversation takes a moment before it picks back up to a normal pace. I just try to survive the meeting without looking like I’m trying to hide behind a notebook.

When it ends and I get to hide in the quiet of my office again, collapsing into my chair with a swiftness that makes my glasses clatter onto my desk.

I sigh and grind the heel of my palms into my eyes, smearing my makeup no doubt.

There’s nothing I can do.

Someone was going to see that footage. Someone was going to see me and Khent making wildly inappropriate usage of company property. Someone was going to file a report about it, and then the pair of us were going to be sent to MR.

Maybe it wouldn’t be today. Maybe it wouldn’t happen tomorrow, or even this week. But sooner or later, someone was going to check that footage.

Was it worth it? To be constantly looking over my shoulder? For when this relationship would trip me up and be my professional downfall? Whether it was the elevator security footage or something else, it was going to happen. I’ve been here before, I know how it goes.

I’m replaceable, all employees are.

Being in HR, you get to know that better than anyone. No quicker way to sweep up liability issues than to let a worker go over the first blip.

And I’m going to take the fall, again.

I closed my eyes and massaged my temples, pushing my fingers up into the mess of my hair. Human resources didn’t help me then, I doubt Monster Resources will help me now.

I just wasn’t going to wait around to get fired.

My laptop pings. Just yesterday the message notification noise that had made my heart flutter wildly, feels like a little crack in my chest now.

I turn to my computer somehow both listless and panicked.

I fidget for several minutes and agonize over the keys and eventually send a single line email: There was a camera in the elevator.

My focus is scattered as I slowly wade through paperwork, not letting myself obsessively refresh my inbox the way I want to. I need to hear from him even if it hurts.

I break after 10 minutes.

Khent’s reply is there, easygoing as he is, like he doesn’t understand what it means. “If you’re worried about it, I can pay the security room a visit. I’m sure their system is overdue for a check.”

It tears a new crack in my heart to read, to want to follow that flutter of hope and trust him that it’s that simple, it’s that easy.

But if not the elevator, it was going to be somewhere else. A janitorial closet, the parking lot, in my office again when someone came by to drop off a report. As long as we were together, we were going to find other ways to deflower office property. One day we were going to slip up in a way we couldn’t come back from, and it was going to be just like it was with James, all over again.

I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like but this is finding new pieces of me I didn’t know existed. They’re unguarded and tender to pain. I chew my lower lip and peck at the keys, carving out a response.

“It’s not just about the camera. That can’t happen again.”

Each short response is all I can tear out even though it’s not enough to finish the job.

I weigh the familiar feeling of heartbreak against the lesser-known feeling of breaking someone’s heart. I don’t think I’ve really had to do that before.

I hate myself for letting it get this far. Not just for my own feelings, but for how I’ve gotten tangled up in Khent’s life. I feel like I’ve led him on by letting myself give in to the fever. If I had just stayed away from him, he never would have had his heart trifled with, he might have found a mating bond with someone else, someone more deserving of him.

He might have never even believed we were going to be something special because of this bond.

I’ve never had it in me to believe something as earnest and vulnerable as that. This was the direction it was heading all along, after all. It was never going to work out.

I look around my office, eyes sweeping from the test from the phishing training, to the spa receipt stubs, and the little bottle of oil I’d brought home from that day.

Everything I’m going to put in a box to forget about, after.

There’s another ping, another message from Khent. I can almost hear the way he would say it, the quiet surprise in his voice. “No more sharing elevators?”

What I’m about to do is cowardly. I’ve given a lot more respectful goodbyes to guys a lot less good to me than Khent was. Usually I make a point to do this in person, but I can’t see that happening in our particular circumstances. I’ve never broken up with someone over text or phone before, and certainly never email.

But it was going to hurt no matter what. I could either save myself all the time and feelings that were ever going to happen between me and Khent and end things now, or wait for it to hurt more later.

“No more anything.”

He doesn’t respond after that.

I had hoped before when we first got entangled in all this, that I was replaceable, for Khent’s sake. Now I hope the same thing, but it nearly breaks me in half to try.