The Billionaire's Assistant

Chapter 65

Startled from a dreamless sleep, Kat looked around in the dark and relative quiet. Emma was beside her on the bottom bunk, snoring no quieter than unusual despite her close proximity to Kat, but when Kat slowly turned her head to the right, she saw the source of her disturbance. Andy sat watching her, crouching just in front of the bed.

"You need to get the badge tomorrow," she said in a voice a few notches above a whisper but still too loud for Kat's liking. "I don't know what's going on, and," she paused, wrinkling her nose so quickly it might've been a twitch. "I can't cover for you again."

"Andy please," Kat begged, gesturing with her eyes to Emma's sleeping form.

"She won't wake up," Andy dismissed. "Maybe she should, maybe there's things she needs to know, but she wont wake up."

Kat's eyes flicked towards the door.

Andy lifted her chin defiantly. "You care a lot more about appearances than I thought. Why don't you care about how things appear to me, huh?"

"Andy, I swear," Kat began in a whisper.

"I don't," Andy interjected a bit louder, making Kat wince. "Wanna hear you lie. I don't. At all. Kat, get the badge. Tomorrow."

She fixed her with a steely glare.

"I mean that. Tomorrow. No more stalling. Then you're done, we'll pull you early, suspicion be damned. You'll be back on rotation with Emma Friday morning, you got it? If," she all but hissed. "You get the badge tomorrow."

Andy had always been intimidating but Kat had never seen her quite like this, a thinly veiled viciousness, a sharpness of tooth and glint of the eye. She seemed sharp, inherently dangerous. Dangerous to wield, dangerous to handle, dangerous even in her utility.

She was making a threat, an obvious one, and whether she was threatening to expose what she suspected about Kat's feelings for Jove or she was intending some other, more serpentine consequence, Kat wasn't interested in finding out, and had never been less inclined to disobey Andy's orders.

"Yea," she agreed quietly. "Tomorrow."

"Good," said Andy, taking a shaky breath that made Kat realize Andy had been nervous as well. "Jesus Kat, just... It's gonna be ok. Just get the badge tomorrow."

Kat nodded and Andy turned to the door, looking tired.

"Where are you going?" Kat whispered.

"A walk," said Andy, still barely bothering to lower her voice. "Don't follow me."

Kat woke the next morning with a pit of dread festering within her like a wound, threatening to rot away the healthy flesh around it with its repugnancy. She hadn't had a moment last night between events to give either proper thought, but recalling the feel of her lips on Jove's made her wince just as much as recalling her late night conversation with Andy.

It hadn't been a confession exactly, not of sorts, but Andy clearly knew something, knew all that she needed to know to draw her conclusions. Her incorrect conclusions, Kat reminded herself. But were they? Andy assumed that she had some kind of feelings for Jove. And she did, she could finally admit that. But Andy was also assuming that those feelings were the thing that was stopping her from making progress with the plan. That was the part Kat was struggling with, that she couldn't justify to herself as anything but betrayal no matter how much she tried.

It's his feelings that are stopping me, she thought. I can't tell him what to do, I can't predict when he's gonna show up, I'm not in charge.

Kat's mind immediately flashed guiltily to their walk to Rises, a method of transport and location that she'd insisted on. She had some control over the situation. Enough to try and slip him, enough to make up some excuse and head back to the office because she knew he wouldn't. Andy was right. If it weren't for Jove, if it weren't for her feelings for Jove, this entire thing could have been completed so much more quickly. But she hadn't turned on them, she hadn't betrayed them. She'd just realized that cutting the little time she'd have with Jove short was betraying herself. She still wanted to go through with the plan, her plan, the one she'd birthed and studied and prepped and translated and worked for, the one she wanted to see succeed more than anyone.

That's where her defensiveness came from. She hadn't abandoned the mission. She didn't think that who Jove was as a person, no matter how she felt about that person, was worth what it cost the planet. She wouldn't be with him, couldn't live with herself with him if he and his family continued to profit from destruction and waste, from needless, atmosphere destroying pollution. She hadn't lost her way, not in the ways that Andy assumed. She'd just never felt the way that Jove makes her feel. She just wanted to hang on to it for one second more.