A Rainy Day [COMPLETE]

Chapter 3

"I had the baby a year after you left for Chicago." We stay there for a minute in silence as I keep my breathing steady. Jessie gawks blankly at the ground. 

"You have to tell him," Jessie blurts out as she finally peers back at me with a realistic expression.

"You're insane," I respond back, now knowing that this conversation was only going to lead me to the dead-end of a long cliff.

"No, I'm not. You have to tell him," she repeats her statement and glares me in the eyes.

"Oh sure. What am I going to say?! Hey, I don't know if you remember who I am, but I gave birth to your kid a few years back in high school and maybe forgot to tell you about it," I ramble in a whisper.

"Uhh, yeah," she simply replied.

"No! I can't, I won't." Jessie approaches me with caring eyes but that's not how I see them at the moment.

"He deserves to know," she speaks truthfully, placing her hands on her hips with creased brows.

"I'm not ready to tell him. First of all, he's the CEO of the company, and second.....do you know how awfully horrifying it would be? I just....no, I can't," I admit, shaking my head.

"He still has a right to know...and for all you know he may find out on his own one day, which isn't the right way to go." I stand there, leaning against her desk, as the pressure of her gaze sears into my skin.

"I'm going to go get something to eat," I respond without any hesitation and leave the room with the soft stomping of my heels.

••••••

After eating a cheap salad from the cafeteria, I pick up a few files from one of my co-workers and headed down to a floor, holding rooms mostly filled with file cabinets and printers. Almost instantly after the elevator doors part, I stride down the plain, white-walled hall in my heels and skim through the overwhelming sheets of paper. I swiftly give a second glance away from my paperwork only to crash into someone.

"Damn it," I muttered and immediately started picking up the papers that had fallen on the ground. I wanted to look up but didn't see any point in doing so until he caught my attention.

"Aren't you my new assistant? The one that barged into my room this morning?" I froze for a moment and recalled the memory inside my head then sluggishly gazed up and sent him a short smile. Before he could get a second glance at me I went back to collecting all the files I had dropped.

"I feel like I've seen you before—have we met?" He bent down on his knees and started to help me pick up the papers. "What's your name?" Why was he being so nice all of a sudden?

"My last? Sharp." He has this feeling surrounding him like he knows I'm playing hard to get but won't admit it to my face. I keep my face parallel to the floor as my fingers rush from paper to paper.

"No, your first name." My eyes and hands stay glued to the stupid files I'm stuck cleaning up.

"It's Dannielle." He brings in his brows and silence fills the room. This is taking forever. How much was I holding?!

"Dannielle Sharp," he repeated my name a few more times, but before he could figure it out I was already speeding past him. That's when things started to go downhill. My eyes felt like they were spinning in all directions and everything around me seemed to glow brighter. I couldn't feel my feet and my entire body was burning up.

At first, I didn't know what to think. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. What was in that salad? I dropped my papers once again causing a loud thump to echo down the empty hall. I tried cooling myself off with one of the papers, but that didn't help in the slightest.

"Are you alright?" a familiar voice from behind asks.

"Yeah....yes. It's just really hot in here. Is the A.C. working?" After leaning my back against the wall my chest rises and falls faster than normal.

"Yes, it's on." All of a sudden my body started burning like it was on fire. I pushed myself off of the wall and waved the thin stack of papers in my hand faster against my face. I couldn't take it anymore. It was like I was in a desert. I dropped my small stack of papers on the floor. I needed to find a bathroom or something. 

When I thought I was on the verge of passing out, everything I was feeling disappeared. Out of what seemed like nowhere, a hand made contact with my shoulder. It was him.

"You okay?" I stared at him for a second and then shook my head back into reality and picked myself back together.

"I'm fine," I say with a straight face and hurriedly drop to the floor. As I scraped up the papers from the floor again, I noticed he was still standing there.

"Is there something you need, Mr. Blake?" I try to ask in a polite tone after getting back up. He stands there in deep thought, gazing straight into my eyes.

"No, everything's alright. Carry on." He strolls away with a still pondering expression on his face and his hands tucked deep inside his pockets.

Have I really changed so much to the point where he doesn't even recognize me?

After five minutes or so, I come to the embarrassing realization that I'm still standing in the same spot, replaying the situation over and over again.