Mistaking My Rage for True Love

1 Everyone at Harrison & Cross knew I was Jesse Wyatt’s personal martyr. I was the girl who downed four double scotches to close a deal for him until an ambulance had to pump saline into my veins at midnight. I was the associate who handed him the keys to the multinational logistics account, gift-wrapped, just so the board would greenlight his promotion to senior VP. The bullpen called me his doormat. They said he was using me. I didn't see it that way. In my warped, twenty-something logic, emotional exploitation was practically foreplay. If he didn't feel anything for me, why wouldn't he use someone else? Why me? I genuinely believed my devotion was carved in granite—until the Monday our holding company dropped Christian Mercer into the corner office as the new Chief Executive. I was walking back from the lobby Starbucks, balancing two venti cups in a cardboard tray, when the elevator doors parted and Christian stepped out. The moment my eyes locked onto his tall, tailored frame, my ribcage caved in. My heart hammered against my sternum like an engine throwing a piston. "I told you to stop buying me the blonde roast, Hallie," Jesse said, stepping out from the corridor and extending a dismissive hand toward the tray. "Whatever. Give it here, I’ll suffer through it." Around us, the floor held its collective breath. Looking like a pathetic, lovesick puppy in front of the incoming, notoriously ruthless Mercer was a bullet straight through the temple of any upward mobility. Under the sympathetic, pitying gazes of the entire strategy team, I bypassed Jesse’s outstretched hand entirely. I glided past him, planted myself directly in Christian’s path, and offered the hottest cup with an aggressively wide, sycophantic smile. "Mr. Mercer. Freshly brewed, three pumps of vanilla, skim. Exactly how you like it." Christian froze. His slate-gray eyes drifted from the plastic lid up to my face, narrowing with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Hallie," he said slowly, his voice like low-grit sandpaper. "Did that concussion from your accident leave you with permanent brain damage?" My pulse did a frantic backflip. He knew my name. He knew about the freeway pileup six weeks ago. If that wasn't cosmic, soul-deep romance, what the hell was? I dropped my chin in what I hoped was an alluring, demure tilt. "Mr. Mercer, you don't need to fret over my medical history. I'm right as rain, otherwise HR wouldn't have cleared me to return." Before the last syllable left my lips, Christian stepped forward, discarded his leather folio onto an assistant’s desk, and took my jaw in both hands. His long, calloused fingers combed back my hairline, checking my temples with a frantic, uncharacteristic panic. "There's no hematoma," he muttered, breathless, searching my pupils. "Then why on earth are you speaking to me like you've been lobotomized?" That settled it. He was completely, irrevocably obsessed with me. Jesse suddenly materialized beside us, grabbing Christian’s wrist and violently yanking him away. "Putting your hands on a female subordinate five minutes into your tenure violates every single clause in the employee handbook, Mercer," Jesse spat, radiating righteous fury. A surge of protective irritation flared through me. Christian was clearly just overcome with concern for my cranial integrity; who was Jesse to play the white knight? "You didn't ask about my crash once while I was in the ICU," I snapped, stepping between them and shoving Jesse backward by his lapels. "Now Mr. Mercer shows a scrap of human decency, and you're throwing a tantrum?" Jesse stared at me as if I had spoken in fluent ancient Greek. I gave him an icy eye-roll, spun on my heel, and turned back to beam at Christian. If I wasn't mistaken, Christian’s left eyelid gave a faint, violent twitch. By lunchtime, the firm's Slack channels were ablaze with the news: Hallie Hughes had abandoned her post as Jesse Wyatt’s lapdog to stalk the new CEO. People watched Jesse in the breakroom like spectators at a demolition derby. Jesse made a point of pacing past my cubicle every twenty minutes, clearing his throat and rustling file folders until my teeth ached. On his fifth pass, I stood up from my Herman Miller chair and crossed my arms. "Jesse. We are over. My heart belongs to Mr. Mercer now. Could you please give my aura some breathing room?" If he kept lurking, my resolve might waver. After all, Christian had been locked in executive strategy meetings on the thirty-fourth floor for three days straight, and distance makes the heart grow reckless. Jesse stared down at me, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched near his ear. "Fickle," he muttered under his breath, turning sharply on his heel. I ignored him, sinking back into my chair to pretend to parse quarterly revenue models. When the spreadsheets blurred together, I pulled out my phone, angled my chin toward the natural light spilling through the floor-to-ceiling glass, and took a polished selfie for my Instagram story. If Christian tapped through it between board pitches, he’d surely be struck by my radiant, unbothered beauty. Swiping back through my camera roll to delete the duds, my thumb caught on a snapshot buried deep in the cloud archives from three summers ago. It was an off-site retreat in Maine—a sprawling group photo on a weathered dock. And right there, shoulder-to-shoulder with me, was Christian Mercer. He had an arm slung casually around my neck, laughing with an open, uninhibited grin, pressing a handful of chocolate birthday frosting directly into my left cheek. My breath hitched. "No wonder he cares so much," I whispered to myself, a thrill running down my spine. "We have history." This was destiny. Even after traumatic amnesia wiped my slate clean, the universe had pulled us back into the same orbit. He had clearly been harboring a torch for me through years of corporate silence. I slapped my laptop shut, booked four hours of personal leave, and drove straight to my best friend Darcy’s brownstone in Brooklyn. When I thrust the photo across her kitchen island, Darcy swallowed her cold brew wrong, choking violently as coffee sprayed across her marble counter. "You... you really don't remember who he is?" Darcy asked, her eyes darting across my face with visible terror. I dug through the blank, hollow corridors of my skull. Nothing. Just static. "My brain is a blank hard drive before May, you know that. But look at him! He's clearly in love with me." "Actually, Hallie, he—" The heavy oak front door clicked open. Heavy footsteps echoed down the foyer hallway, and Christian Mercer walked into the kitchen, holding a manila accordion file. My soul left my body. A cold, suffocating dread settled into my gut. Were Darcy and I entangled in a secret, illicit love triangle? Had I thrown myself at my best friend's man? Christian stopped dead when he saw me sitting on the barstool. The corner of his mouth did that nervous, irritated twitch again. Before I could burst into tears and swear on my mother’s grave that I would never covet her partner, Christian spoke. "Aren't you supposed to be at your desk?" he asked, his tone dry and commanding. "What are you doing here?" I straightened my spine, folded my hands neatly on the counter, and gave him the most rehearsed, contrite smile I could muster. "Mr. Mercer. I apologize profusely. I had no idea you and Darcy were together. Everything I said at the office was the product of severe post-concussive delirium. Forget I exist." Christian’s face transitioned from ivory to a deep, incandescent crimson. Whether from pure embarrassment or sheer, homicidal rage, I couldn't tell. "Hallie," he growled through his teeth, "get your ass back to the financial district before I dock your entire quarterly bonus." I didn't wait for a second invitation. I snatched my purse, tripped over the rug, scrambled out the front door, and spent the entire subway ride back to Manhattan firing off frantic paragraphs of repentance to Darcy’s phone. Back at the office, humiliated and hollow, I pulled up Word to draft a formal letter of resignation. A large iced matcha latte clunked onto my desk, interrupting my descent into self-pity. "Don't do something idiotic," Jesse said, hovering over my partition with his hands buried in his slacks. "You won't find another firm that pays this well with your level of experience." "None of your business, Jesse," I snapped, keeping my eyes glued to the blinking cursor. "Mercer isn't the kind of man who looks at an associate like you," Jesse continued smoothly, leaning down so only I could hear. "If you had chased me for another week or two, I might’ve caved and taken you to dinner. But throwing yourself at Mercer? You're playing out of your league, Hallie." I barely heard him. My mind was completely occupied with drafting apologies to Darcy. I had flirted with my best friend’s boyfriend. Worse, I couldn't even remember the history that made me do it. "Can you back off, Wyatt?" a junior analyst two desks down called out nervously. "She clearly doesn't want to talk to you." Jesse shot the analyst a look that could strip paint, and the kid immediately ducked behind his monitors. Then, the ambient hum of typing and phone calls died instantly. The entire floor plummeted into a heavy, suffocating silence. Christian stood framed in the double glass entrance doors, trench coat over his arm. "Does this entire department lack deliverables today?" Christian’s voice cut through the air like a cold blade. "Because if you have time to host a support group in the middle of the floor, I have four operational audits I can reassign." Associates scattered like roaches in the light. Jesse turned to slip away toward the elevators, but Christian shifted his stance, planting himself directly in Jesse's path. "Out of her league?" Christian challenged, stepping into Jesse's space until they were inches apart. "Wyatt, if she hadn't bounced her skull off a windshield six weeks ago, she wouldn't have looked in your general direction to check the time." My heart gave a treacherous, involuntary shudder. He was defending me. In front of everyone. A vibration buzzed against my thigh. I glanced down at my phone on the desk. Darcy: You idiot, Christian and I aren't dating! Our families share an investment trust. He was just dropping off tax distributions. Darcy: If you like him, go get him. You two have years of baggage, but there was always... something there. You just need your head to catch up. I frantically typed back: If we were so great, why weren't we together before the crash?! Darcy: When your memory comes back, you'll understand. As I stared at the text, the air behind me shifted. I turned around quickly and found Christian leaning over my cubicle wall, one hand resting on the fabric partition, peering down at my screen. "Why were you so obsessed with Jesse Wyatt?" he asked quietly. I stared at his hand. Long, lean fingers, clean-cut nails, the faint silver trace of an old scar across his knuckle. As someone who had an absolute, helpless weakness for good hands, my brain short-circuited. He was brilliant, protective, devastatingly handsome, and completely within reach. "Temporary insanity," I blurted out, desperate to scrub the past forty-eight hours from the record. "My taste clearly runs toward men of your... caliber. And please, completely ignore what I said in Darcy’s kitchen. Foot in mouth. Total glitch." "I was only at her place to deliver partnership documents for our parents' joint estate," Christian murmured. He didn't mock me. He didn't look angry anymore. He just offered the explanation like a man clearing the air with someone whose opinion mattered. My chest tightened with that undeniable, terrifying warmth. That evening, walking to the subway, I called Darcy to break down the entire interaction. On the other end of the line, she let out a snort of laughter so loud and unladylike it sounded like farm equipment. "You really don't see it, do you?" she wheezed before hanging up. I was still smiling at my phone, floating on a cloud of romantic delusions, when a shadow cut off the streetlamp ahead. Jesse was standing on the corner, blocking the entrance to the station. "I pulled the old files from the archive," Jesse said without preamble, thrusting a thick manila folder against my chest. "You and Christian Mercer were never friends. You were bitter, bloodthirsty rivals." The folder contained printouts of internal firm rankings from our previous agency, project bids, cross-departmental reviews. According to the memos, I had transferred to this subsidiary specifically to undercut Christian’s billing numbers and push him out of the running for managing partner. I looked at the papers, then looked at Jesse, and burst out laughing. "Are you completely unhinged?" I tossed the entire folder into the nearest wire trash can. "I dump you, and your immediate reaction is to manufacture a corporate conspiracy? Leave me alone, Jesse." Jesse’s composure snapped. He stepped forward, pointing a trembling finger in my face. "I was literally about to give you a chance, Hallie! All you had to do was cut ties with Mercer. Wire me five grand as a token of commitment to show you're serious, and I would've been your boyfriend tonight." I stared at him, repulsed by the sheer audacity dripping from his lips. Had my standards really been this subterranean before the crash? "You delusional narcissist," I sneered, shoving him out of my path. "Get out of my face." Yet, as I hurried down the subway steps, an eerie chill ran down my spine. That bizarre, arrogant pitch—give me five grand, prove you're serious—rang with a strange, echoing familiarity. I couldn't place why, but it felt like a script I had read before. When I looked back over my shoulder from the turnstile, Jesse hadn't chased after me. He was standing beneath the amber streetlamp, grinning like a madman. Early the next morning, I sat across from my neurologist at Mount Sinai. "Dr. Prescott, you have to help me fix this," I pleaded, leaning over the examination desk. "There are gaping holes in my past. Massive ones. I think I'm falling in love with a man, and I don't even know what our foundation is." Dr. Prescott sighed, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. "Hallie, post-traumatic retrograde amnesia isn't an engine we can jump-start with medication. Traumatic blockages clear when the subconscious feels safe, or when you are exposed to significant, specific emotional triggers. It requires patience." "I don't have patience!" I insisted. "I need to know if we were enemies or soulmates. I can't live in this limbo." "The brain protects itself for a reason," the doctor said gently. "Be careful what you rush to uncover." Defeated, I walked out through the hospital’s revolving doors into the sticky July heat. Lost in thought, I plowed straight into a wall of solid muscle. I stumbled back, looked up, and groaned. "Are you tracking my phone, Jesse?" "I have a way to jog your memory," Jesse said calmly. He held out a torn piece of paper with an address scribbled in black ink. "Go here. See if the walls speak to you." The handwriting was jagged. The address was in Queens, a neighborhood far removed from the polished glass towers of our daily lives. Looking at the numbers, an inexplicable, suffocating weight settled onto my lungs. "What do you know?" I asked, dropping all corporate pretense. Jesse looked at me, the smirking arrogance melting away entirely. In its place was something raw, quiet, and deeply sorrowful. "You know... when you were chasing me like an idiot every day, I actually started to care about you." There was no sleaze in his voice. No calculated posturing. For a second, he looked entirely like a stranger—or perhaps, like the man he actually was when the office lights were off. "Come with me," I said, my hand trembling against the slip of paper. "I’m not going alone." We took his battered sedan across the bridge. When he pulled up to the curb of an overgrown, two-story colonial with peeling paint, my fingers froze on the door handle. I couldn't move. A wave of profound grief washed over me, thick as tar. We walked up the cracked concrete path together. I stood on the porch, staring at the faded brass house numbers, waiting for the dam in my mind to burst. Nothing happened. Just a dull ache behind my eyes. "Anything?" Jesse asked, his voice strained, desperate. I shook my head slowly. "Nothing. Just... sadness." Jesse let out a bitter, humorless laugh, leaning his back against the rusted porch railing. "You and Mercer were never real enemies, Hallie. He and I are. It's him or me. By the time this ends, one of us isn't walking away." The shift from petty office flirtation to cold, lethal finality struck me like an icy bucket of water. He wouldn't explain further, and the mystery festered in my gut, impossible to share with Darcy, impossible to ask Christian. In the weeks that followed, the tension coiled tighter. Jesse stopped pacing my desk, but his eyes followed me everywhere. Christian, on the other hand, abandoned all executive subtlety. The entire firm whispered that the new CEO and the rising star VP were locked in an open war for the heart of Hallie Hughes. "I have two seats for the indie film premiere at Lincoln Center tonight," Christian said, dropping two heavy cardstock tickets on my desk one Friday at five. "The director's cut you mentioned wanting to see." "I'd love to," I breathed, my face lighting up. Before Christian could turn away, Jesse slipped in from the corridor, slapping down two VIP passes. "Front row, opening night gala, private after-party access with the cast." He looked at me, challenging me. I glanced between the passes and Christian’s quiet, composed face. The allure of the VIP perks was tempting, but the dark, quiet magnetism of Christian Mercer won out. "I'm going with Christian," I said softly. Jesse’s jaw tightened. "You're going to regret this, Hallie," he hissed through clenched teeth, his eyes wounded, fierce, and entirely too intense for a spat over movie tickets. After the film, Christian walked me through Central Park under a canopy of illuminated summer trees. Near the fountain, surrounded by the soft hum of the city, he pulled me close and told me he didn't want to play corporate games anymore. He told me he wanted me. Swept up in the cinematic romance of it all, I said yes. We crossed the threshold into dating. Every dinner with Christian, every brush of his knuckles against mine across a linen tablecloth, made my heart beat at an unnatural, exhilarating speed. That high carried me all the way through late July. Until the rainy Tuesday night I decided to surprise him at his penthouse, and found him in the dimly lit foyer, his hands resting on the waist of a striking brunette, their faces pressed together in an undeniable, intimate embrace. The blood in my veins turned to boiling oil. I lunged forward, grabbed Christian by the shoulder, spun him around, and cracked my open palm across his face with everything I had. The force of the blow snapped his head sideways. A thin line of crimson bloomed at the corner of his lip. "You cheating son of a bitch!" I screamed. Christian wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn't look remorseful. He looked cold, bitter, and terrifyingly amused. "I thought indulging your little amnesia routine would be entertaining for a while, Hallie," he sneered, taking a slow step toward me. "You didn't actually think this was real, did you?" "What are you talking about?" "Still drawing a blank?" The mockery in his voice was razor-sharp. "You took Jesse Wyatt home to meet your parents, Hallie. And then you turned around and crawled into my bed. What am I to you? An ego boost? Did you think faking brain damage to play both of us was funny?" A red haze of fury blinded me. "My parents?!" I choked out, tears of pure rage burning my eyes. "What parents, you monster? I spent twelve years bouncing between group homes in upstate New York! I am an orphan! You cheat on me, and then you invent an imaginary family to paint yourself as the victim?" Christian froze. The cruel smirk vanished from his face, replaced by a sudden, jarring shock. "We're done," I spat, fighting the urge to hit him again. "You are dumped. Remember that—I threw you away. And don't you ever speak about my family again." I spun around and bolted into the rain, leaving him standing frozen in his doorway. An hour later, I was sobbing on Darcy’s sofa, wrapped in a fleece throw while she stroked my wet hair. "It's Mercer's fault," Darcy said fiercely, handing me a mug of tea. "He’s a bastard for pulling a stunt like that. Trash takes itself out." "I should have stayed with Jesse," I wept into my hands. "At least Jesse was honest about being an asshole." "No!" Darcy snapped, surprisingly vehement. "Absolutely not Jesse." I lifted my tear-streaked face. "Why do you hate him so much? I was pursuing him before the crash, wasn't I?" Darcy looked at me with deep, conflicted sadness. "Yes. You were obsessed with him before the accident, too. I just hoped... I thought with your memory wiped, you'd finally break the cycle." "I guess I owe my past self an apology for having terrible taste," I croaked with a miserable, watery laugh. Darcy picked up her phone, furious. "I'm calling Christian right now. I don't care about the penalty clauses—I'm pulling our family's capital from his logistics firm tomorrow morning. He doesn't get to treat you like this." "Darcy, no!" I lunged across the cushions, wrestling the phone from her grip. "That’s millions of dollars! Don't torch your family's portfolio over my disastrous dating life!" I hit speakerphone to de-escalate. Christian’s voice came through the receiver, cracked, raw, and completely devoid of his usual corporate armor. "Hallie? Please. Just let me explain." Darcy opened her mouth to unleash a torrent of profanity, but I held up a hand. "Fine," I told the phone. "Talk." He came to the diner down the block. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, Christian looked smaller, his eyes bloodshot. He swore there was no kiss. The woman was an old family acquaintance; she had leaned in to whisper a private warning about the board, and from the hallway angle, it had looked incriminating. He had leaned into the lie out of spite because he had seen surveillance stills of Jesse and me standing outside that colonial house in Queens. "I thought you took him home to your family," Christian whispered, staring at his coffee cup. "And when you told me you were an orphan... Hallie, we’ve known each other for seven years. We fought tooth and nail through three different firms. And I didn't know you grew up in foster care. I felt like less than a stranger to you." A heavy silence fell over the booth. "I’m sorry you didn't know," I said quietly, pulling my hands away from the table. "But setting up a cruel, petty test because your pride was bruised? That’s not love, Christian. That’s a transaction. I don't want to live in a relationship where every misunderstanding results in psychological warfare." "Slap me again," Christian urged, his voice breaking as he reached out and grabbed my wrists. "Hit me until you feel even. Just please don't walk away." The moment his skin touched mine, a vivid, sharp image slammed into the front of my brain. It wasn't Christian’s face. It was Jesse. Standing in the rain outside an office building, his coat soaked through, his dark eyes brimming with unshed tears. My breath caught. Was I truly that shallow? That incapable of choosing? I ripped my hands from Christian’s grip, mumbled an incoherent excuse, and fled the diner. I ran all the way back to my apartment. I tore through my closet, pulling down storage tubs until I found a dusty shoebox tucked beneath winter coats. Inside were three leather-bound Moleskine notebooks from the past four years. With trembling hands, I flipped open the earliest volume. Every single page was covered in my handwriting. Every single page was about Jesse Wyatt.