Snow Job by Tara Wyatt (best large ereader .txt) 📗

She’d fucked with him one too many times, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

6

Sebastian glanced over his shoulder, double checking that the hallway was empty before darting into Patrick’s office and closing the door. It was just shy of lunchtime, and although he’d spent the morning teaching another adult beginner class—this one not including Kayla, thank God—his mind had only been half-focused on teaching. The rest of his brain had been happily occupied coming up with how he was going to take Kayla down.

And then, while they’d been working through a series of drills, he’d remembered something she’d said to Patrick. Something about being the event coordinator for this retreat. So, if the retreat went badly, that’d be on her, wouldn’t it? Instead of messing with her directly, he messed with the retreat instead? What if he turned it into such an embarrassing disaster that Stammler had no choice but to blame Kayla?

It was the perfect solution, and the second he’d landed on it, the anger still bubbling inside him had settled into something smoother, more focused. Now he wasn’t just pissed. He was pissed with a plan, which felt so much better.

And so, here he was, an hour before lunch time, putting his plan into action. He sat down in front of Patrick’s computer, jabbing at the space bar to wake it up. He was greeted with the standard Blizzard Ridge employee login page, asking for Patrick’s password. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, thinking, his eyes darting over Patrick’s desk. When his gaze landed on a framed picture of Patrick and his beloved black lab, Groucho Barks, he grinned, typing “grouchobarks” into the password box.

Bingo.

Having spent nearly the past decade in a corporate environment, he was able to navigate through the employee files easily to find what he was looking for: a copy of the retreat’s itinerary. Once he had the document open, it didn’t take him long to start making subtle but important changes. Switching the time of key speeches and meetings, changing the room numbers of various presentations, misspelling the names of presenters. Once he was satisfied, he printed about fifty and then went back and made even more changes, then printed more, sowing chaos with just a few keystrokes and clicks. Everything would be totally disorganized, something Stammler absolutely hated. And he’d blame Kayla, since the retreat was her project, and Sebastian’s payback would be officially underway.

“What are you doing?” asked Lane from the doorway, her head cocked and her arms crossed over her chest. Crap, he’d been so absorbed in what he’d been doing, he hadn’t even heard the door open. “Does Patrick know you’re in here?”

“No. Come in and close the door,” he said, waving her inside as he spun in the chair and collected his first batch of print outs. With a wary look on her face, Lane stepped inside, gently closing the door behind her.

“So, you wanna fill me in here?” she asked, eyeing the stacks of itineraries currently on Patrick’s desk. Sebastian paused in his sorting long enough to look up and meet her gaze.

“Payback,” he said, gesturing to the piles of papers. “This is payback.”

“For…?”

He sighed and leaned back in Patrick’s chair, the frame creaking under his weight. “I used to work for Silver Stream Development, the company having their retreat here.”

“Okay. So?”

“So I got fired.”

“And?”

“The woman responsible for organizing the retreat came to Patrick behind my back this morning to complain about me working with the retreat and implied that I shouldn’t be working here, either. She played a role in getting me fired from Silver Stream, and she’s deliberately trying to screw up my situation here, too. It was over the line.”

“Ouch. That’s shitty.”

“Yeah. So.” He held up the fistful of papers. “Revenge.”

“Huh.” She leaned against the closed door, her arms once again crossed over her chest. “You wanna remind me which one of the twelve steps is revenge? Does it come before or after making amends?”

He froze. He’d only ever talked to Lane about his knee injury, never any of the other shit in his past. No, that was a topic he’d carefully avoided. “What…” He swallowed thickly, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. “I’m not an addict.” Which wasn’t really true, but the shame burning in his gut made the lie easier than the truth.

Lane rubbed her fingers over her mouth. “Listen. I saw something in you when you first started here. Something I recognized because I’ve dealt with it too.”

“Dealt with what?” He frowned, leaning forward.

She shrugged. “You and I aren’t that different. You blew out your knee, and I had to stop competing because I wrecked my back. I had to have major surgery, and while I was recovering, I got real friendly with my pain meds. Too friendly.”

Sebastian nodded slowly. If Lane saw him not as someone to be pitied, but as a peer who’d faced similar challenges, maybe he was okay with that. Maybe. “So what did you do?”

She shrugged again as though what she was saying were no big deal. “Got help. Went to some NA meetings. Went to therapy. Worked the steps in my own way. And I can’t say I remember revenge in there at all.”

“I’m not working the twelve steps because I’m not an addict.” And it was true. He wasn’t an alcoholic or dependent on drugs in the classic sense. If anything, his addiction was to risk and bad decisions. To things that made him feel alive until they made him feel like absolute shit. Things like gambling. He wasn’t addicted to a substance, but he was addicted to a behavior. A behavior he was a lot more likely to engage in with a few drinks in him.

She cocked her head, studying him. “Maybe not. But there’s something there. Sometimes, I get this sense that you’re walking on eggshells, man. Like all it would take is a good breeze to blow you over.”

Her words hit