The walk of shame.

That might be the next thing everyone expects to see from her. Only, Cobie is determined to turn the table around this time. Instead of a walk of shame, she's going to give them the walk of flame. Because she's on fire right now.

Just thirty minutes ago, she considered playing dumb by laughing at her stupidity with everyone else as if it wasn't a big deal. Everyone admires Luke after all! But then it would mean she admitted she had a crush on Luke publicly, and it would put her back to the same spot as almost a decade ago: a public joke.

After some thorough thoughts, Cobie has decided to fight for the remaining pride she has. People know what they know until new evidence comes into play and changes the whole game. She just needs to create the new false evidence. And soon, everyone won't be able to draw the line between the actual fact and the illusory fact. Yes, she's working on damage control now.

Cobie lets out a deep breath and releases it through her mouth when the elevator doors slide open, revealing the busy office floor. She peers at her battlefield. Her colleagues are now talking, typing, phoning, burying their faces in the computer screens, or just spacing out at their desks. None of them seems to notice her yet. With an optimistic smile plastered on her face, Cobie holds her head high and strides along the office aisle, ignoring people's gazes as they begin to catch her presence.

She keeps her eyes straight. A few more desks and she will be out of everyone's sight, hidden behind her cubicle walls, her sanctuary. It's when she sees the new guy from the marketing division lean on her cubicle and grin widely at her, making his plump cheeks look like a chipmunk stuffed with jumbo peanuts.

She stops short and smiles at him. "Mark."

"Cobie," he greets, the smirk never leaving his face. "Just wanted to check if you got my client's data ready."

"I thought you would need it tomorrow?"

"True. But I was just wondering if you'd have it by now."

"I barely started it. I've been occupied with other tasks."

"Oh right, you were occupied." Mark clicks his tongue.

When his smile grows even wider, Cobie is so close to smacking his face with the mouse pad on the desk next to her. Instead, she curls her fingers inwardly to make a fist and forces a smile. "It will be sent to your email tomorrow before lunch."

"I will be checking my email then."

She knows better than replying to his remark. Still keeping her smile, she nods to signal that the conversation is over, but to her surprise, the man stays rooted to his spot, wearing the same smirk. She raises one eyebrow. "Is there anything else you need from me?"

"No, not really." Mark prompts himself up from the cubicle wall. "Your hair looks gorgeous by the way."

"Thanks?"

"Must be hard maintaining beautiful silky hair like that."

She stares at his eyes, seizing him before shifting her eyes to his completely bald head. "You have no idea."

Mark quickly rubs his head, grinning once again as he walks away. Cobie rolls her eyes and marches to her desk, turning a deaf ear to the repressed giggling from other desks.

This, too, shall pass, Cobie.

The day goes slower than a snail's funeral. Cobie has been trying to get her mind back to work and finish everything that was put on hold yesterday —thanks to her boss, but her brain cells keep making an unwanted leap.

Apology emails have been sent to those who directly received the email last night. However, Bram will be up for her ass later when he's back from his leave. But Luke is a different story. He will be back from a meeting anytime soon, and Cobie needs to talk to him once he's available.

She's been glancing at his office and the elevator for the whole morning, but the man has not yet shown up. The anticipation is high, and the waiting is killing her. Needing a distraction to break the accumulated anxiety, Cobie clicks the red dot on the bottom of the screen, partly guilty that she's been ignoring BreadPitt since last night.

Hi.

Sup? You've been awfully quiet. Is everything okay?

Just peachy.

What's wrong?

Dealing with some shit at work.

😑 sorry to hear that

Me too. Sorry about your carpet too.

It's okay. Mom is trying to fix it. She knows what she's doing

Ah. Lucky :) Mother knows best.

And lucky it's almost lunchtime for you

No real lunch break for me today. Need to catch up with work soon. Thought I would bug you a bit.

You sound sad. Do you want to tell me what happened?

Cobie purses her lips, weighing if she wants to talk about it now. Could her day get even worse if she tells him? She shrugs and starts typing.

Someone read my (supposedly) message for you, took a screenshot of it, and then sent it to everyone. Now I'm becoming a laughing stock at work.

What message?

You haven't seen it yet. My dumb brain didn't notice that I was typing the answer to your question last night on the email body text for my boss.

Oh?

She copies her disastrous message and pastes it on the chatbox before hitting the "Send" button. Counting backward from ten to one, she drums her fingers on her desk while waiting for BreadPitt to read it. His message pops up again at the count of four.

OH!

Yep. OH. On that note, I gotta go back to work. Don't wanna stay up late again today.

Cobie has just closed the chatbox when she senses the sudden change in the work atmosphere. The buzzing from her surroundings is gradually ceasing, propelling her into an alert state. Without moving her head, she shifts her gaze, following everyone's line of sight.

Luke's tall figure comes into view as the man strides to his office. He's in his casual gray suit and a black dress shirt which matches the color of his pants, looking annoyingly delicious as usual. When Luke stops abruptly and turns his head in her direction, Cobie lowers her head, hiding behind her computer screen.

Covering her temple with her palm, she pretends to write something in her notebook, hoping Luke doesn't spot her. Despite her intention to talk to him, his sudden appearance makes her courage plummet to a non-existent state for some reason. Maybe she just needs a little more time.

"Evans!"

"Shit," she mumbles.

She swears that everyone stops breathing right now. The quietness is just freaking eerie. If someone from the security room is looking at the CCTV footage at this very moment, they must think that the camera has encountered a technical problem.

Slowly, Cobie lifts her head and meets her boss' eyes. "Yes?" she replies with a voice she can't recognize. Did she just squeak?

Luke smiles widely, waving his forefinger at her. "We got the spot. Pack your bag. We're leaving Friday morning."

"Huh? I beg your pardon?"

"We snagged a spot in Global Sports this Friday afternoon. We need to take an early flight to the venue..." Luke trails off when he notices the weirdness around him. Everyone freezes but their eyes are going back and forth between him and Cobie. "Is something wrong?" He raises his eyebrows as he sweeps the room with his eyes.

Like a mantra, his question brings those people back into life, and the shuffling noise returns, followed by people resuming their work. Still looking perplexed, Luke beckons Cobie to come to his office.

"What the hell's going on out there?" Luke asks once Cobie closes the door behind her.

"I might have an idea." She stays at her spot, fumbling with her own fingers. "But I need to talk to you first."

Luke closes his window shades to block the glaring sun before plopping down on his chair. Shifting his gaze back to her, his lips curl into a smile; a smile that wakes up the disobedient butterflies in her belly. "I think I know what it is about. Why don't you take a seat, Cobie."

If she wasn't this nervous right now, she would have been overanalyzing Luke calling her Cobie instead of Evans. Trudging to the chair in front of Luke's desk, she forces herself to move as normally as possible. If she needs to show the whole office that the message was just a misunderstanding, she has to convince Luke first.

"It's about your email last night, isn't it?"

"Yes." Cobie glances out of Luke's glass door, wondering if people can hear her from that distance. When she notices all eyes are on her, she curses inwardly.

"They won't be able to hear us unless you scream."

"Okay," she replies as she sits down on Luke's leather chair. "I have sent my apology email but it feels like I need to say it in person. I'm sorry for the lack of professionalism, Luke. As you might have guessed, it was just a stupid mistake. I was just too tired and didn't look carefully where I was typing. It wasn't supposed to be sent to you."

Luke leans backward, bringing his hands up and interlacing his fingers over his lips. "It was for that guy you were talking to online, right? The breadhead or something."

Cobie swallows the imaginary lump inside her throat. "Yes. And if it makes you feel better, everything I wrote is also not true. I'm just using my boss' figure, I mean you, to" — Cobie glances at Luke—"slow down the things with him. I just don't want him to know that I like him. I know this sounds like a stupid teenage drama, and I'm so, so sorry for the mess."

Luke's forefinger twitches. "You want to convince him you're not interested in him by saying you're having things for me?"

She nods, biting her lower lip. Unable to look at Luke's hazel eyes, she fixes her gaze on his desk calendar. "That sounds about right."

"Why?"

Cobie frowns, trying to understand where Luke is trying to go with his question. "I'm sorry. I don't understand your question."

"Why not just tell him whatever it is?"

Luke's question catches her off guard, prompting her to open and close her mouth but no words come out of it. Did he just ask her that? This isn't the part she was prepared herself for.

"Sorry. I think my question is a bit too personal. Just ignore it." Luke waves his hand in dismissal.

One thing she admires from Luke is despite being observant, he knows where the boundaries are. However, since the question has left his mouth, she will need to answer it nonetheless, to fix all plot holes in her make-up story.

"No, it's fine. We just started talking, so, I do think I need to take this slow if I want to make it work. I don't want to scare him off." Cobie is surprised with how fluent her lie is rolling off her tongue. "So, yeah. That's why. I told you it's stupid."

Luke doesn't reply right away. Instead, he keeps his gaze on her as if he's seeing through her, which makes it harder for Cobie to breathe. If he keeps doing this, she's afraid she will break and fess up to her lies voluntarily.

But no, she will not let it happen. At any cost.

To her relief, the man nods. "I don't get it, but okay." Luke glances at his door. "And do you know why they are acting like that? It's lunchtime and no one is leaving their desks. Actually, they are gawking at us right now."

"About that." She winces. "We...I'm in the middle of a situation right now. Someone took a screenshot of the message I sent you last night, and when I came here this morning, everyone knew about it."

"Someone did what?"

"Took a screen–"

"I heard you fine," Luke cuts her. "Do you know who?"

Cobie shakes her head. "No. I'm still trying to look at all the possible suspects, but people barely talk to me now. All they did the whole morning was stare at me while grinning like a Cheshire cat. I'm not sure why I'm telling you this because it's not your problem. I just..."

"Well, you're on my team. Your problem is my problem as long as it's related to work." Before Cobie can react, Luke continues, "Not that I appreciate the thing you did. Doing your personal thing during work should be avoided because of this exact reason. You were lucky it was me. Your career could be put at risk if you did this to our director, or worse, our clients."

This is the first time she receives a stern tone from Luke, and it makes her shrink a hundred times smaller in her seat, like an ant-man. "I'm really, really sorry. It won't happen again."

Luke nods. "I believe you. I've known you for more than two years; I know your true quality. This is just one of those everything-has-gone-wrong days. Right?"

"Yeah."

"I won't hold you here any longer, or none of us in this office will have lunch on time," Luke says, glancing at the people outside his room. "I'll see what I can do to help you fix the mess."

"You will?"

"Of course."

"Thank you, Luke." She nods and gets up from her seat.

"And don't forget we're leaving early on Friday. You might need to bring a couple of clothes in case we need to spend the night. Georgia will arrange all the necessities for the trip."

Cobie gulps. "Is it going to be just the two of us?" She's darn sure the corner of Luke's lips twitch as if he's smirking. But it's gone the second she blinks.

"No. Georgia is coming with us."

"Of course," she mutters under her breath. "I'll contact Georgia for the details."

"And Evans," he says, looking up at her with the look she can't decipher. "It's going to be okay. People will forget about this trivial thing, especially when they see that what you said in the email is not true."

Cobie nods and forces a smile. "That's exactly what they're going to see, yes. I'll prove them wrong."

"Good. Show them." Luke winks and it's enough to make Cobie's knees wobble. Did he say it with genuine intention or did he just challenge her?

Inwardly cursing at herself, she pivots on her heels and strides to the door. She doesn't have time to ponder now. The biggest task is awaiting her: how to not fall for her boss.

🔹🔹🔹