Rebecca and I had been working together for about a week. Every shift, we were crammed into the same sardine-can surveillance room, surrounded by flickering monitors and the hum of outdated equipment. I was the quiet one—just doing my job, counting the hours—but Rebecca? She wouldn’t shut up. And not about anything interesting. Just her lousy boyfriend.

At first, I tried to ignore it. Nodded at the right moments. Gave her the occasional grunt of acknowledgment. But she was relentless, dumping every frustration, every fight, every passive-aggressive text message onto me like I was her personal diary.

One night, I was running on fumes, and she was at it again, ranting about how he didn’t appreciate her, how he made her feel invisible. My patience snapped.

“Rebecca, shut up,” I said, my voice low but firm. “If you’re that unhappy, leave him. But bringing all that negative energy here? Not gonna work.”

Silence. For the first time since we’d started working together, she didn’t have a response. She just stared at me, lips parted like I’d short-circuited her brain. Then, without another word, she turned away and didn’t speak to me for three days.

Not that I minded. The silence was nice.

But on the fourth day, the weight of it must have been too much for her because she finally blurted out, “I don’t know what to do.”

I sighed—louder than I meant to—and she clamped her mouth shut, like she expected me to tell her to keep it to herself. But the truth was, I knew the feeling. I’d been through it with my ex-wife. The endless cycle of frustration, staying with someone even when you knew it was over.

I rubbed a hand down my face and looked at her. “I get it. I’ve been there. But hearing about him all day? It’s frustrating.”

She studied me for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”

Something shifted between us after that. Maybe it was because I stopped trying to block her out and actually started asking her questions. Maybe it was because she stopped seeing me as just a coworker and more as someone who understood her.

That night, I had her laughing. Not just chuckling—real, deep belly laughs that made her eyes shine.

“No guy’s ever actually cared about who I am as a person,” she said at one point, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe it. “They just want me for—” She trailed off, cheeks heating.

“For what?” I teased.

She rolled her eyes. “You know.”

Oh, I knew. I’d been pretending not to notice how her uniform hugged her in all the right places, how her lips looked when she bit them in frustration, how her body moved when she stretched after a long shift. But now that I’d broken through her walls, now that she was looking at me differently…

The next night, I had her on the table, forgetting she even had a boyfriend.

It started with a look—one of those long, lingering glances that lasted a second too long. Then she leaned in just a little when she handed me the clipboard. Then our fingers brushed, and she didn’t pull away.

I tested the waters, brushing my knuckles against hers as I reached for my radio. She shivered.

That was all the invitation I needed.

I stood up, closing the distance between us, backing her up until she was against the table. “You sure no guy’s ever cared about you?” I murmured, my hands bracing on either side of her, trapping her in.

She swallowed hard. “Not like this.”

My lips hovered over hers, waiting. Letting her make the next move. And when she surged forward, kissing me like she’d been starving for it, I let my hands wander, gripping her waist, lifting her onto the table.

Her breath hitched as I pressed between her legs, as my hands slid beneath her uniform shirt, fingers mapping out every soft, heated inch of her skin.

“I shouldn’t—” she started, but the words died in her throat when I tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet my eyes.

“Then stop me,” I challenged.

She didn’t.

Instead, she wrapped her legs around me and pulled me closer, nails digging into my shoulders, breathy little moans slipping past her lips as I kissed my way down her neck, as I teased and tormented, as I made her forget every complaint, every fight, every bad memory tied to the man who didn’t appreciate her.

For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t thinking about him.

She was thinking about me.

And I was going to make damn sure she never forgot.