My Younger Boss Still Wants In

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The new CEO was making his rounds. I stood with a group of young women in the hallway, waiting to greet him.

He stopped directly in front of me, leaning in just a fraction.

I want in.

His voice was a low, gravelly murmur. My face instantly burned.

Years ago, on a narrow mattress in the back of a rented Airstream, holding onto me with scalding skin and ragged breaths, those were the exact words he used to beg me with.

Every eye in the corridor snapped toward us.

I froze, the air leaving my lungs.

The tall, broad-shouldered man standing before me merely looked past my face, his gaze flat as he gestured to the space behind me.

"Excuse me. Do you mind?"

Reality crashed back down. I realized I was blocking half the doorway to the executive suite. Heat flooded my cheeks, and I quickly took two steps back.

Roman Wyattwait, no, just Romangave me a polite, curt nod. His expression was completely unreadable as he strode into the Chairmans office.

I retreated to the breakroom and aggressively brewed a cup of black coffee.

Did he recognize me? Or not?

And those words...

Deliberate, or a terrifying coincidence?

I turned my head and caught my reflection in the glass cabinet doors.

Staring back at me was the blurry, unremarkable outline of a thirty-three-year-old woman. A sharp, practical bob. Minimal, lifeless makeup. Thick black-rimmed glasses. Because Id been pulled away while auditing expense reports, I was still wearing a pair of ugly, frayed sleeve protectors over my cardigan.

I looked absolutely nothing like the wild, sun-kissed girl who had driven down a desert highway five years ago.

We were two completely entirely different people.

...It was a coincidence.

I let out a shaky breath, settling on that conclusion.

When I returned to the Finance department, my two youngest subordinates were practically vibrating with gossip about the new boss.

"Hes ridiculously gorgeous. If you didn't know better, you'd think he was an A-list actor! If I knew the new CEO looked like that, I wouldn't have stressed about the buyout at all."

"I heard hes only twenty-eight. Built his own tech startup, sold it, and now hes taking over his family's corporate empire. Its literally a romance novel come to life. Im updating my Instagram story right now."

"Oh my god, calm down..."

"Hey, if Maddiethe most strictly-business, stone-faced finance director alivecan be so starstruck she literally blocks his path in the hallway, why can't I? Ow, why did you kick me"

I walked to my desk, my face an emotionless mask.

"Keep the gossip off company time, ladies."

They fell silent instantly, their heads ducking behind their monitors.

The sharp clack-clack of heels echoed from the hallway, growing louder. Viola marched into the room. As always, the marketing assistant was perfectly contoured, poured into a skin-tight tailored suit.

She slammed a stack of receipts onto one of the junior accountants' desks.

"Why were the Marketing department's expense reports rejected?"

The recent grad flinched, stammering, "V-Viola, this doesn't comply with the new corporate policy. Anything exceeding the per diem by fifty percent requires the General Manager's signature"

Viola cut her off with an impatient eye roll. "Our department is out there on the front lines, fighting for market share. You guys just sit comfortably in your cubicles trying to find ways to drag us down, is that it?"

I looked up slowly. My voice was ice.

"Viola. The new expense protocols were distributed company-wide a month ago. We even held a mandatory training session. If you don't understand it, go back and read the manual. If you have a problem with it, take it up with executive leadership. Do you think raising your voice in my department makes you look competent?"

Viola turned to me. She blinked slowly, feigning a look of sudden realization.

"Maddie. You wouldn't happen to be... letting your personal grudges affect your professional judgment, would you?"

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and met her stare head-on.

"And what personal grudge would that be, exactly?"

She let out a breathy, condescending little laugh.

"Well. I suppose Cameron will just have to come down here and explain it to you himself. After all, you two used to be married."

Cameron didn't take long to arrive.

Viola immediately dropped her voice, calling him "Boss," before biting her lower lip and staring at her shoes. She played the part of the bullied, innocent victim to perfection.

"There's no need to make things difficult for my girls, Maddie," Cameron said. He frowned slightly, his tone as casual as if we were discussing the weather.

Ah. I knew this scene well.

Before I divorced Cameron, he had said similar things to me more times than I could count.

We were married for three years. When he was promoted to VP of Sales, the boundaries between him and his assistant, Viola, became incredibly blurred.

I had asked him to transfer her.

He thought I was being archaic and ridiculous.

"You sit in a sterile office all day," he had argued. "Sales is out there entertaining clients. We look out for each other. You don't have to be so threatened by a twenty-something girl."

Then came the night he got too drunk at a client dinner. I drove to pick him up. Viola was in the backseat, "taking care" of him. On the ride back, she suddenly let out a sharp, breathless "Ah." When she got out of the car, I saw her short skirt had ridden dangerously high, exposing a flash of pale, bare thigh.

I am a low-energy person.

I didn't have the energy to play detective, and I certainly didn't have the energy to scream and shout. I simply handed him divorce papers.

Cameron had been dripping with sarcasm.

"Maddie, if this is some manipulative tactic to get me to beg, you've miscalculated. I don't respond to threats."

"You're a divorced woman in her thirties. You're rigid, you're boring. If you can find a man who has even half my credentials, I'll get on my knees at the front door of this building and grovel."

The divorce was finalized quickly.

Unfortunately, we still worked for the same conglomerate. I had to see him every day.

He and Viola moved as a unit. He would purposely dote on her in front of me, playing the white knight at every opportunity. His excuse? "Shes my team. Of course I protect my own."

I knew people in the office whispered about me. They marveled at my tolerance. They wondered why I didn't just quit.

If this were five years ago, I would have. I would have felt too humiliated, too suffocated, and I would have run away.

But I was thirty-three now.

Age had gifted me a certain kind of grounded resilience. I had bled to climb the ranks to Director of Finance. Why the hell should I be the one to leave?

They were the ones who should be embarrassed. Not me.

Now, Cameron tilted his head, that familiar mocking smile playing on his lips.

"Whatever issues we have between us, dragging my innocent staff into it is just petty. Don't you think?"

I kept my face perfectly blank. "Enforcing company policy is being petty? The entire financial structure of this corporation was designed just to bully your assistant? Cameron, are you losing your grip on reality?"

He stared at me for a few seconds, then chuckled.

"Fine. We'll let the new CEO make the call at tomorrow's executive meeting. But Maddie..." He lowered his voice, dropping it into a register that was dripping with arrogant certainty. "Trying to use this kind of pathetic stunt to get my attention? Honestly, it's beneath you."

The next day. The executive board meeting.

When Roman walked into the conference room, the collective posture of every person at the table straightened.

I observed him from safely behind my thick lenses.

His posture was immaculate, his features sharp and striking. As he sat down with fluid grace, his unbuttoned suit jacket brushed against the mahogany table, revealing the crisp, subtle folds of his white dress shirt near his waist.

The lost, broken boy I once knew had grown into a dangerously composed man.

He listened to Cameron deliver the Sales report. He rested one hand lazily on the table, nodding occasionally, his expression completely neutral.

Then, without warning.

He turned his head and looked directly at me.

I didn't have time to look away. My heart skipped a violent beat.

But it seemed to be just a casual glance. He looked away just as quickly.

"Regarding this expense report from Marketing," Roman said. His voice wasn't loud, but the room instantly fell dead silent. "We'll make a one-time exception. Approved."

Across the table, Viola shot me a triumphant, venomous smirk.

After the meeting, Cameron stopped me in the hall, a smug smile plastered across his face.

"Policies are rigid, but people are flexible. You've lived this long, yet you're still so stubbornly inflexible. Haven't you suffered enough for that yet?"

I clutched my files against my chest. "Cameron. Me rejecting you was standard procedure. The CEO making a special exception is also standard procedure. As a VP, is that really so hard for your brain to process?"

He scoffed. "Maddie, you and I both know..."

"Director."

A voice cut through the air behind us.

Roman stood in the middle of the hallway, hands in his pockets, his face devoid of any excess emotion.

"My office. Now."

My stomach tightened.

Inside the CEOs office, a massive, imposing desk separated me from Roman.

"The transition to the new financial systems will put the most pressure on your department. Friction is inevitable, but you need to manage your boundaries."

His tone was entirely flat, the pure, sterile cadence of a superior speaking to a subordinate. He outlined a few more directives, his pacing steady, his logic flawless. He radiated an aura of untouchable distanceso completely different from the young man in my memories who always spoke to me with a rough, needy edge.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"Understood, sir."

His secretary came in to drop off coffee. Roman looked down, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out a slim, midnight-blue velvet box. He slid it across the desk toward me.

I didn't move.

The secretary smiled. "It's a welcome gift from the CEO to all the department heads, Maddie. An engraved fountain pen. You're the last one to receive yours."

Roman took a sip of his coffee. His long, pale fingers tapped once against the velvet box.

"Do you want it?"

He murmured the words low.

I don't know if it was because he had just taken a sip of hot coffee, but the words came out slightly breathy, carrying the damp heat of his mouth.

Wet.

A violent, familiar shiver traced its way down my spine.

Suddenly, my mouth felt entirely dry.

"Do you want it?"

"Tell me you want it, Roxy."

Five years ago. A blistering highway stretching across the Mojave Desert.

My brief, six-month memory of Roman was entirely consumed by the absolute entanglement of our bodies.

I had always been the quintessential good girl. My father was a high school teacher; my mother taught elementary school. In everyone's eyes, I was obedient, quiet, low-maintenance. The perfect daughter.

But only I knew the truth.

I was a coward. I had no opinions of my own. I echoed whatever people wanted to hear. I was terrified of conflict, terrified of disappointing anyone, terrified of stepping out of line.

I was slowly suffocating to death. I hated myself more with every passing day.

So, at twenty-eight, I made the first rebellious decision of my entire life.

I quit my soul-crushing corporate job. I traded my sensible haircut for wild, unkempt waves. I ditched my heavy prescription glasses for contacts. I bought cheap floral sundresses that showed too much skin.

I rented a vintage Airstream and drove off into the American Southwest, completely alone.

And on an endless stretch of red-dirt highway, I picked up Roman.

He was twenty-three then. He had wiped out on his motorcycle, sitting alone in the dirt of nowhere, Nevada. He looked ragged, defeated, with a heavy, dark storm brewing in his eyes.

Like a trapped, wounded animal.

I pulled over, dragged my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose, and flashed him a brilliant smile.

"Hey. Need a ride? I can get you to the next town."

He gave me a silent, stony rejection. He forced himself up, limping as he tried to push his busted bike down the shoulder of the road.

I drove off.

But not even ten miles later, I turned around.

He still ignored me.

I drove at a crawl behind him, alternating between coaxing and teasing.

"Come on, kid. I'm not a serial killer. I'm just trying to get my good karma in for the day."

"Looks like a storm's rolling in. You're going to freeze out here."

"I heard there are skinwalkers in this desert..."

He stopped abruptly. He turned his head to glare at me, his face deadpan.

"You never shut up, do you?"

"Is that a yes?" I smiled until my eyes crinkled.

He got in.

I knew he was probably walking through the darkest chapter of his life, but I didn't ask a single question. Anyone who comes out to the desert alone is running from something.

I dragged him out of the van during a windstorm, making him spread his arms and scream into the gale. I pulled him down beside me to lie on the hood of the Airstream under a canopy of violent stars, talking absolute nonsense until dawn. We spent an entire afternoon helping a local rancher look for a lost calf. I cooked him half-burnt chicken in the cramped little kitchenette.

Out there, under a sky that demanded nothing of me, I naturally morphed into the exact opposite of "Maddie."

I was free. Passionate. Fearless.

I was "Roxy." A fun, slightly feral older woman.

I was always smiling brightly, my voice always loud and uninhibited.

Partly to save him. Partly to save myself.

Slowly, the storm in Roman's eyes cleared. His smiles became sharper, more real. The way he looked at me shifted from cold indifference to a focus so intense it burned.

I discovered that beneath his brooding exterior was an incredibly fierce, resilient, deeply arrogant young man.

Roman was my mirror opposite.

On nights illuminated by millions of stars, in the dead silence of the desert, we tangled together on that narrow camper bed.

It happened so naturally. Like sleeping when you're tired, like drinking water when you're dying of thirst.

The most primal desires melding into one under the raw power of nature.

There was no age gap. No corporate titles. No pasts.

Just scalding skin. Heavy, desperate breathing.

All the rules of society were crushed to dust. Our hunger was magnified to infinity. Our joy was magnified to infinity.

We drowned in it, unable to pull ourselves out. Like two starving children who had just discovered sugar, desperately tasting, constantly demanding more.

He loved to trail his index and middle fingers slowly across my skin, tracing lines until he stopped at a very specific place, his voice dropping into a ragged, ruined gravel.

"I want in, Roxy."

"Do you want it?"

"Can you take one more? Let's find out..."

That road trip lasted six months. We were drifters, stopping wherever the wind took us.

One evening, as the sun set over the canyons, painting the world in soft, bruised purples, we sat by the window eating cheap takeout.

"Wait for me, Roxy. Give me one year. Let me go back, fix the mess with my family, and I'll come find you in your city. Okay?"

His expression was terrifyingly serious.

"No way," I laughed it off, waving my fork.

"Why not?"

"I'm five years older than you, kid. I don't have time to wait around. Besides, younger guys and older women never work out. By the time I've got gray hair, you'll still be in your prime, and I'll turn into some paranoid, bitter housewife. Hard pass."

I was talking absolute nonsense, just like I had a hundred times before.

But he froze. He looked completely devastated.

My chest tightened. I relented, giving him a soft smile.

"Alright, humor me. What exactly do you like about me?"

He thought about it for a moment, then spoke with absolute reverence.

"I like that you're so wild. You're so free. You're completely fearless. You live exactly how you want to."

I lowered my eyes and shoved a piece of food into my mouth.

A few days later, in a dusty border town, I left a note on the counter.

And I ran.

The woman he saw in his eyes... wasn't me.

We were just two passing storms that happened to collide on a lonely highway, briefly tangling together under the right temperature, the right atmospheric pressure.

Eventually, the winds had to blow in different directions.

I returned to Chicago. I put my glasses back on. I cut my wild hair. I bought safe, neutral cardigans.

I went back to being the Maddie everyone expected me to be.

I spent a long time agonizing over whether he had recognized me.

Five years of zero contact. A brief six-month fling.

When I started that road trip, determined to sever ties with my old life, I used a fake name from day one. When I rented the Airstream, the guy at the lot offered me an "employee discount" if I paid him in cash and let him rent it under his name. I was lazy, so I agreed.

Two years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and shattered my nose, requiring minor reconstructive surgery. Even old college friends barely recognized me after that.

In short: by looks, by aura, by status, by name... I was a fundamentally different species from the girl he knew five years ago.

He couldn't have recognized me.

As for those vague, terrifying phrases he used. If I looked at them objectively, they were perfectly normal corporate speak.

I was just projecting.

...And it seemed my logic was sound.

Over the next few weeks, everything was perfectly normal.

I gave Roman my routine financial reports. He would occasionally call me up to his office to clarify a budget detail.

My interactions with him were strictly contained within the absolute, rational boundaries of a CEO and his Director of Finance. Strictly business. Polite. Cold.

Slowly, I relaxed into this new reality.

During meetings, I could argue a data point with him without my heart hammering in my chest. When others cracked jokes, I could even manage a relaxed, professional smile.

I thought to myself: That burning, fleeting road trip was just an anomaly outside of our real lives.

Like a desert tornado. Violent and chaotic when it touches down, but dissipating into thin air, leaving no trace it ever existed.

One morning, I walked into the Finance department to find a young woman standing by the desks.

Long, pin-straight black hair. A white eyelet dress. She was the picture of pure, untouched innocence.

She offered a polite, sweet smile.

"Hi, Maddie. I'm Harper. I'll be interning here for a while. I just wanted to come over and introduce myself."

I gave her a professional nod. She smiled shyly and walked away.

My two juniors immediately swarmed me, desperate to spill the tea.

"Maddie, whatever you do, do not get on her bad side! We just asked her how she got the internship, and she said her brother got it for her. And her brother is the CEO! Shes an orphan his family took in when she was little."

"Now it makes sense why the CEO left the corporate headquarters in New York to come all the way to the Chicago branch! Hes just here to babysit his little sister and clear the path for her!"

"Oh my god, I am so weak for the 'adopted siblings' trope. And honestly, they look so good together!"

"Right?! I ship it so hard..."

Their voices dropped to frantic whispers.

I frowned, looking down at my sleeve. My new cardigan had somehow picked up a smudge of red ink near the elbow.

I sighed, opened my drawer, and pulled out those ugly, frayed sleeve protectors. I slipped them on.

Later that morning, Roman called me up to his office.

Harper was there again.

She was sitting curled up on his leather sofa, sipping a green juice, chatting with him in a soft, melodic voice. The sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows hit her perfectly, highlighting her vibrant, youthful energy.

Roman waved me over.

After formally introducing Harpers background, he leaned back in his chair. "She has two options for her rotation: Sales or Finance. Considering the toxic drinking culture in Sales, I'd prefer she join your team."

I listened carefully, trying to read between the lines. Was he asking me to actually mentor her, or just rubber-stamp a nepotism hire?

"What do you think?"

He paused. Then, he looked up, his dark eyes locking onto mine.

"Can your department fit one more in?"