The CEO's $5 Love Letter

Sebastian Vaughn scolds me harder than anyone else at work. Eight years ago, he wrote me a love letter and never sent it.

My cold, impossible boss. And once, a long time ago, the boy who shared my desk in high school.

I only found out because my little sister spent five dollars at a school fundraiser and came home waving a yellowed envelope with my name on the front.

To Summer.

His handwriting. I'd know it anywhere.

Then the phone rang. A kid on the other end, crying so hard he could barely get the words out.

"My uncle's gonna kill me," he sobbed. "I'll give you a hundred bucks. Just give the letter back, please."

Chapter 1

An intern fumbled a deliverable, and the whole team took the hit.

As team lead, I took it hardest.

By the time I walked out of Sebastian's office, the intern who'd made the mistake was blinking back tears.

"Summer, I'm so sorry. I dragged you into this."

I looked at the bruise-dark shadows under her eyes. We'd all been pulling late nights this week. She hadn't slept either.

I waved it off. "Don't worry about it. I'm used to getting chewed out. Doesn't even sting."

"Is that so?"

Low. Male. Right behind me.

The intern flinched like she'd been caught with her hand in a register.

I stiffened too, and turned. Sebastian had opened his office door and stood there, one brow tipped down, watching me.

A face carved out of ice. Honestly, just looking at it made me want to pick a fight.

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile. "No."

He held my eyes for a beat. Then he shut the door.

Later, refilling my water, I caught the interns whispering.

"He's so harsh with Director Hale."

"She's got nerves of steel. I would not survive that."

"You know they went to high school together?"

"Seriously? He tears into an old classmate like that? The man's a monster."

I shrugged.

Couldn't argue with it.

Sebastian Vaughn was, in fact, a monster.

And we weren't just old classmates. We'd shared a desk for three straight years. He still wouldn't give me an inch. Less than an inch. He saved his worst for me.

I was about to walk off when their voices dropped.

"Oh, did you hear he's engaged?"

"I saw her drop him off a while back. The fiance."

"Him? Mr. Vaughn has a fiance?"

My feet stopped.

My fingers curled around the cup before I told them to.

I looked down the hall to that corner office, and for no reason I could name, something in my chest went heavy and cold.

A month of grinding later, the project finally broke through, and the company gave us five days off. The interns almost cried with relief.

I passed on the group dinner, packed a bag, and drove home.

Six months since I'd last made the drive. Lucky for me, home sat just over a hundred miles from the city. Four hours, if the roads were kind.

It was deep into the night when I pulled in.

Showing up out of nowhere gave my mom a happy little fright. She hurried off to make up my bed. My dad went to fix me a midnight snack, humming the whole way.

I set down my bag and eased open the door to the small room off the hall.

By the light spilling from the living room, I found a little girl burrowed under the covers, sound asleep, her face soft and easy.

Sadie. My parents' happy accident, born back when I was still in high school.

I hadn't known what to do with a sister that small at first.

But she'd grown into something impossible not to love: my mom's patience, my dad's quick mind, all of it folded into one small kid who slept like the world had never once done her wrong.

Chapter 2

She was also clingy as anything. Whatever good thing came her way, I was the first person she thought of.

Early the next morning, I surfaced from sleep to a small weight at the edge of my bed. I cracked my eyes open. Sadie, chin on the mattress, watching me without a single blink.

"You're home!"

"I am." I shut my eyes again. "Be good. Let your big sister sleep a little longer."

"Okay. I'm going to school. I'll bring you a present when I get back!"

I mumbled something back.

She tiptoed out and pulled the door shut behind her, quiet and careful.

Thoughtful little thing. And apparently flush enough with allowance to be buying me presents now. I'll admit it. I was a little curious.

It was almost eleven by the time I got up. Dad had already picked Sadie up from school. Our parents asked me to keep an eye on her and left for the grocery store.

The second they were gone, Sadie dug something out of her backpack and leaned in close, all mystery.

"Guess what I got you?"

How was I supposed to guess?

I was reaching for some random answer when she cracked first and pushed an envelope into my face.

"Look, it's got your name on it!"

I blinked and took it.

The paper had gone yellow. Years old, by the look of it.

On the front, one line of careful ink.

To Summer.

Such an uncommon name. What were the odds someone else had it too?

Sadie was already off and running. "So there was a fundraiser at school today. We bring in old stuff we don't use and everybody buys it and the money goes to charity. My deskmate brought a whole pile, old books and old pens, and I found this letter tucked inside one of the books, so I bought it. Five whole dollars."

She beamed up at me, fishing for praise. "Do you like it, Summer?"

My first thought was that it had to be a fluke.

Growing up, I was never the pretty one. Thick glasses, quiet, closed off. When people talked to me, I never knew what to say back.

So no boy had ever handed me a love letter. Not once.

I turned the envelope over in my hands, at a loss.

Sadie, naturally, kept pushing. "Open it, open it!"

"I don't think we should." It was someone's private letter. A love letter, no less.

"But I worked so hard to find it. It cost me a whole week's allowance."

Kids have zero patience. She plucked it back out of my hands, tore it open in two seconds flat, and pressed it into my palm.

"Read it to me. My friend says it came out of his uncle's treasure box. It's all good stuff in there."

I opened my mouth to say no.

Then my eyes snagged on the signature at the bottom of the page.

Neat, elegant strokes. Sebastian Vaughn.

The name went off in my skull like a struck match.

I sat frozen for a few seconds before my gaze crawled up to the first line.

Summer, this is our third year sharing a desk

"Come on, read it!" Sadie tugged my sleeve. "I want to hear it too!"

Chapter 3

I finally got rid of Sadie with the promise of a snack, then bolted into my room and shoved the window open, standing in the cold until my face stopped burning.

It didn't help.

I looked at the letter again.

There was no doubt in my mind. Sebastian Vaughn had written this.

My own handwriting in high school was pure chicken scratch. My English teacher finally gave up and handed me a stack of Sebastian's assignments to copy, a whole semester of penmanship drills off his neat, even letters.

I could pick that handwriting out of a house fire.

But why? Why would Sebastian Vaughn, of all people, have had a crush on me back then?

My mind drifted, all the way back to the first day of freshman year. The first time I ever saw him.

I'd come alone from a small town to the city, to start high school at Northgate.

I'd packed my whole life into a couple of garbage bags, the fat, overstuffed kind, one of everything crammed inside.

By the time I reached the school gates my arms had given out, so I just dragged them along the ground.

I'd overestimated the bags.

Under all that friction, one of them split wide open.

I walked a long way before the weight felt wrong. I turned around and found a trail of my belongings scattered down the sidewalk behind me.

Books. Pens. Toiletries. My lunchbox.

Everyone was looking. The laughter kept coming.

"Oh my god, the country came to town."

"Nice bags. Real classy."

Face burning, I crouched and started working my way back up the trail, gathering it all.

I hadn't gotten far when I ran straight into a boy coming the other way.

Backpack over one shoulder. Good-looking. Tall.

He had an armful of my things. "Got the ones up ahead," he said, flat and even.

His eyes went past my shoulder to the busted bag on the ground. "You have another bag?"

I shook my head, barely able to look at him.

He thought about it, pulled a few books out of his backpack, and held the backpack out to me.

"Use this for now."

I took the boy's black backpack without understanding any of it and looked up, lost. "How do I get it back to you?"

He nodded at the books I'd just picked up. "You're a freshman in Homeroom 3 too, aren't you?"

I blinked and looked down at his books on instinct.

His name was written across the covers, along with his homeroom.

Homeroom 3. Sebastian Vaughn.

If we're being honest, I fell first.

It just never went anywhere. For a hundred reasons, that little crush died quietly on the vine.

After college, I took an internship at some no-name company, and of all the people in the world, I ran into him again.

That was when it hit me that the no-name company was his.

See, that's the thing about the distance between two people. It only ever grows.

I was still figuring out how to feed myself. Sebastian had already built a company and climbed clean out of the world we started in.

So this letter. Why did it exist at all?

I turned it over and over in my head and came up with nothing.

Did that mean Sebastian might still...

My pulse picked up before I could stop it. But before I could follow the thought anywhere, the water-cooler gossip came back to me.

Sebastian probably had a fiance now.

So this letter, real or not, could only ever be past tense.

I was still sitting with that when Sadie's voice came through the door, hot with outrage.

"Rowan! You're a liar. I'm never playing with you again!"

I pushed the door open. Sadie had her kids' smartwatch cupped in both hands, mid-call.

The kid on the other end, one of her classmates, took one listen and burst into tears.

"Please, I'm begging you, give the letter back! My uncle came home out of nowhere today and found out I went through his stuff. He chewed me out so bad. I'll pay you a hundred bucks. No, I'll give you all my holiday money, every dollar, just give it back, okay?"

Maybe it was how hard he was crying.

Chapter 4

Sadie's lip pushed out, and for a second she didn't say anything.

She wavered for a long time while the kid kept pleading.

"Fine. I'll go ask my sister." She looked genuinely troubled. "But it's the present I gave her."

"Thank you so much!" The relief in his voice was instant. Then, out of nowhere: "Oh, my uncle's probably almost at your place. He asked for your address, left like half an hour ago. Just give him the letter."

I jolted and shot out of my room. I grabbed Sadie's watch. "Hey, buddy. What's your uncle's name?"

The kid stammered. "It's... it's Sebastian Vaughn."

Ding-dong.

The doorbell, at the exact same second.

I froze. Then I pressed up to the peephole and took one look.

Sebastian stood outside, waiting patiently. Casual clothes. His hair not slicked back into its usual perfect order. He looked softer, somehow. Almost approachable.

Not that it mattered. What mattered was that if I opened this door, the two of us would combust with awkwardness, and then how in the world would we work in the same building ever again?

Sadie and I locked eyes. She opened her mouth, and I clapped my hand over it.

I tossed the watch onto the bed, its little screen still lit, and crouched to her level.

"Listen to me. You're going to answer the door. Don't tell him I'm home. And don't tell him who your sister is."

I darted back into the room, tucked the letter into its envelope until it looked untouched, and pushed it into her hands. "Give it back to him and shut the door. Go."

Manners could wait.

Sadie nodded, waited for me to duck out of sight, then ran to open the door.

Sebastian opened his mouth to say something and found no one at eye level. He paused, looked down, and found a little girl holding an envelope up at him.

"Hi. Are you Rowan's uncle? This is yours. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to take your stuff."

Her face crumpled into pure, wronged innocence. Whatever had been knotted in his brow smoothed out.

"It's alright. Rowan sold it to you. That's on him." He glanced at the envelope. "Did you open it?"

The tear along the flap was pretty obvious.

Sadie's eyes darted. "I'm sorry, mister. I got really curious so I peeked. But I can't read that many big words yet, so I didn't get it."

Sebastian huffed a small laugh and let it go. He handed her some cash. "Late holiday money. Work hard in school."

He didn't linger. He was gone in under a minute.

When the door clicked shut, I came out of hiding. Sadie flashed me an OK with her fingers.

"Mission accomplished!"

The last day of my break ran out, and I drove back to the city.

I was sorting through everything for the next morning's meeting when I remembered I'd left an important file at the office. There was data I needed to check against it, and doing it in the morning would be cutting it fatally close.

I hesitated maybe three seconds, then grabbed my keys and headed down.

My apartment wasn't far from the office. Fifteen minutes by car.

It was a twenty-floor tower, and our company had the top floor. I stood at the base of it and looked up, and something made me stop.

The top floor lights were on.

Terry, the night guard, came around from his patrol and spotted me. "Who's there?"

"It's me, Terry."

"Oh, hey." He smiled. I'd worked here for years. The guards all knew my face by now.

"Kind of late," I said. "Somebody's still up on the top floor?"

Chapter 5

Terry looked up. "Just came down from there myself. It's Mr. Vaughn."

He clicked his tongue. "Been up there since this morning. Hasn't stopped once. Man's a machine."

I went up, grabbed the file, and was tiptoeing back out when the light spilling from the office at the far end caught my eye.

I thought about it. Then I turned around and went that way.

I was about to knock when I saw, through the half-open blinds, what was going on inside.

My hand stopped in the air.

Sebastian was stretched out on the black leather couch, long legs drawn up a little. Still in that crisp white shirt, except now the tie hung loose around his neck, and at some point the top two buttons had come undone, showing a clean line of collarbone.

I stood there a second, then eased the door open, terrified of waking him.

His brow was drawn even now. No peace, even in sleep.

Come to think of it, he always looked like that. Those sharp, good eyes never quite let go.

But I remembered a time Sebastian let something gentle show.

It was the spring of junior year. We'd been deskmates a year by then. He handled the math homework, I handled bio.

One afternoon the teacher sent us down to the copy shop by the front gate to pick up a set of exam packets. I'd barely stepped outside when I ran into my grandma, who'd come all that way to see me.

She lit up. "Summer! I was standing here trying to figure out how to get in!"

They didn't let outsiders onto campus. She'd ridden the bus in from our little town, transfer after transfer, and spotted me the second she reached the gate.

She caught my hand and started in on a dozen things at once.

Sebastian waited for me a few steps off.

"Summer," Grandma said, "those cornbread pieces I had you bring in for your classmates last week. Did you bring them? Did they like them?"

I smiled. "They loved them. Said you've got a real gift."

"Oh, good." Her whole face folded into the smile.

I'd lied.

I'd eaten every piece myself. I split them with my roommates at first, until I caught them dropping the whole batch in the trash.

"No telling how clean that kitchen even was. You'll make yourself sick."

I didn't want my grandma's work thrown out like garbage. And fifteen and proud, I had my own reasons too.

So the rest of it, I finished alone.

I told Grandma to wait by the print shop. I'd grab the papers and take her to lunch. But something was off with the bio set, and I had to go track down the teacher.

When I came back out, Sebastian was at the door, keeping my grandma company.

I heard her ask him, "Did Summer give you some of the cornbread?"

Sebastian paused. Then he smiled. "She did. It was really good."

That lit her up all over again. She fished a small bag out of the one already in her hand, her eyes full of hope. "I've got more right here. Want a piece?"

Older folks are like that. They save what they think is best for the young ones. To my grandma, the cornbread she made with her own hands was the finest thing she had to offer, the one thing her granddaughter could carry in and share with friends.

I watched Sebastian, nervous.

He reached out, took the piece, and ate it without a flicker of hesitation.

"Thank you, ma'am."

His lashes were long. The sun laid a soft shadow under his eyes, and for once those sharp features went quiet and warm.

I forgot how to move.

Chapter 6

I heard him tell her I was a good student. Hardworking. Kind. That I had a lot of friends.

Grandma was so happy that day.

And that was the day it hit me. I think I... might have a thing for him.

A crush is a private kind of chaos.

I started tracking Sebastian's every move. I copied the little things he did when he was thinking. I copied his handwriting. An accidental brush of a hand between classes could set my pulse going.

That was how it went. Me, quietly hoarding every small, precious second.

The summer before senior year, I decided I was going to tell him.

Days before I could work up the nerve, the whispers started. About Sebastian. About what went on inside his house.

"I heard his mom and his sister got beaten right out of the house. And his dad? Hauled off to jail a couple years back. Drunk, throwing punches in the street