Chapter 20 Caleb
Caleb
Everything is off in this office. There is so much tension, and Adrian is being more of a recluse than ever, hiding away in his office and sending stupid, nitpicky emails about everything to everyone.
And apparently, despite being his partner and equal owner, I’m getting them, too.
I stare at the most recent one pulled up on my screen, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I call out, not hiding my annoyance.
Adrian steps into my office and closes the door behind him. “We need those projections by the end of the evening, and the software keeps glitching. How do we fix that?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know.” I turn my chair to him. “Maybe we should consult with IT, like I suggested before.”
He clenches his jaw and I can tell he’s on the verge of saying something, but instead, he just shakes his head. “IT doesn’t know the software as well as you do. I’d prefer you be the one who does it.”
My shoulders fall. “I don’t have time to handle everything for the 32 million dollar Apex expansion and handle the stupid fucking software, Adrian. You know that.” My tone is clipped and he raises his brows at me.
“What’s your deal?” he demands, folding his arms across his chest. “You’re never in this kind of mood.”
Yeah, and I’ve never been so caught up over one of our assistants, either.
“Sorry,” I manage to mutter. “There’s just a lot going on. Plus, my mom’s been bugging me to come and see her. It’s been a while. And she doesn’t have anyone else.”
Adrian’s stone-cold expression suddenly softens. He’s one of the few people who know I grew up with just my mom. “If you need to take time off, you know you can.”
I shift uncomfortably in my chair. “She knows I work a lot and it’s hard for me to get home to see her. I keep telling her to move to the city, but she hates the traffic.”
Adrian chuckles. “She’s not the only one. I hate it as well. Maybe someday I’ll move out of the city.”
“Ha,” I snort. “Yeah, right.” I lean back in my chair. “What’s going on with you by the way? You’ve been in your head. I can tell.”
He falls into silence, his lips pursing. “Yeah, it’s just something I have to get over. I got involved with something I shouldn’t have.”
I raise my brows. “That development company out in Boston?”
Adrian gives me a weird look. “Why does everyone always assume that my whole life revolves around this place?”
“Because it does,” I laugh, and Adrian lets out a pained sigh and then drops a file onto my desk.
“Here are the reports on the Apex expansion.” His voice goes back to being all business. “I really need them before the end of the day because I’m dealing with the legal implications of a fucked-up permit. I’ll have Maddy order in for lunch so you can eat at your desk.”
I wince, wishing he could just chill out every now and then. “Like I said, I don’t know if I can get it done and fix the software.”
“You never miss deadlines,” Adrian says, turning to leave. “I’m sure you can get it done.” He pauses at the doorframe, rolling his knuckles against it. “You’ve never let me down before. I can’t say that about everyone else around here.”
He’s totally beefing with Beck. I raise my brows, but before I can question him about that, he slips away, the door closing softly behind him. I stare at the folder, my chest constricting.
The last time I let a deadline fall, I was nineteen, still waiting tables at this beat up diner, and the thing due was a term paper on municipal zoning. I got an A-minus, but only because I bribed the professor with my mom’s apple pie and a promise not to correct him in class ever again.
This is so much more serious.
Now, the “thing due” is a report on a $32 million mixed-use project that will make or break the entire quarter. I’m not a fan of The Apex expansion. Beck insists that we build a second building—when we’re still trying to fill the first with tenants. It feels too hasty.
But I still need to have the numbers finalized. I run my hands over my face and take a look around my office. There’s shit everywhere. It’s not the neat space it usually is.
But no one notices when my shit is off. They’re too wrapped up in themselves. I’m just the reliable guy who never fucking misses a deadline and always shows up.
Fuck. I do my best to pull myself from my pity party.
My brain would be firing on all cylinders if it weren’t for the fact that every time I try to focus, my thoughts veer sideways into the chaos of Adrian and Beck’s little feud over some undisclosed subject, and even more embarrassingly, into the chaos of Maddy.
She’s in my head constantly, and right now she’s in the conference room, color-coding the latest batch of property reports. I see her through the glass, flipping her pen between her fingers and biting her lip in concentration.
She doesn’t notice me.
I’m supposed to be working on this project, not stalking her like a creep.
This past week has been a mess. Adrian is ice-cold one second, then explosive the next. Beck is… well, Beck. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing most of the time.
I’m supposed to be the anchor, the dependable partner who holds it together when the other two blow off steam.
I always thought it was a role I was suited for. But apparently, I’m full of shit. At least right now.
I do my best to focus on the tasks at hand. I decide to deal with the software issues first, so I pull up the bug complaints and print them off.
This would be so much easier with two people.
But I do what I do best: work alone.
After about forty-five minutes of flipping through spreadsheets and coding forums, I’m about to rip my hair out. Every time I close my eyes, my brain conjures up Maddy, hair a mess and lips pursed with that quiet, relentless focus.
I have to talk to her, but I have to finish this stupid shit first.
I work until my vision blurs, the glare from my monitor giving me a headache. I force myself to keep typing, to keep rerunning the simulation, and working through one bug at a time.
That’s always been my thing. Just outwork the problem.
Finally, when I make it to the finish line of the first bug, I let out a deep breath. I got this.
I go to hit save and…
My computer crashes.
What. The. Fuck.
My jaw drops at the full, blue screen of death, fatal error, everything-is-fucked-and-so-are-you kind of crash.
This cannot be happening right now. No, no, no… I start smashing the escape button, desperate to undo whatever the fuck I just did, my heart pounding so hard, it’s all I hear.
I stare at the monitor, the loading circle mocking me, and I try to bring the system back to life with sheer force of will.
Nope.
My body goes completely rigid, and then I do something I haven’t done since I was a hot-headed teenager. I slam my fist into the desk and throw a fucking tantrum.
“Fuck!” I shout.
A stack of plumbing plans avalanches off the table and onto the floor, sending a snowstorm of sticky notes and graph paper everywhere. The desk shakes, my coffee tips over, and for a second, it looks like my whole damn office is caught in a paperwork tornado.
I just stand there, breathing hard, hand throbbing, staring at the disaster.
So much for keeping it together. I rake my fingers through my hair and pull at it, trying to decide what the fuck I should do next.
And that’s when I realize someone is standing in the doorway.
It’s Maddy.
She’s holding a paper bag from the café downstairs, and her lips are parted like she was about to say something but thought better of it. She looks between the desk, the floor, and my hand, which is still balled in a fist.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” she says, trying for a normal voice and failing. “I have your lunch? Adrian told me to order for each of you and yours has been sitting in the breakroom for a couple of hours now…”
I totally forgot that he said she was ordering food.
I scrub a hand over my face, and try to get my shit together, mortified that she saw what just went down. “Sorry you had to see that.”
Her expression is painfully soft. “Are you okay?”
“I’m… fine.” My voice sounds about as fine as a man in the middle of a breakdown can muster.
She hesitates, like she might back out of the office and pretend none of this happened, but instead, she steps inside, holding the bag in front of her like a peace offering.
She sets it on the corner of my desk, then, after a beat, crouches and starts gathering up the fallen blueprints. “I’m assuming your computer crashed,” she comments, collecting the pages into a tidy pile. “I hate it when that happens.”
I open my mouth to tell her to leave it, but she’s already sorting papers by size and paperclipping them together. She moves with that same quiet efficiency that she’s shown since day one, and by the time she stands, the mess is ninety percent contained.
I can’t take my eyes off her hands.
“You’re not going to fire the new IT intern, are you?” she asks, setting the stack on a nearby chair.
I sigh, feeling a little more at ease with every passing second she spends in my office. “No, but maybe I should make him be the one who has to fix the bugs.”
Maddy smiles. “Honestly, shouldn’t that be his responsibility, anyway? I think you have enough on your plate right now.” She glances at my computer and then at my hand. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Ugh. She saw everything.
I flex my fingers. “Not really.” It’s a total lie. My knuckles are already red, and they’re probably going to bruise, but I’d cut my whole hand off if it meant not looking like an idiot man-child in front of her right now.
She nods, as if she believes me, and opens the paper bag.
“I got you the chicken pesto sandwich. Adrian didn’t specify your order.
Have you had anything to eat today?” She eyes my cup of half-drank coffee.
There’s no accusation in her voice, but it still lands with the force of a concerned parent scolding a child.
I shake my head, looking back at the computer screen. “I haven’t had time.”