Chapter 21
Jensen stared down at his phone for another moment before rushing out of the empty conference room and back to his desk. His heart beat fast in his ears, blocking out every other sound in the crowded office.
Never once had he heard Daniel so upset.
So defeated. Jensen couldn’t imagine what he was going through.
He knew Daniel was struggling with money and his job, but it seemed like everything was crashing down on top of him.
And Jensen wasn’t there. He wasn’t there to help him get his car into a shop or drive him to work or hold him and tell him it would be okay. And that was unacceptable.
Jensen couldn’t stomach being so far away from Daniel anymore. Regardless of a potential position with Larsson and Fowl or any other firms, he had to move to Sevier. He would take on freelance jobs until he found something he enjoyed.
Ignoring all the other browsers and emails and software open on the monitor, he pulled up flights leaving out of San Francisco.
There were a couple slated for late that night or in the morning, but that wouldn’t do.
He had to get there as soon as possible, which left one option that would be boarding in just under two hours.
The drive from the office would take at least a half hour if traffic behaved.
More than likely, it would take an entire hour to get to the airport, leaving him no time to go home and pack. Or finish out his workday.
Jensen selected the flight, entered in his information, and bought it without thought; the anxiety and second-guessing that usually accompanied his every decision was blessedly absent, overruled by his worry for Daniel.
“Wyatt,” Jensen said, his face turned toward his assistant’s cubicle while he quickly shut down his laptop and began gathering his things. “I’m leaving and probably won’t be in for the rest of the week.”
“Everything all right?”
He turned the volume on his phone up, then slipped it into his pocket. “I’m flying out to Sevier to see Daniel.”
“Uh.” Wyatt stood from his seat. “What about the Garner project? Mendes said we need to get the revisions finished and sent off by Wednesday.”
“I don’t care about the project,” Jensen admitted, though Wyatt was probably more than aware of this fact after his outburst on Friday.
Wyatt stared at him with wide eyes, speechless.
“I’ll bring my laptop and see what I can do,” he muttered. While he didn’t care about the project, Wyatt’s performance review and bonus relied on Jensen finishing it. He might be ready to take a match to his life, but he refused to take his assistant down with him.
Since there wasn’t much else to say, Jensen picked up his laptop and started toward his boss’s office with long strides.
He only had to weave through a few displeasingly beige rows of cubicles and dodge a couple coworkers that were standing around talking before he stood in the doorway and looked at Mendes.
“I’m taking the week off.”
His boss looked up at him, his pen paused where it was marking up a document. “What?”
“I’m leaving town for the week. I have my laptop, though, so—”
“The hell you are,” Mendes interrupted, his face turning red. “You are going back to your desk and finishing the job I pay you to do.”
Jensen’s palms started to sweat from the heat in his boss’s tone. “I have a plane to catch. But, like I was saying, I’ll bring my laptop and see what I can get done.”
“A plane?” Mendes spluttered. “It’s the middle of the workday, and you’re required to be here. I suggest you sit back down and get to work or our next conversation will have HR involved.”
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Jensen realized this was the moment he had to make a decision. Stay or go.
He’d imagined quitting his job countless times. Whenever a promised project disappeared, he’d storm through his house, slamming cupboards and muttering to himself about how he was going to leave the firm behind.
The inside of his car had heard endless rants and one-sided conversations where he told his boss exactly what he could do with his feedback on Jensen’s work.
His parents had patiently listened to his lists of all the things he hated about his job over many dinners.
But he’d never had the balls to actually bring up his issues inside the glass prison.
During the sporadic one-on-one meetings he had with his boss, he kept his mouth shut about his grievances so he could escape the suffocating room faster.
He even left neutral responses on the annual employee survey.
And look at where that had gotten him. Jensen had nothing to show for his compliance and restraint except for a job he dreaded going to and a thousand miles between him and Daniel.
He wasn’t going to get the things he wanted in life by being under Mendes’s heel. No amount of hard work was going to lead to any of the things he wanted. Not when that hard work was done for someone else. No, it was finally time for Jensen to put in that effort and work for himself.
Even if that meant … not working.
If you never take risks, you’ll never gain anything. His father’s words came back to him, cutting through the nerves fluttering in his stomach and the weight in the back of his throat.
This was his opportunity to change where his life was headed. And at the moment, the only thing he wasn’t okay risking was his future in Sevier. His future with Daniel. His future at a job that allowed him to create. Ultimately, he couldn’t risk his future happiness.
He would give up all his comfort for Daniel.
Except that wasn’t quite true. Daniel had become his comfort.
What used to be carefully laid plans, a home of quiet solitude, and skirting social interactions had morphed into a man with winter eyes, soft hair, and determination to survive.
Jensen would navigate airports, loud rooms, and unfamiliar situations for Daniel.
He couldn’t not. Not when home and comfort and all the most wonderful things in the world were personified at his side.
“I appreciate the opportunity to work for you, Mr. Mendes”—he really didn’t—“but I think you’re right and we should part ways. Please have HR send me any required paperwork to my personal email. Any personal belongings I’ve left here can be sent with Wyatt.”
His boss stared at him, mouth hanging open and vein pulsing on his shiny red forehead. Jensen set his laptop on the slim table next to the door and spun around on his heel.
Already he was feeling lighter, like a weight had been lifted off him. Though it was cloudy outside and the skyscrapers blocked out any sun that tried to break through, Jensen’s world was full of sunshine and birdsong. A stupid smile appeared on his face, one he didn’t even want to tamp down.
Holy shit. He had just quit his job.
He’d quit. Without even giving a two-week notice.
He was free. Completely done with the glass walls and thin desks and mislabeled emergencies. The annoying Garner project that was too generic to require so much attention was no longer his problem.
It felt good.
“Jensen!”
He turned his head, along with the rest of the office, to see Mendes coming out of his office.
“You signed a contract,” he said, like it was some big gotcha that would force Jensen to say there until he took his last breath.
He shrugged a shoulder. “I’m an at-will employee. At this time, I’m no longer willing to work here.”
Scattered whispers rang out around the open floor plan, and one of Jensen’s now ex-coworkers abruptly ended a call. From the corner of his eye, he could see Wyatt trying to get his attention.
“You owe us two weeks. You owe me! I took you on when you were green behind the ears. I made you, and I can get you blacklisted from every firm in the city.”
Jensen looked around the office at the people he’d spent forty hours or more a week with for the past ten years.
A few people were blatantly staring at him, sending him grimaces or looks of concern.
Most people were staring blankly at their computer screens or down at their desks.
Some were actually working, but not many.
Except for Wyatt, Jensen wasn’t friends with any of them.
He didn’t talk to them outside of work; he hardly talked to them at work.
Outside, concrete, glass, and steel formed towering buildings that held other firms where Jensen could probably find employment doing the exact same thing he was doing under Mendes’s command. Going back to middle school held more appeal than that.
“All right,” he said simply. There wasn’t anything else to say. He’d already decided his life in San Francisco was over. There was nothing for him there. Not when Daniel lived in Sevier. Not when he was on the precipice of something great. “If that’s all, I have to get going to the airport.”
He didn’t look back as he strode toward the elevators.
The door opened, and Jensen took his first unimpeded breath in hours.
Daniel slammed into him, his arms going around him instantly.
Jensen couldn’t think, couldn’t move beyond burying his face into Daniel’s hair and squeezing them together.
The nightmare of two airports, a middle seat on a flight, and handing over his credit card information to a rideshare app was worth it because he got to feel Daniel against his chest. He got to finally, after too long, smell his hair product and rub his lips against the soft strands.
For long minutes, they stood in the doorway, the house’s air-conditioning fighting with the summer night, holding each other. Breathing each other in. Finding comfort. But eventually, Daniel’s hold on Jensen loosened, and he pulled back enough to look him in the eyes.
His hair was disheveled, sticking straight out in the places where his hair gel was disturbed. A slight redness settled below his blue eyes, made starker by his paler than usual skin. The frown and crease between his eyebrows seemed etched onto his face by how deep they were.
“You’re here,” Daniel said on a breath.