Chapter 11
“So are you planning on telling me how the afterparty was?” Junie asked.
Connor connected with her on his way back to the Les Grande that morning. Junie had been eager to dish the details of the previous night, and she also didn't hide how irritated she felt about him leaving her high and dry to ‘entertain the kids’, as she called them.
Liam ended up with a connecting room with Benji, so they’d thrown up the door and turned both of their rooms into a functional party space.
“Everyone was there. The girls from legal, that guy you like from accounting, plus all of Liam's little friends. Ryan, of course. And you wouldn't believe it, but he's in with Anise’s secretary, too.”
From what Junie described, it seemed like they had close to a dozen people going back and forth before they received an official noise complaint from hotel management.
It probably would have been fun. Connor had always been friendly with the legal secretaries.
He certainly wouldn’t have fucked up the way he did last night.
“Not much to tell,” Connor lied as they walked the brick path to the ballroom. “Just C-Suite execs getting drunk. I saw Thornton there.”
He hoped bringing up Junie’s boss might distract her. It didn’t
“Yeah. Ellie wanted to rub our panel in Berkshire’s face. I heard there were firebreathers at the last one. Anything like that?”
“No, it was pretty normal. Just a bar.” He hesitated, then decides he might as well give her a more salacious detail. “Some young women I didn’t recognize.”
“Oh, they’re always hiring escorts,” Junie said dismissively. “Unofficially, you know. So what time did you get back?”
“I dunno, maybe midnight,” Connor replied, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Midnight?”
“Well, Na-,” Connor pretended to cough, correcting himself, “Santos wanted to show me around.”
Subtle, the way Junie’s eyes narrowed at that. No doubt, this was exactly why Thornton was so reliant on her. She was perceptive, far too much for her own good sometimes.
“He wanted to show you off?” She asked.
Connor didn’t answer. He found himself thinking of how he’d left Nate the night before, and regret ached its bitter pangs in his chest.
He was an asshole.
Nate had wanted him to stay and he hadn’t even acknowledged him.
For a moment, Connor pulled out his phone, checking his notifications.
Nothing from Nate.
He considered sending a text, testing the waters, but the urge died when he caught the way Junie was looking at him.
She had always known when something was going on between Connor and Devore, even when he thought he’d succeeded in keeping his secret. Junie never confronted him, but the concerned looks and subtle questions seemed to suggest that she might. Connor never knew how, but she just did.
Probably the same way she knew now that something was going on between him and Nate.
“He must like you,” she said casually. “Ellie does that sometimes.”
“Maybe,” Connor offered, hoping that would be enough to keep her from asking any more questions.
By some miracle, they started to see other Alarie Inc.
folks as they approached the ballroom. Connor was quick to catch the attention of an old mutual friend of theirs, Gianna Feliz from PR.
Though she’d started out as an assistant around the same time they did, Gianna had been fortunate in that she was initially assigned to Maria Ronaldo.
Fortunate for her, because Ronaldo had a habit of promoting her assistants out when they proved to be useful.
Devore once called Ronaldo a snake who wanted her serpents in as many nests as possible. He wasn’t wrong, but then again, he’d never come out on top when conflicts arose between the two of them.
But Connor didn’t want to think about Devore. Not when everything with Nate still felt so fresh. Fuck. He didn't want to think about Nate either. He was just Santos now. Only Santos.
“Gianna, good to see you. You’re a team manager now, right?” Connor said, feigning his own pleasant mood while greeting their old friend. Gianna’s face lit up with a wide grin.
“I am! Between you and me, I'm dying here,” Gianna laughed, while Junie politely echoed her laughter.
“Aren't we all? I hear your department’s running the workplace hellness workshop, right?” Junie teased.
“Workplace wellness,” Gianna corrected her, before rolling her eyes. “But what's the difference around here?”
No kidding, Connor thought. But it was a welcome distraction from his own worries.
They split off soon into their set workshops, with Connor needing to be present for the Client Privacy and Ethics presentation. Funny, a consulting firm hiring consultants to guide internal policy, but Connor found himself unable to dwell for long on the irony of the morning.
He'd spotted Nate taking a seat at the far end of the conference room hosting this panel. He looked, well, exactly the same as ever. No changes there.
Another expensive suit, dark with delicate pinstripes. A yellow tie. Matching handkerchief in his pocket.
But he wasn't cleanshaven, his stubble already growing in dark at his jaw and cheeks. And the dark circles under his eyes suggested a night as restless as Connors had been.
He pressed his lips together and looked away. But as the workshop began, Connor was too aware of those dark eyes watching him from across the room. Glancing at Nate to meet his gaze had Connor regretting it almost immediately.
Where last night those dark eyes had followed him with pointed interested and intent, what he saw today was–
Like someone had come in and turned off the lights. Nate was a man just trying to get through the day and nothing more.
Connor dropped his gaze to the carpet.
He was an asshole.
That was the first thing he told Nate once the first workshop concluded, edging his way across the conference room to where he sat. But Connor didn't sit next to him, not right away. He didn't want to assume he was invited.
For fuck’s sake, he knew he had no reason to feel so guilty. Nate was the one who should have be feeling guilty. Nate was his boss, sleeping with his subordinate. He should have known better.
And yet for all his attempts at self justification, Connor knew he was equally at fault. Maybe, after all, he was the one who should hold most of the blame. If anyone knew better, why not the subordinate who'd already slept with his boss once, and then went and made that mistake a second time?
“Last night. I was an asshole,” he said flatly. Nate looked up at him, surprised, but his expression didn't soften.
“You were. Maybe I was, too.”
Connor shook his head.
“You didn't do anything wrong. I'm sorry.”
Nate was next to drop his gaze, embarrassment or perhaps shame playing out across his handsome features. For a moment, neither of them spoke. And then Nate patted the seat beside him, acting as casual as he could likely manage.
“Sit through the next one with me,” he suggested. He didn’t look at Connor when he said it, looking like he was finding the stage’s backdrop to be far more interesting. Or so it seemed.
Connor hesitated before nodding and taking a seat beside Nate. And, though he was loath to admit it even to himself, it was nice to be sitting next to him once again.
So the day’s workshops passed, and nothing at all seemed to be amiss between Connor and Nate. At least not to any onlookers.
It would have been easy to believe that nothing at all happened between them, that Connor hadn’t just come out to his boss only twenty-four hours beforehand, that they hadn’t spent part of the previous night together.
But they had. They had, and try as he might, Connor couldn’t forget a single moment of it. He found himself replaying the prior evening in his head over the course of the day, staring at Nate sitting beside him, recalling just how it felt to kiss him. The weight of his body against his.
Nate’s arm brushed against his when they paused for lunch, and it was like something in his body broke. Connor found himself looking at Nate, feeling the rush of people passing around them, hardly paying them any mind. And Nate looked back.
An unasked question played there in his dark eyes, one Connor couldn’t pretend to not notice.
He checked his watch, if only for an excuse to look away from Nate for a moment.
Nate didn’t get an opportunity to ask Connor whatever it was he wanted to ask, because they were interrupted by Berkshire stepping between them, stepping past Connor like he was nothing more than part of the background.
“Nathan, there you are. Come with me to lunch. I’d like to hear your thoughts on our next quarter strategies after last night’s investor panel,” he said, an arm on Nate’s shoulder.
“Oh. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, uh- Connor, I’ll meet you back here after lunch, okay? Let’s keep talking about that- that- uh…” Nate snapped his fingers like he was forgetting the word.
“Your client retention plan,” Connor offered. It was an easy save, gratitude plainly written on Nate’s face.
But Berkshire acted as though he hadn’t spoken at all, leading Nate away with a hand firmly on his shoulder.
As promised, they met up again after lunch, but they didn’t have time to talk.
Connor had been pulled out for a round of unsanctioned margaritas with Junie and Liam (plus Ryan - the two of them seemed to be connected at the hip today) and only just returned in time for the start of the afternoon panels.
But he’d still been on time. Nate had missed the first panel entirely, slipping in just before the second started, offering Connor a small smile as he did.
It didn’t seem to reach his eyes, and for a while, Connor couldn’t even be sure that he was paying attention to the panel.
And then he felt Nate’s calf right against his own, curious, questioning. Connor didn’t respond, not right away. He stayed quite still, much like he would with a bird that came to sit on his balcony railing, like any sudden movement might scare it off.
Then Nate’s leg left his. Connor’s followed, imperceptible movements invisible to anyone around him, but he felt Nate’s eyes on him throughout.