Olly
“So,” I said. The word broke the silence that had been hovering through the room. “I take it you’ve dropped this foolish idea of moving to Ace’s office.”
Keaton looked up at me. He opened his mouth and seemed for a second like he would say something else.
He closed it and finally spoke with a different expression.
“Yes, I’m not going to ask to work with Ace again,” he said.
I couldn’t tell what that note was in his voice and in his face.
Resignation? Acceptance? Amusement concealed under the surface?
I wished I could read him better than I was managing to.
“Good,” I said. Silence stretched on again. Keaton was diligently organizing the files I’d asked him to look over this morning.
I ached to talk to him. To try to get more information out of him. I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted him to know everything about me.
Telling someone else about Caleb had been… liberating.
I’d spent a long time – a decade – protecting myself. Protecting my clients. My assets.
I hadn’t realized until last night that I had isolated myself somewhere along the way as well.
I refocused on my work. I needed to take the cue from Keaton’s initiative. He was a hard worker. I opened up my calendar to look at the week’s meetings.
And frowned.
“Keaton?” I asked. “What happened to my calendar?”
“Oh, I color-coded it,” he said without looking up.
“It started to look like there were a lot of things on there – too many things, with all the dinners and lunches and extra meetings you have with clients this week. I thought it might be easier to read if you could see at a glance what kind of meeting you have to prepare for next.”
I ran my eyes over the colored boxes on my screen. “Red for clients,” I said. “Blue for sponsor company representatives. Green for agency staff.”
“And purple for personal events,” Keaton said. He glanced up as he clipped another file into the right place in the folder. “Not that you have any on there right now. Just thought I’d let you know what the code will be when it happens.”
I resisted the urge to sigh morosely. I didn’t have a personal life. “I don’t think you’ll find many to add.”
“Last night counts,” Keaton said. He was studiously keeping his eyes on the files now. I bored my eyes into the side of his face but he didn’t look up. “And any other times you might need to take a lunch or dinner with a friend. Or a family member. Or, you know. Your boyfriend, or whatever.”
A cold shock of water went down my spine. Twice he had mentioned it now. Caleb and now this. It wasn’t a coincidence. He knew.
I was the one keeping my eyes steadily trained on my desk this time.
“Ace told you,” I said. It wasn’t a question. There was no one else here who knew.
“Oh,” Keaton said softly. “Um. Don’t… get mad with him, or whatever. I wasn’t trying to get him in trouble. I figured you knew I knew, after what I thought about – you know, about… him.”
“You can say Caleb,” I told him. “We’re sports agents. Not secret agents. No one is listening in the walls.”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. I mean – well, I mean, I’m sorry. About the other thing. I just… is it not okay for me to know? You said you were letting me into the inner circle, so…”
“I was,” I grunted. “Ace didn’t know that.”
I looked up at Keaton’s face. He was blanched white. “I really didn’t mean to get him in trouble,” he said. “He told me not to mention it to you. I think he was just trying to convince me to stay a bit longer, in his own way. Like if he knew we had something in common, I wouldn’t want to quit.”
I digested that information for a moment. Ace had been right. He hadn’t managed to pull it off but his instinct was the same as mine.
I sighed and put the documents I had been working on approving into my outbox. There wasn’t much I could say to Ace. I could threaten to fire him as much as I wanted. He knew I needed him.
So long as he didn’t screw things up so much that he was losing me more money than he was making.
Even then…
The inner circle was very small. I couldn’t imagine it could survive losing a member. Not even with a new one coming in.
I was tired today. I couldn’t figure out what it was exactly that was worse than usual. I had existed on barely any sleep for over a decade. Something about last night had taken more out of me than I realized. Or maybe it was this Ridley Angus thing. I needed more caffeine.
A hand reached over and placed something on my desk. Keaton’s hand. I looked up from the thoughts I had been lost in.
A coffee. He’d made me a coffee.
“I saw you finished your last one about twenty minutes ago,” he said. He was still standing in front of my desk. He must have bought a new suit over the weekend. This one actually fitted him. I wanted to take it off him. “I thought you would be about ready for another cup.”
“I was,” I said. There was more wonder in my voice than I had intended. Keaton gave me a shy but satisfied smile and pushed his glasses up his nose. He turned back to the filing.
I could see even from just a single glance that he was remaking the system. Making it more efficient. That was what he did. What he had done to everything in this office since starting.
I felt my heart drop. He had been here for only a few weeks and he was already making this place better. Making me better. Anticipating my needs.
Was I falling for my secretary?
No. I knew the answer to that in my heart immediately.
It was too late.
I had fallen for him days ago.
All the rest was just icing on the cake.
I cleared my throat.
“Has your ex been bothering you?” I asked.
Keaton looked confused for a moment. He paused with his hand hovering over the next file. “You mean Jordan?”
Jordan Muriel. I nodded lightly and tried not to let it show on my face that I had looked into the slimeball extensively. “He was bothering you the other day.”
“Oh, yeah.” Keaton looked back at the files. “Honestly, I have him on mute. It’s my own fault when I go and read his messages. I should probably block him once and for all.”
Was there still something there? “Why don’t you?”
Keaton waited a long moment and then shrugged. “I guess I like having the option to read his messages if I want to. Feels kind of good to have someone fighting for my attention, even if I don’t really want it.”
I could understand that on some level. The thought of someone out there wanting your attention.
What I couldn’t understand was wanting it from someone you didn’t want to be with anymore.
“Are you thinking about getting back together with him?” I asked.
It probably wasn’t my business. I was his boss and that was all. But… I had to know.
“No,” Keaton laughed. A wave of relief went over me like a wave. “Three years is a lot to throw away, but I know it’s the right choice. We just… don’t work. Not really.”
“Why not?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. This wasn’t supposed to be an interrogation. I just needed to know.
What had Jordan Muriel done wrong? How had he lost Keaton? What could he have done to save their relationship?
“Like I said, he’s not out,” Keaton said.
He folded his arms while he thought and looked up at the ceiling.
He didn’t say anything about this being odd.
Maybe he didn’t think it was. Maybe this was just two co-workers talking.
I wasn’t exactly experienced in that kind of office chatter.
“I just couldn’t handle that, in the end.
And even if he changes his mind and decides to come out now…
it wouldn’t be enough. I spent three years feeling like I wasn’t good enough for him, like he was ashamed of me, and he let me.
He just sat by my side and let me feel like that.
That isn’t love. I couldn’t ever be with him again and really feel like he valued me as a person after that. ”
“Even if he apologized and came out in front of everyone?” I asked.
“Not even if he did it on the national news,” Keaton said with a wry smile. “I need to respect myself. That’s what Clara says – my little sister.”
I nodded. Something stirred in my memory. “The one who’s dating Fernando.”
Keaton looked at me in surprise. “You remembered.”
“Yes.” Why wouldn’t I?
Keaton smiled then.
And I knew.
This man was very dangerous. Because if he asked me to come out so that we could be together…
I would have to come out.
I would tell everyone what I had been hiding for all these years just to see that smile again.
Maybe I should have accepted his resignation. Maybe I should have sent him as far away from me as possible. But it was too late.
I was gone.
Keaton only needed to turn around and realize it – and he could make me do whatever he wanted.
I fixed my eyes on my laptop and didn’t dare try to engage him in conversation again.
Keaton Dunbar was just too dangerous to talk to.