Chapter Four #3
Two months later, one of Miles’ pastry videos went viral, and he packed up and moved to LA.
When he watched Miles make himself a drunken mess over his new producer, Kian told himself firmly this was exactly why Bastian had insisted they keep things professional between them.
He didn’t want to be Miles, and he didn’t want to be Miles’ new producer either.
It was messy and embarrassing and it didn’t even matter that they ended up happily together.
Kian told himself firmly that he was thrilled for them, and left it at that.
Four months after that, Wyatt, witnessing the money Miles had made in LA, let himself be lured down there too. He got a job as a private chef for a baseball player, and at this point, Kian was resigned that all his friends were going to abandon him.
As long as Xander stayed, he’d be okay.
Of course, Wyatt leaving meant that Wyatt had to resign from Terroir.
Unfortunately, Kian, who took care of almost all of Bastian’s personnel issues now, as well as prepping and subbing as needed on the line during service, couldn’t be the one to take Wyatt’s resignation letter.
It was going to have to be Bastian, and Bastian wasn’t going to be happy about it.
He loved firing people, but people leaving him? Not good. Abort. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
It would’ve been weird for Kian to be in the office when Wyatt submitted his resignation but he hovered outside, waiting for the moment when everything went sideways.
He heard murmured voices, and then Bastian’s voice edging upwards. Wyatt was still too hard to hear, which meant that he was keeping his own temper, even as Bastian’s sneering tone cut right through the glass walls of his office and echoed throughout the whole kitchen.
“Did someone even hire your sloppy ass?” Bastian demanded, and he said it loud enough, Kian could see heads rise across the kitchen.
He sighed and leaned back against the wall.
This was going just about as badly as he’d imagined it would.
The worst part in Kian’s opinion was that he knew Bastian didn’t mean anything he’d just said.
He was so angry because losing Wyatt, who was a fantastic chef with an intuitive touch for meat, was a blow.
It didn’t excuse the verbal abuse, but at least it helped explain it.
Kian was startled from his studied nonchalance when a crash resonated through the entire kitchen.
Almost immediately Wyatt stormed out, his blue eyes narrow and his expression very pissed off.
He didn’t even acknowledge Kian, who raced past him to discover that yes, Bastian had swept the entire contents of his desk onto the floor.
He sighed, and leaned down to pick up a piece of coffee mug that was spinning at his feet.
“I can’t believe that fucking bastard quit,” Bastian said in a huff, but Kian had known him long enough to know it was all defensive posturing. I can’t believe he left me, was what Kian heard.
“He needs the money. His grandmother is in a home,” Kian said quietly. “And this private chef gig pays really well.”
“Private chef,” Bastian sneered. “So he’s going to go grill plain, tough chicken for some socialite in LA?”
Being Bastian’s intern and being friends with Wyatt and Xander was a fine line to walk.
He often knew more than he felt comfortable saying to his boss—things that his friends told him in confidence.
Like that Xander’s new sauce recipe was almost directly lifted from a Tom Colicchio cookbook, or that Wyatt wasn’t going to be cooking for a socialite at all, but the only “out” player in professional baseball.
Bastian definitely didn’t need to know that there was definitely something going on between the baseball player and Wyatt.
“Probably,” Kian said noncommittedly in his most soothing voice.
He leaned down and picked up the keyboard, which was missing a few important keys.
This was the fourth keyboard they’d been through in the last year, and Kian had started buying extras because he might still need to place online orders for supplies and ingredients the day that Bastian decided to throw a hissy fit.
They couldn’t run out of artichokes just because Kian didn’t have a keyboard.
Kicking a pen, Bastian slumped down into his chair. The anger had passed now, and they’d moved on to guilt.
“I shouldn’t have said those things. I just . . . saw red,” Bastian said hopelessly.
Kian set the broken keyboard on the chair opposite the desk.
He maneuvered around the random detritus on the floor and took a chance by moving closer to Bastian than he normally allowed himself.
Even took the risk of placing his hands on Bastian’s broad, muscular shoulders, emphasized by the cut of his white chef’s coat.
Bastian stared at him, and something inside Kian trembled. They didn’t often touch, because even a hand on a shoulder was dangerous, and Kian never initiated contact. But he did today, curling his fingers into the starched cotton of Bastian’s jacket, holding him steady as his own pulse accelerated.
“Maybe next time, we can figure out a way for you to only see . . . orange,” Kian suggested softly.
“I have a temper,” Bastian snapped. “It’s not going away.” He jerked out of Kian’s hands, and the moment broke, like an egg cracking against the edge of a bowl.
It would be nice if Bastian’s temper mellowed, but Kian was not laboring under any false impression that it would.
Bastian’s temper was part of who he was; it was the product of the intense pressure he put on himself and on others to produce perfection every single day.
It wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t always professional, but it wasn’t going away.
Still, if Kian could figure out a way to convince him to take a second to think before he acted, then maybe the collateral damage would be less. At the very least, Kian would end up needing less keyboards.
Leaning down, Kian began to gather up pieces of the coffee cup and the pens and pencils scattered over the polished concrete floor.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Bastian began to pace in the small space, his arms crossed across his chest, like the physical movement might contain what kept trying to escape.
“I just . . . Wyatt . . . he’s good,” Bastian said, and Kian glanced up to see that he’d stopped pacing and was staring at him, crouched on the floor.
“I know he is,” Kian said calmly.
“He knows it too,” Bastian muttered, like that made up for the insults he’d just spit in Wyatt’s direction.
“Yeah, he does. Which is partly why he’s leaving.”
Kian had gathered almost all the pens from the desk and was moving onto the paperclips sprinkled across the concrete.
“Here,” Bastian said, and Kian looked up from the floor to see the mesh paperclip holder held at eye level. He’d crouched down next to Kian and was also picking up paperclips.
This was by no means the first time Bastian had cleared his desk in a fit of temper, but it was definitely the first time he’d helped Kian clean up the mess.
Kian tipped a handful of paperclips into the container.
“Maybe I should get one with a sealed lid,” he said, trying to use a bit of humor to distract him from the fact that Bastian was right there next to him, helping him.
If he turned his head and leaned a little to the left he’d be pressed right against him.
It might not be an apology, but it was something.
Sighing, Bastian pushed back on his heels, observing the mess surrounding them with a cynical expression. “This life is hard.”
“Really?” Kian retorted sarcastically. “I had no idea.”
Bastian, who could be a sarcastic son of a bitch, ironically hated sarcasm in others, so he ignored Kian’s statement. “And this,” he gestured between them, “makes me tense.”
Like on cue, Kian tensed himself. It was the first time Bastian had overtly referred to the non-relationship between them since that first conversation in the dairy walk-in.
He’d come close that Sunday when they’d tested the new langoustine dish—a dish that had carved out a permanent place on the menu, which Kian was still unbearably proud of—but he’d never come out and said it directly.
“It’s hard,” Kian agreed softly. He didn’t really believe that sexual frustration was making Bastian an edgier or more terrible boss than he’d been before.
It was a convenient excuse, but Kian still understood what he really meant.
There were definitely days, those occasional times when their hands would brush or he’d catch Bastian staring intently, possessively, at him, and he also wanted to throw something.
He’d been at Terroir a year now, and there was a part of him that had fiercely believed that after all this time, something would have happened to shift the status quo, even though they both believed that it was better that nothing ever happened between them.
But Bastian’s determination to keep his hands off was forged from steel, and Kian couldn’t deny the selflessness attracted him even more.
It grew harder, every day, every week, every month, and still neither of them flinched.
Maybe they never would. That possibility had seemed completely impossible a year ago, but maybe he’d been wrong. After all, it couldn’t get much harder than this, could it?
“I’m sorry,” Bastian said, so quietly that Kian nearly missed it.
Kian reached out again, and it was perilous, but he covered Bastian’s big scarred hand with his own, smaller one. “Don’t apologize,” he insisted in a hard tone. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
Bastian’s smile was wry. “Even for losing my temper?”
Kian’s mom had told him once that when he fell in love, he needed to accept everything about the object of his affection. “You don’t have to love everything,” she’d said with a laugh, “you don’t even have to like everything, but you need to accept who they are because you can’t change them.”
Kian couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to realize, but of course he was in love with Bastian.
Maybe it was because he’d been trying to keep those feelings locked away, covered with the convenient, much less serious, “hormones” label.
But now that he’d realized, it was impossible to deny it was true.
And Bastian—who still shot him yearning looks, who was teaching him every single thing he knew, who seemed to delight in Kian stretching his culinary wings, who denied them the very thing they wanted because it would be better for Kian’s future—he must love him too.
It should have been a joyous realization, but all it did was fill Kian with frustration.
What was he supposed to do about something he couldn’t do anything about?
Nothing, he thought darkly, I’m going to do nothing. Nothing has changed.