27. Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Part 4
F or the first time, Morgan found the monotony of the office almost comforting. The glow of the overhead lights. The hum of the heater and the clack of keys. Answering emails and drafting paperwork for new projects had never given him any peace before. Yet here he was, more calm than he’d been in a while.
The absurdity almost made him laugh.
This job was an endless loop of nothing. It numbed him—robbed him of the very essence of who he was. There was no strategy, no real thinking involved at all. His greatest accomplishments were organizational: scheduling, PowerPoints.
Sad, really.
But it was a welcome distraction from the madness brewing inside the house.
Home had locked doors and unanswered questions. Home had gnawing doubt that maybe—just perhaps—he’d… slipped.
The fire had reduced most of Jacob to ash. Not all of him.
The buttons, the earrings, the phone.
He should have waited a little longer. He should have been more thorough .
Had he, though?
No.
Rubbing his palm against his forehead, he turned off the white glow of the monitor and forced himself to relax. His coffee had gone cold ages ago but it still tasted fine. Sweet, with just enough bitter aftertaste to leave him wanting more.
Like Lex.
Lex with his wide, pleading eyes and broken whispers of how cold he was. How—no matter how close to the fire, how deeply he buried inside Morgan’s jacket—he couldn’t stop shaking .
And foolish Morgan, still reeling from ecstasy and that orgasm high, had let Lex dictate his actions. He hadn’t thought twice about the things he’d left behind when he helped Lex back to the car.
Stupid.
Very stupid.
His phone buzzed, clattering around on the stack of papers before it slipped off and onto the wood of his desk.
Alexander Whitlock
projections ready lmk if u need anything else
Morgan had no idea how long he stared at the text message. How many times he blinked, willing his hand to relax even as his knuckles whitened around it.
No punctuation. No warmth. Professional without being dismissive.
The rest of Lex’s texts—ones that had Morgan rolling his eyes, not bothering to respond at all—were littered with those overused, yellow emojis. Childish and frivolous.
Annoying.
This was worse.
What made it unbearable was the fact that Lex was holed up in the small conference room, not three doors down. Ten steps, if he bothered to count. Lex could have been over to his office in ten steps, could have handed them over himself. Yet he was hiding behind a glowing screen.
Avoiding him at home was one thing, but they were at work.
Frustration threatening to boil over, Morgan set the phone down and smoothed his hands over his face. The burning in his chest was festering, simmering, just out of reach .
Was this simply a failure on his half? Had he not thought through his actions enough?
Questioning himself was not something he took kindly to.
The soft knock on the door pulled him back into the present, away from the insistent, intrusive thoughts.
One of the junior associates—Paul, Peter, something along those lines—was standing awkwardly in the frame, clutching the manila folder to his chest like the ground would open up and swallow him whole.
“Mr. Delacroix, I have the revisions for the uh… the Sorbett account. The meeting’s tomorrow—”
“Leave them,” Morgan interrupted, clipped and short even in his own ears. He took a breath, compartmentalizing the rest of his feelings to deal with later. He didn’t need the distraction. “I’ll review them before end of business. Thank you.”
“Actually...”
The pause lasted longer than Morgan would have liked. He straightened, rolling his free hand in a silent, impatient gesture.
Keep talking or get out.
“Actually, Lex kind of needed you to review them now. Right now. If it’s not too much of a problem. He wants them ready by mid-afternoon, at the latest.”
One second, Morgan’s hand was around the pen—sleek, weighted, an expensive but long-lasting luxury—ready to look over more business drivel. The next it was airborne. He had to watch it sail across the office and into the wall beside the associate; the crack made him wince .
There was no in-between. No middle. He wasn’t even sure how it happened.
The man’s shoulders squared up to his ears, eyes darting between the folder in his arms and Morgan.
“I’ll leave them right here, alright? I-I’m sorry,” he blurted, all at once. He set the folder on the chair next to the door and scurried back out.
Lex.
It was always Lex who got under his skin, burrowing under flesh until every nerve was raw and exposed. Now Morgan could feel his absence like a gaping wound that refused to heal. One he couldn’t stop prodding, even when it tore and bled.
Whatever feelings his little brother was experiencing—whatever existential crisis or awakening he was wallowing in—he needed time to work through them on his own. Morgan understood that.
Logically.
But Lex needed to work through them faster.
By the time he finished the revisions, he didn’t feel any better. There was no calm evenness he appreciated. No settled .
Lex was disgustingly good at their job. More apt than Morgan, if he were to be honest with himself. He couldn’t find a single thing to add. There wasn’t an issue—glaring or minuscule. There wasn’t a stone left unturned.
There wasn’t anything Lex hadn’t already thought of.
But he wasn’t there to play Lex’s game .
Sending someone else over to shuttle simple documents back and forth? That wasn’t worth the paycheck.
The junior associates were there to learn from them, and the only thing they had learned in the last few days was that there was a problem.
Standing, he stripped off the jacket, taking his time as he hung it over the back of his chair. He needed more than a moment if he wanted to keep what little bit of control he had left.
Out of the office, it wasn’t ten steps to the conference room like he’d thought.
It was six .
Morgan slapped the folder on the table and Lex didn’t flinch. Didn’t even lift his head. He stayed still as stone, hunched over the laptop with his fingers flying across the keyboard faster than Morgan could process.
“Hi,” Lex mumbled, low and absent. Casual in a way that grated. The white stick of a sucker jutted out from the corner of his mouth, rolling against his teeth.
Click-click-click. Stop. Click-click-click. Stop.
The rhythm pulled at Morgan. He couldn’t look away from the sucker, couldn’t stop listening to the quiet, repetitive scrape. Couldn’t stop picturing it shifting against his tongue.
Morgan had to stamp down the urge to rip it out of Lex’s mouth and replace it with his own. “The revisions are fine,” he said, licking his lips.
“Glad I can meet your standards. ”
Lex’s eyes moved across the monitor, methodical and precise, like a perfect typewriter. But he wouldn’t look up. Not even a passing glance.
Though his body betrayed him.
The longer Morgan stared, the more his face began to change colors. It started subtly, creeping over Lex’s cheeks, faint under the tan before it crawled up his ears. Soon, even his neck was the same bright, vivid hue.
That’s when the typing stopped.
“Did I forget something?” Lex asked, breaking the silence. The telltale waver was amusing.
“Did you?”
Lex’s mouth parted just enough to slide the sucker out. The faint, wet sound of it leaving his lips was deliciously sexual.
“I—I’m just doing my job, Morgan. Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to be competent ?”
The venom dripping from Lex’s voice didn’t match the stutter. It didn’t match the rest of his body language, either—the restless fidget of his hands on the edge of the laptop, fingers twitching like they’d suddenly forgotten their function. Two very different things warring inside, fighting for control.
“We both know that you’re competent, Lex.”
And the blush deepened.
“You’re distracting.”
“You’re letting me distract you.” Morgan traced his fingers along the monitor of the laptop, and Lex’s eyes shifted up to follow the movement. “Did you need a break? Food? Coffee?” He let the question linger, the pause heavy and suggestive, dragging it out for effect. “Something… else?”
The laptop slammed shut.
“I need some damn air,” Lex spat, standing so quickly that the chair almost toppled backward.
“I take it you don’t want company.”
“No.”
“Do I scare you, little brother?”
Halfway to the door, Lex stopped moving. He tilted his head back enough for Morgan to catch how his shoulders fell, the quiet rise and fall of his breath. Morgan’s gaze followed the line of his back down, taking in every dip and pull of fabric.
Those pants fit Lex remarkably well. Hugging his hips, his legs. Morgan hadn’t been able to look at him properly in the woods. The concern of keeping Lex as comfortable as possible had squelched most of the things he really wanted to do to him.
“Yeah,” Lex said after a minute. “Yeah. You do.”
All Morgan could do when he left was watch.
The waiting and distance were killing him.