Chapter Seventeen
Kayden
I stepped into the elevator at Acker Real Estate, excited but also a little nervous about seeing Jace.
I’d reached out to him a few times over the last week, but he’d been working late every night.
When he’d said he was also busy on Saturday, I figured I’d wait to see him today to find out if everything was okay.
It was hard not to worry that he might be avoiding me after the incident with Olivia. If she’d told him details about our night together, it was possible he was avoiding me while trying to figure out how to handle that information.
The possibility of being rejected by him stung.
I felt something for him that I wasn’t used to feeling, and I wanted to see where we could go.
Maybe that wasn’t fair, given I was asking him to crawl back into the closet with me, but I was pretty sure he felt it too, and he seemed willing to move at my pace.
At least, that’s what I’d thought until I’d seen him with Olivia.
The way he’d frozen in place when she touched him like his body was a livewire and the way he’d looked sick after I told him we’d hooked up had made it obvious there was more to their friendship than he let on.
To say I’d been spinning out about it over the weekend and what it meant for our relationship would be an understatement.
I’d tried to talk to Olivia briefly on the way out of the office after my last meeting with Jace, but she’d brushed me off, telling me there was no need.
I hadn’t fully processed seeing her again at the time and I hadn’t pushed the topic, but after a week to sit with it, I couldn’t reconcile the way we’d parted that night with her current chilly demeanor.
What had changed for her in the last four years?
I was planning to make sure that she and I were on better footing today. If she was important to Jace, then it was important to me that she and I both felt comfortable around each other. Plus, I just couldn’t bear the thought of there being any hard feelings between us.
Hopefully we’d all feel more settled today and Jace wouldn’t be concerned anymore. Though a part of me hadn’t been able to shake the way I’d noticed him looking at her the same way he looked at me and what that meant.
As far as the rehab facility was concerned, the designs were in good shape.
I had two options for Jace to review, and both had taken me a lot more time than I’d expected.
I’d ended up working late last night to finish the second option after an idea had hit me late in the afternoon.
And as much as I missed Jace, I had a couple of other client deadlines this week, so his avoidance had probably been for the best since it allowed me to catch up on work.
Plus, there was the afternoon I’d spent with my father trying to help him sort out his medications.
An experience in which I’d been subjected to enough emotional abuse to remind me why I hadn’t visited in years.
It had taken me a full day to recover from that, most of which I’d spent wondering why I didn’t just walk away from him again.
I stepped off the elevator and Olivia turned toward me in her desk chair.
“Good morning,” I said, watching as her nose ring glimmered in the light above. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had on a pair of leopard print boots. My dick twitched at the sight of her and the memory of our night together.
“Hey.” She gave me a tight smile. “Jace is just finishing up a call with his boss, Martin. I reminded him you were next but sometimes they run over.”
“That’s okay,” I said, stopping at her desk. “I was hoping we could talk again.”
“You can have a seat.” She gestured to the chair in front of her.
I glanced at the corner office, feeling unsettled. Olivia picked up her phone and fired off a text message.
“You don’t have to text him. I don’t mind waiting,” I said as I sat across from her.
She scoffed. “Trust me, he pays me to bug the hell out of him. He’s been on time to more meetings in the last week than ever in his life. People are talking about it.”
I chuckled. “Is he usually that bad?”
“According to the rumor mill around here, Jace Cohen is notoriously late,” Olivia said.
Her ponytail swished across her back and her eyes softened in the same way they had the night we met.
My memory had not been doing her justice.
She was far more beautiful than I’d remembered, and it was nice to see her less shaken up than the last time I was here.
“He’s never late when I need him though, so maybe everybody’s just full of crap. ”
“He’s never been late for our meetings either,” I said. “Maybe he’s only late for the people he doesn’t want to see.”
She laughed and looked at her watch. “We’ll see. Two minutes and you’ll find out if your theory is accurate.”
Or if he just doesn’t want to see me anymore.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked tentatively.
I took a deep breath. “I just want to make sure you and I are okay. It’s pretty unexpected that we’d run into each other again, especially like this. I don’t want my presence to be uncomfortable for you.”
“I appreciate you saying that. I’m not uncomfortable around you,” she said, reaching for my hand on top of the desk.
My body buzzed at the contact. It felt like I was waking up the morning after our night together and seeing her again, like the last four years had been a dream.
Only, during that dream, I’d met someone who I was kind of crazy about and he was less than fifty feet away from us right now.
I pulled back my hand and straightened in my seat.
“Kayden,” she said, her voice tight. “When you’re done with Jace, do you think you’d have time to go for a walk with me? You’re the last meeting of the day for him and there is something else we should talk about.”
A million questions flew through my head so quickly I couldn’t even decipher which ones made sense and which ones my brain had concocted with zero evidence to support them.
But one stood out among the rest: Did you also wake up four years ago and feel like it was a mistake not to make each other any promises or stay in touch?
And if you did, how do I reconcile that with the man filling my every waking thought?
Before I could ask anything, Jace’s door swung open—right on time—and my face snapped to his at the sound.
He looked between Olivia and me warily. He had dark circles under his eyes, his beard was a little longer than usual, and his face was paler.
He looked exhausted, like he really had been working late for the last week. I felt bad for doubting him.
He ran a hand through his hair, snapping on a professional smile.
“It’s good to see you, Kayden. Come on in.
” The formality in his voice sent a shiver through me.
I knew why it was there, but I preferred the smooth honey of his voice when we were alone or the way he sighed contentedly when I praised the way he sucked my dick.
“Kayden?” Olivia pulled my attention back to her.
“Yeah, of course, we can do that,” I said, forcing a smile as I remembered her request to talk.
I walked to Jace and stepped into his office, waiting for him to shut the door behind us before turning to face him. I reached out a hand to graze his cheek and he signed contentedly at the contact. “How are you?” I asked.
He took a deep breath and stepped closer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around last week. I’ve been under a lot of stress.”
I scratched softly at his beard. “Is that normal for you? To have weeks like that?”
Jace shook his head. “I’m hoping it’s temporary.” He cupped his hand over mine and held my hand against his face. “I really missed you, Kayden.”
I let out a small breath of relief. I hated that I needed to hear it and that his words of reassurance were so necessary, but they were.
I pulled his face to mine and kissed him gently, letting my tongue softly skim over his bottom lip before pulling back.
“I really missed you too. But it’s okay. Do you want to see my revised plans?”
He nodded sadly, and I desperately wanted to know what was eating at him. He sat down in his usual seat in front of his desk. I decided to wait and focus on the work for now and sat next to him.
I handed him the printed schematics and leaned close as I walked him through the first option.
It allowed for the art therapy space but compromised slightly on the structural integrity, not enough to be concerned with the weather in Boston, but not something I’d recommend to clients living in the Midwest. The second option expanded the footprint of the building slightly, but not enough to compromise the current plan for the outdoor space on the property.
I opened my laptop and set it on the edge of his desk to walk him through the financial projections.
The second option would raise the costs of the project, putting it slightly out of the budget Jace had given me to work with in his original RFP, but it maintained full structural integrity.
I glanced at Jace as I reassured him that option one would be perfectly safe and up to code. So far, Jace had been easy to work with and forthcoming with his thoughts, but now he was staring at me with a faraway look and frowning so much that I was pretty sure he’d zoned out a while ago.
“Are you paying attention?” I asked, as the vacant look in his eyes deepened. I adjusted my glasses. I was way too tired to walk him through all of that again.
Jace blinked at me and a look of longing took over his face. I was used to being the one hiding my emotions since Jace never seemed like he was doing that with me—until now. I always knew where he stood and right now, he was making me guess, which I didn’t like.
“Jace,” I said, snapping him out of it.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you hate both options? Because if you do, you need to just spit it out so we can start over again.”
“I don’t hate them. I’m sorry, I barely even heard what you said.”
“What is going on with you?” I asked, putting my hand on his knee. “Talk to me.”
He looked down at my hand before looking at me with pleading eyes. “I don’t think I can do this right now.”
My heart plummeted to the ground while simultaneously starting to beat out of my chest as a feeling of loss cascaded over me.