Epilogue #2
The others look up, confused, and Mace leaves everything he’s doing to come our way. Without missing a beat, he opens his arms and pulls us both into his embrace, squeezing us together. Amused, I look up at Lex, who stares ahead, seemingly unfazed.
“How dare you two go away for so long?!” Mason scolds after he’s released us. “Ya’ll know I need a regular dose of my favorite ship.”
“Sorry, we needed some time for ourselves.”
“Girl, if I were either of you, I’d take a whole-ass year to get it out of my system. At this point, I expected you to come back pregnant and make an uncle out of me. Mr. Lex, what have you been doing this whole time?!” he scolds, looking at Lex but pointing at my unpregnant belly.
Lex takes a breath before he says, “Need I remind you I’m your boss again, Mason?”
Mace rolls his eyes before sassily answering, “Sorry, I’ll need a period of adjustment, Mr. Bossman.”
“Adjust faster,” Lex responds with cold seriousness.
Mason sighs and mumbles to me, “Your boyfriend is an ass.”
I shrug. “You know what they say: you are what you eat.”
The moment the words are out, I slap my hand over my mouth and turn to Lex with wide eyes. I don’t even need to look at Mason to know he is gawking.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt. “I think I’ll need a period of adjustment too.”
“And you need to adjust even faster than Mason,” Lex grumbles, unamused by my oversharing.
Well, it wouldn’t really be a first day for me if I didn’t let out an incredibly embarrassing joke in front of everyone, right? At least this time I didn’t talk about my “beard.”
The others have joined us, and Steven, Joseph, and Brian greet us with an enthusiasm that almost matches Mason’s. Oli waits for his turn, and I give him a long, tight, and intense hug. Lex also takes him in his arms, and they pat each other’s backs.
While Lex speaks with the guys, Oli walks me to a quiet side of the room. “So, I give you the ABCs of hacking, and you then proceed to dismantle a sex trafficking crime ring that involves some of the most influential people in the country?”
I wince. “Lex helped with that one. A lot. And it wasn’t so much hacking, it was more … infiltrating.”
He shakes his head with a chuckle. “You are insane. And so is he. I’m glad you two found each other.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m not completely sure his crazy matches my crazy, but I’ll get him there.”
Oli laughs again.
We join the others, and barely five minutes in, Lex says, “We need to go meet with Kevin. We’ll come back.”
I’d love to stay with my old crew a little longer, but I get why Lex would want to spend more time with his best friend. And I’m very curious to see the new floor and what it’ll look like.
Once we’re up there, we’re each given a helmet, nonnegotiable, and Kevin grabs a roll that has the floor plans on it. He walks us around the floor, explaining the future layout. The place is loud and swarming with workers, but it looks already well-advanced, so it shouldn’t take too long.
“So, over here, we’ll open the floor and make an auditorium.
That way, we can have more events with outsiders and show them what we do here.
It’s my understanding that people have decided we’d use it for a company movie night once a month, for team-building purposes.
They’re trying to decide which movie we should watch first.”
“The Shining,” I say immediately.
“Uh … Why?”
“I still haven’t gotten around to showing it to Lex.”
“What have you been doing all this time?!” Kevin wonders, turning around to look at us.
“We’ve been taking down a trafficking ring. And having tons of sex,” I add with a shrug.
This time, Lex doesn’t take offense like he did with Mason, but nods instead.
“Okay, fair enough,” Kevin says before resuming the tour.
From what he’s describing, this floor will be amazing.
He’s using a big chunk of the profits Kelex has made to invest in an environment where his employees will flourish.
The goal here isn’t only to expand, but also to offer an even better quality of work life to everyone.
That’s why he’s already starting the negotiations for the floor three levels below us, under the main one.
“And this,” he says proudly, having shown us everything else, “is my future office. That one’s yours, Lex. South-facing this time, so we’ll have sun all day.”
“However much we get in Seattle,” Lex replies.
“Is that a third office?” I wonder, pointing at a similar space next to theirs.
“Oh, yes. It’s for our third partner.”
Okay, that I didn’t know about. “A third … partner? Did you bring on someone new while we were away?”
“No,” Kev says.
“Is it Evora? Is she joining Kelex after all?”
“No.”
There’s something impish about the way he’s acting, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I turn to Lex, hoping I can get a straight answer from him. “Who is it?” I ask.
“Hm, the thing is, your app has launched Kelex into the stratosphere. It opened doors we never thought were even within our reach, and we felt like you got cheated with the sale. Though to be fair, we never intended to cheat you out of what was rightfully yours.”
Kevin takes over, saying, “We merely miscalculated how much your app would bring us.”
I frown, still confused. “I’m very happy with the money I made then, and the stock and everything. I don’t feel cheated.”
“Well, that’s commendable of you, doll,” Kev says, “but I do feel bad about it.”
“That’s why we thought we would make you a partner. We’ll transfer you some shares, and we’ll become equal partners.”
“A three-way partnership,” Kev concludes before grimacing. “Is it me, or did that sound dirty?”
I stare at them—one, then the other—at least ten times, trying to process all that information. They’re waiting for my answer with bated breath, genuinely hopeful for my agreement.
“You want me to become a Kelex partner,” I say.
“Yes. We can’t really change the name because it would be confusing. Sorry about that. But if you insist on it, we could go with something like Kelexrea or whatever.”
“I don’t insist on it,” I stop him. Then I repeat, “You want me to become a partner.”
Kevin chuckles. “Yes.”
I turn to Lex, wondering how long he’s been keeping that from me. There are three offices being built, it’s on the floor plan, it was asked of the architect … It has to have been going on for months.
“Was this your idea?” I ask my half-fiancé.
“No, it was Kevin’s suggestion. But I very much agreed with it.”
I let out a breathy uh. “So, I sleep with one of the bosses, get amazing opportunities, don’t show up to work for literal months, and when I come back, I make partner? Talk about being fast-tracked. People will gossip.”
“Again, it was Kevin’s idea. And as far as I know, you never slept with him.”
“It was just that one time,” Kevin jokes.
Lex sends him a dangerous glare, then his focus returns to me. “Do you want to become a partner, Andrea?”
“A three-way with us,” Kev insists.
Again, I don’t answer right away, thinking about everything it implies.
I’d be the nerds’ boss. I’d be everyone’s boss.
Am I even boss material? I’m not sure. But then, these two are, so they could do the boss things, and I’d hang out with the guys in the Troll’s Lair when my south-facing office feels too lonely.
Jesus, am I really considering this? Joining Lex and Kev, becoming an equal partner with them?
“If it helps with the internal battle you’re waging,” Kev says, “just know the revenue from your app bought this floor and the construction. And it’ll pay for the fourth floor, too. Just a thought.”
Yeah, okay. Maybe I deserve this partnership thing. It’s not like I need the revenue from it. I have plenty of my own money, and I’ll end up being married to a literal billionaire one day. It’s more for the … posterity.
“If I were to become an equal partner,” I say carefully. They practically drink my words, hanging on them. “If that happens, Kevin can never call it a three-way again.”
Lex smiles, already knowing what this means, while Kev thinks about my demand for a moment. About ten seconds in, the latter gives in. “Yeah, okay. No more three-ways.”
“Does this mean you’re in?” Lex asks.
“It means I’m very strongly considering it. I’ll need to see some paperwork, know the exact terms of our partnership, some insurances … And I’ll probably have a thousand questions.”
“But you’re in,” Lex insists.
“I think I am, yes.”
Kevin lets out a joyful, “Hell yeah!” while Lex walks up the few feet that separate us to take me in his arms. He gives me a long and proud kiss, then releases me. Kevin doesn’t fail to hug me, too, but his kiss lands on my flushed cheek.
Once the effusion has died down, I ask, “What if I’d said no? You’d have an extra office for nothing.”
“I knew you’d say yes.”
“You did?”
“Well, Lex knew he could convince you to say yes.”
I look up at Lex with a questioning glance. “We’ve already established I can’t say no to you,” he explains, “but I’m pretty sure you can’t say no to me if I ask nicely enough.”
“That’s probably true,” I chuckle. My eyes travel to the third office, the one that’ll be mine, next to Lex’s. “Until all this is finished, how do we organize? Where do I work from?”
“You can settle anywhere you want, you can be a free electron and move desks all the time, anything, really,” Kevin answers. “You’re literally the boss.”
“Or you can come work in my office for now,” Lex suggests. “Like old times.”
Okay, I like that. A mix of that and downstairs, with the nerds.
“Are you okay with that?”
Staring straight into his beautiful eyes, I grin and say, “It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”
Our second first day at Kelex hasn’t been very productive. There was a lot of chatting, reminiscing, and acclimating. Andrea and I have worked for an hour at most, and it was spent catching up with everything the dev team worked on during our absence.