Chapter 20
twenty
. . .
Desmond was not a man who had ever navigated his emotions comfortably.
He preferred they stay in the background of his life and that they came at him one at a time.
He most definitely did not appreciate a dozen different emotions flying at his head all at once.
Deep love and appreciation for Javier mingled with shame over his actions, but with a hefty dose of hope and perhaps even excitement for where things might go next.
Joining those emotions in a mashup that nearly robbed him of the ability to feel anything for a moment was rage at Matthew and his smarmy smile and outrage that the man would have the audacity to interrupt such an important moment in his life.
All those screaming emotions vying for attention gave Desmond a feeling of righteous indignation that made it impossible for him not to say everything on his mind, starting with, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Matthew’s smug look faltered a little. He most definitely was not used to Desmond standing up for himself or fighting back when he was cornered. “My nephew is friends with the birthday boy,” he said, face flushing. “I volunteered to bring him to the party to give my sister a day off.”
“How very noble of you,” Desmond hissed with scathing fury.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to prove or accomplish by butting in like this,” Javier said, the most serious and threatening psychedelic flower that had ever graced an English garden, “but you can turn around and walk away right now.
Matthew’s spite returned, and he glanced over Javier with a derisive sniff. “I don’t take orders from the help.”
The man was relentlessly awful, but for the first time in Desmond’s life, Matthew’s threats seemed ridiculous and immature instead of dire shots that could turn his entire world upside down.
“What do you want from me, Matthew?” he asked, sounding more weary than furious.
“I want you to be humiliated the way you humiliated me,” Matthew snapped in return.
“Oh, is that all,” Javier said in a deadpan manner as he untied the strings of his headdress that were choking him so he could ball the wild thing in his hands.
Matthew glared at him. “This has nothing to do with you. Back off.”
“Honey, this has everything to do with me.” Javier stood as tall as he could. With a face full of garish make-up and glitter, he actually looked terrifying.
So much so that a small girl whose mother had just brought her to the bouncy castle burst into tears.
Desmond sent both mother and daughter an apologetic look, relating to the girl more than he wanted to, then gestured for Matthew to follow him away from the children’s play area to a more adult section of the garden so they could really get into things.
Javier walked by his side, sending him a look that questioned what he was doing, but said he would stand by his side.
Surprisingly, Matthew followed them as well.
As soon as they reached the edge of what looked like a rose garden, stopping beside its thick archway made out of boxwood, Desmond turned to face Matthew.
Before he could do more than open his mouth to say what he should have said a long, long time ago, Matthew launched in with, “This can all go away if you’d just reinstate my allowance.”
Desmond flinched back, eyes going wide. “Are you truly that thick?” he asked.
He’d always seen Matthew as an unfortunate leech whom he had to appease to keep silent, but not only were all the reasons he needed to buy Matthew’s silence gone now, he was beginning to wonder if Matthew wasn’t simply an incompetent boob who thought it was easier to hurt other people than to make something of and for himself.
Matthew did not appreciate being called thick. “I know things about you,” he said by rote. It was the same meaningless drivel he’d been spouting for more than half a year now. “I know exactly how to bring you down.”
“I don’t believe you do,” Desmond said, glancing to Javier, his strength. He looked at Matthew again, a new and relaxing confidence filling him, and said, “Not anymore.”
“Oh, so the insider trading just went away, did it?” Matthew took a step closer to him. “All those facts and figures and insider secrets Angus and I got out of you? They just vanished, did they?”
“You didn’t get anything out of him,” Javier said, crossing his arms with a challenging look.
Matthew snorted. “You have no idea. Or have you not figured out that your special friend here has loose lips after drinking whiskey and having a few orgasms?”
Heat flooded Desmond’s entire body, making him wish he could run away again.
He wouldn’t do it, though. Not this time. It was long past time that he stood his ground and defended himself for doing the best he could at the time.
“I deeply regret allowing you to coerce me into that situation with Angus,” he said, wanting to stare down at his shoes, but maintaining eye contact, squared shoulders, and a firm jaw all the same.
“It will probably take a great deal of therapy for me to unpick why I let those things happen, but none of it was entirely my fault, and I accept that.”
Javier smiled and inched closer to him, resting a hand on the small of his back.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Matthew said with a frown.
“It means I’m sorry that those things happened, but I’m not entirely certain I am the one who deserves the blame in the situation,” Desmond said.
Javier’s smile tightened as he spotted something behind Matthew, at the corner of the rose garden.
He was taller than Desmond and in a different position, so Desmond couldn’t see what he saw.
He wondered what had caught his attention when Javier looked at Matthew with something wild in his eyes and said, “So you admit that you and this Angus guy got Desmond drunk and put him in a compromised position so you could bleed stock tips from him?”
Matthew glared at Javier. “We did what we had to do to get what we needed.”
Two seconds later, Albert Jones emerged from the other side of the trellis arch. “Would you mind repeating that?” he asked, looking like some sort of holy avenger.
Matthew flinched so hard Desmond swore he could see the man’s soul leaving his body. “Mr. Jones. I didn’t see you there.”
“Evidently, you did not,” the man said. “But I would be very interested to know more about how you entrapped my former star partner into revealing insider information that benefited our strongest competitor.”
Matthew turned downright green. “I didn’t do anything. Desmond was the one who—did you say former partner?”
“I quit,” Desmond said, confidence and freedom rushing in like a warm tide on a peaceful summer’s day. “I am no longer employed by Pickering Jones.”
“So you don’t really have anything more to threaten him with, do you, sweetie,” Javier said, giving Matthew the tightest, meanest smile Desmond had ever seen.
“But I—you can’t—”
“I think our legal team will want to hear about this latest development in your case, Mr. Evers,” Albert said. “This is more than just a disciplinary matter now.”
Matthew stood there looking like the ground had just opened up under him. In so many ways, it had. Then he turned tail and bolted away from them, toward the front of the house.
No one chased after him. They didn’t need to.
It wasn’t like he was a thief who had made off with everyone’s jewels.
Whatever Albert planned to do with him legally going forward, Matthew wouldn’t be able to run.
At best, he’d lose whatever job he had now and never be able to work in the financial sector again.
“So that’s what your resignation was about?” Albert asked once Matthew was gone and mostly forgotten. “Fear that Evers would use an embarrassing slip against you?”
It would have been easy for Desmond to say yes, that was it. He knew the light in Albert’s eyes, too. Harry had probably had a long talk with him about all the ways they could woo him back. All would be forgiven and he would probably be offered his job back if he merely answered yes.
That wouldn’t have been the truth, though. At least not the entire truth. The truth was what he’d discovered about himself through Javier, what he’d spent all week thinking about as he’d missed his boyfriend and not his job.
“Er, that’s not it entirely,” he said, a bit sheepish to start, then quickly scolding himself for falling back into old patterns.
He wasn’t ashamed of figuring out he wanted something different for his life than what he’d always assumed he wanted.
He was ready for change. “To be honest, Albert,” he continued, “I think I’m done with finance. ”
“Done with finance?” Albert looked shocked, like not wanting to be part of that world anymore was a foreign concept.
“I’d like to do something else with my life,” he said, smiling cautiously, then fully as he glanced at Javier.
“I’ve spent nearly a decade helping myself,” he went on, “making money for myself and my clients. To be honest, I don’t find it particularly fulfilling. Not like everyone told me it would be.”
“I see,” Albert said, though Desmond wasn’t certain he did see.
“I think I’d like to try my hand at something that makes other people happy, that helps them to discover the things I’ve discovered,” Desmond went on, his thoughts coalescing even as he spoke.
“I’ll admit, that’s a noble sentiment,” Albert said with a sigh. “Do you have any idea what you’ll do?”
Strangely enough, Desmond did have an idea. It was a bizarre idea and it might not actually work, but it was an idea all the same. He smiled at Javier again, since the man he loved would be instrumental in the mad plan hatching in his head, and said, “I have one idea.”
Javier’s brow inched up in surprise, or, at least, as much as it could with all the glitter plastered on his face. Desmond couldn’t wait to tell him what he was thinking.