“Yeah, Mr. Problem.” Evie shrugged. “I mean, it’s still not great, but it squicks me out less than your other name.”
“Mr. P,” Damien muttered to himself, shaking his head. He glanced at his phone. Three new notifications had arrived since he’d last checked it. “I’m not even going to fight you on that one. I’m Mr. Big Fucking Problem, alright.”
“You wanna talk about it?” Harley asked. “There’s another ten minutes before the ceremony starts.”
“Nah.” Damien shook his head. “It’s kind of you to offer, but all I really need to do is put on my big boy pants and take care of business.” Another notification arrived, this one a text from one of the newer account managers on Damien’s team, Peter Sokolov.
Bankes is here looking for trouble. Thought you should know.
“Shit!” Damien clamped his hand over his mouth, then looked apologetically at Harley and Evie. “Sorry. Work stuff.”
Harley frowned. “You sure you don’t wanna talk about it?”
“I’m sure.”
Damien considered turning off his phone, but couldn’t bring himself to follow through. If Bankes was sniffing around, it meant the bastard was actively looking for a way to take Damien down, and Damien would be damned if he let him win. The petty rivalry between them had been going on since Damien had been promoted to senior account manager within a week of Bankes’ own promotion, and ever since, Bankes had been an insufferable tool of a man who’d gladly stab Damien in the front only to stab him in the back when Damien was down.
It was no coincidence that Stendahl had discovered that Geller had gone missing while Damien was thousands of miles from the office.
None at all.
The problem was that there was nothing Damien could do. If Bankes was involved, it meant that there was active sabotage going on. Unless Damien was physically on the premises to talk Stendahl down from the ledge, shit was going to go south. It’d be easy for Bankes, who was in New York, and who was the slimiest smooth talker to ever ooze through the Financial District, to take Stendahl off his hands. Once he did, he’d effectively sink Damien’s career… unless Damien could intervene.
It was a steep price to pay. To win Stendahl’s trust and keep him from Bankes’ evil clutches, Damien would have to cut his vacation short and go back to New York, leaving Fiji—and those in it—behind.
Shit.
Shit, shitty shit shit.
If he’d been anywhere else, Damien would have let loose a roar of frustration and slammed his fist into a wall, but out here, the only wall around was Harley, and as enraged as Damien was, he still recognized that punching a retired SEAL was the mother of all bad ideas.
“Well, if you’re good, mind if we sit with you?” Harley gestured to the two empty seats next to Damien. “Evie’s planning to go off and sit with Shep, so it’ll just be me and Simon.”
A sprig of irritation pushed its way through Damien’s rage and frustration. No, Harley couldn’t sit with him. If he had to jet back to New York on the next available flight, that meant he had, at most, a day left to spend with Matthew—the seat next to him should belong to him.
Only, it didn’t.
It couldn’t.
Bankes was squeezing him from one side, and the situation with Matthew was squeezing him from the other. Together, they trapped him in place and wrested control out of his hands. All Damien could do was grit his teeth and watch as his life unraveled.
Frustrated and forlorn, Damien stole a glance at the section of chairs across the aisle from where he sat. Matthew was there with his father and Alex, looking like a dream in his black suit jacket and white shirt. Prior to that moment, Damien had never seen him in formal wear, and his thoughts drifted from fantasies of Matthew in too-long tees that barely hid his hardened cock to a soirée where Matthew was his plus one, his round, innocent eyes juxtaposed by the innate maturity of a finely tailored suit. Through the window of a glassy Manhattan sky-rise they’d watch the twinkling city lights side by side. Matthew, ever enthusiastic, would make a remark that would fill Damien’s heart, and then—
“Knot?” Harley asked uncertainly. “You okay? You’re spacing out.”
“I’m fine.” Damien blinked and reeled himself back in from the impossible. As he went to look away, Matthew glanced over his shoulder and met Damien’s eyes. All at once, Damien’s anger vanished. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the world. There was a glimmer in Matthew’s eyes, both shy and full of longing, that pierced Damien’s heart with precision so sharp, Damien didn’t feel the pain.
No, he wasn’t fine. He was far from fine. Fine was the furthest thing from his current state of being.
What he’d found in Matthew, life clawed back from him. Damien couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so taken with a boy.
If this was how he felt after a single night, what would he feel after a week?
A month?
A year?
It was a curse that he’d come all this way to find what he’d spent years looking for, only to know he could never make it work. When Matthew’s connection to Gwynn hadn’t been enough to keep them apart, New York had come knocking. It stole joy from Damien with every chance it got.
