“I know you said not to interrupt unless we had a fire. Well—” The man pauses, clearly nervous. “It’s not exactly a fire, but it is an emergency.”
His dark eyes flick between Nero and me, as if he’s unsure whether he should continue speaking with me present. I’m about to excuse myself to give Nero privacy when he speaks.
“Get on with it, Icarus.”
The order sounds a bit rude, but it’s not as though I can form an opinion about what kind of boss Nero is when today is—literally—the first time I’m seeing him outside our bubble.
I’ve seen him with the guys plenty of times, of course—especially this week, since Nero showed up at the shop at closing time every day.
Some days, we went on proper couple dates. On others, we went straight to my place and got lost in banal conversations and maddening touches. Sometimes we met the guys on purpose; other times, we were surprised by them crashing our plans one way or another.
And since, despite Nero’s constant complaints, they keep showing up, I’m assuming this is just the four of them’s modus operandi. Nero and Atlas are always the ones complaining about Drako’s and Apollo’s supposed bad behavior, while those two are the ones committed to behaving in ways worthy of constant complaint.
I’m convinced those complaints have far more to do with the pleasure Nero and Atlas take in making them than with their real opinions about how Drako and Apollo live. I don’t think the more serious friends find the other two nearly as inconvenient as they like to pretend.
I certainly don’t. I like the guys’ company—watching their dynamic and, most of all, feeling like part of it. It’s funny how, overnight, they simply started treating me like some kind of younger sister.
The Nero who fills my days is the same one who’s always surrounded by his friends. And although I don’t yet have a formed opinion about Nero-the-boss, one thing is already very clear: he’s not the same lighthearted, selectively grumpy man who’s been sharing my bed.
But given the number of things he has to deal with here, I don’t blame him.
In the few hours I’ve spent at the export company, I’ve seen very little of the processes behind Nero’s work—and still, I already feel overwhelmed.
I never wanted a desk job. I’d be lying if I said I chose nursing for romantic reasons. One of the main factors in my decision was that it’s a profession that allows me to work anywhere—after all, everyone needs hospitals.
That wasn’t all, though. I always saw myself doing something that escaped routine, that was different every day, and—above all—that kept my body as active as my mind. And although the first time I stepped into an emergency room as a professional rather than a patient I thought maybe I’d taken those desires a bit too literally, I don’t regret my choice.
“The safety evaluation of the new machinery was postponed, and if—”
“And if we can’t move it back to the original date, we’ll have to suspend operations again. Fuck,” Nero cuts Icarus off, finishing the thought himself. The lightness and desire that were on his face seconds ago evaporate in an instant.
Is it wrong that I find this just as arousing as my fantasy of Nero-the-cotton-farmer?
God, I really am becoming a monster.
I shake my head, pushing the naughty thoughts away and focusing again on the man in front of me. I can almost see the gears turning inside his head.
He turns to me, his face softening just a fraction before the words leave his lips.
“I need to go back to my office to deal with this. Will you keep me company?”
“Of course.”
***
“If I were you, I wouldn’t sit there,” Drako says in my ear as I’m about to lower myself into an armchair in Atlas and Apollo’s apartment.
Apartmentis actually a very modest word. The twins live in the penthouse of one of Khione’s few luxury buildings, and they invited me to see it when they ran into me in the export company’s corridors this afternoon.
After Nero’s usual round of complaints about his intrusive friends, he agreed to do what I wanted. I straighten up, stand, and walk toward a sofa.
When I look at Drako, he’s already watching me. He shakes his head side to side in a silent no, and I scan the room, looking for somewhere to sit—but with every step I take toward a sofa, chair, or armchair, Drako shakes his head again.
“Why are you standing?” Nero asks, coming back from the kitchen with two glasses of water.
I look over his shoulder to check whether Atlas and Apollo are paying attention anywhere near us, but they’re far enough from the living room not to hear my next words.
“Drako said it wasn’t a good idea for me to sit on any of the sofas, chairs, or armchairs,” I whisper, and Nero’s eyes go straight to his friend.
