“You’re joking.” Calder was now on the other side of the counter from where we stood. Both of them were radiating testosterone-fueled peacocking, as if they were about to challenge each other to a duel. I stood where I was, looking from one to the other. I wasn’t sure that anything I said would make a difference.
Plus, I was still recovering from the shock of being caught. The entire atmosphere had completely changed in a matter of seconds.
“No,” Ash asserted, squaring his shoulders. “You’re the top of the class, right? Best of the best? You’d pick up my slack just to save your own ego.”
“That’s no excuse,” Calder answered, slamming his hand on the counter. “You can’t expect me to do your job for you. Are you going to do the same thing when I’m a lieutenant? Think you can just be all buddy-buddy? That’s not how this works. Youhaveto follow the ranks.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re just so much better than the rest of us, aren’t you?” Ash rolled his eyes. Calder’s anger didn’t seem to reach him, but it was possible that Ash had simply decided to force down every possible emotion that he could be feeling.
“Guys,” I tried, but they both completely ignored me.
“If you actually applied yourself, maybe you’d be in my position,” Calder hissed, something that he must have wanted to say for a long time. “But you just pretend not to care, and that’s going to be your downfall.”
“Maybe it’s not pretense,” Ash answered flippantly. “Maybe I actually just…don’t care.”
“Bullshit,” Calder insisted, now leaning forward over the counter. “Something has been bugging you since this call started, and you’re running away from it instead of facing it. What’s going on with you, huh?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” This time, Ash had an edge to his voice. It was clear that he didn’t want Calder prying any further than he already had.
Calder, however, didn’t look like he was going to let up. “Fine, deny it, that doesn’t matter. Frankly, you’re letting your personal life get in the way of the job, and you know better. You screw up, the rest of us will pay for it.”
“Whatever,” Ash answered, though I could hear something more than apathy in his tone. “Nothing happened. Nobody got hurt. Nothing’s wrong. You’re overreacting, and that’s just stupid.”
“Overreacting?” Calder’s voice rose in volume. “This time, we were fine. Next time? We won’t be. Is it Rhea? Is that it? She’s so distracting that you can’t even finish your admin before you have to get your dick wet?”
I raised my eyebrows at that, but neither of them seemed to notice. It was like I wasn’t even there at all. It probably wasn’t even really about me, at the very core of it, but I felt offended anyway. Their argument seemed to be escalating at this point, far beyond whatever it was that they were initially bickering about.
“That’swhat you think?” Ash snapped back, now leaning forward too. As naked as he was, his anger was turning me on more than I expected.
“It is.” Calder’s voice was firm and convinced. “I think you’ve been blinded by pussy, and you’re letting it affect the job.”
The sentence dropped into a heavy, thick silence. I didn’t really appreciate the way Calder was talking about me, but I figured that it wasn’t meant to be targeted that way. It was likely more to hurt Ash than anything else; though I didn’t want them to be fighting like this.
It felt as if something was boiling over, something that I’d been worried about all along. Maybe Beck could’ve calmed the situation down, or maybe him being here would have made it worse. I wasn’t sure, but at the same time, I had no idea what exactlyIcould do about it either. They didn’t seem like they were going to listen to me, but how far could I let this go on? At some point, I really had to try to intervene. I didn’t want them to get into a real fight.
But maybe they needed to get all of this off their chests, too. Maybe it would help to have an argument and then a real talkafterward. I didn’t know, it seemed like it was something that sometimes helped men.
“Seriously, you’ve got it all wrong.” Ash’s words sliced harshly through the quiet. “But I’m not surprised. You don’t pay attention to anything except your next promotion. Everything’s about Calder.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?” Calder scoffed, now crossing his arms, too. The more they argued, the more they closed themselves off. “You refuse to talk, you refuse to sort yourself out, all you do is put the entire team in more and more danger, and you don’t care.”
“Nobody was in danger tonight,” Ash pointed out insistently. “It’s not like anything exploded or the whole world was on fire. It was a standard call. You’re acting like I abandoned you in the apocalypse.”
“And if it isn’t a standard call next time?” Calder’s voice turned even darker. “We can’t trust you. Rhea can’t trust you. You are not the right man for her.”
“Okay, wait, seriously,” I insisted this time, pushing Ash out of my way so that I was standing against the counter between them. “You both need to stop this before you say something you’re really going to regret.”
Now, the two of them looked over at me, as if they were realizing I was there for the first time. They didn’t say anything, and I took a deep breath before I decided to keep talking. Maybe this was the right time to voice Jackie’s advice, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, I was going to give it a shot. It couldn’t really get much worse than it already had.
“Ash is the man for me,” I announced, watching as Calder’s jaw tightened and Ash’s eyes lit up. “But so are you, Calder. And so is Beck.”
The declaration dropped like a heavy rock, and both of them raised their eyebrows at me. I’d expected that. I waited for them to say something, but as I did, the atmosphere only grew thicker, and I could tell that they were both confused and disappointed.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Calder finally breathed, though his harsh tone had almost completely disappeared. “You’re not going to choose?”
I thought about it again, but I came to the same conclusion in my mind. They were all still even, and I didn’t think that there was any chance that any one of them would pull ahead of the others. That meant that whatever happened now, I had to put my idea forward and hope for the best.
“No,” I eventually answered after a long, tense silence. “I can’t. You’reallthe one. And to be honest, I don’t think that should be such a big problem.”
