“Holy shit. Well, we need to have a yacht party!” His phone was in his hand in a flash, and I lost my moment to try and decipher his reaction.
“What are you doing?” I asked warily.
“I’m checking the calendar. I fly to California tomorrow, and I’ll be gone for a fortnight, but after that … yep! We’re christening the yacht!”
“I don’t?—”
“It’s happening. I’ll organise everything, I promise!” Atlas nudged Liv with his elbow. “Liv’ll help me, won’t you, cupcake?”
Lucian stiffened beside me, turning away from the window to findLiv. I followed his gaze. Liv smiled and nodded at Atlas. “If Henry is okay with that?” She looked my way.
With a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I shrugged. “I suppose seagoing vessels do need a christening.”
Atlas hooted. “Yes! It’s happening! I’ll email you from Cali, Liv, and we’ll make it the hottest party Sydney has ever seen.” He tilted his phone in my direction. “I gotta dip. I’ll see you in a fortnight, ready for a rager!”
With that, he tucked his phone away, ran a hand through his horrific hairstyle and sauntered out of my office.
I let out a long breath. “Liv, you should go. It’s Saturday, and the update is finalised now. Go enjoy your weekend.”
Liv shrugged. “I don’t mind being here.” Her eyes flitted away from me then back again. “Uh, there were a couple of calls, while you were finalising the update. Cadence wants to know if you have time for a meeting next week?”
Lucian made a disgruntled sound behind me, which I ignored. “I suppose she wants to discuss advertising again?”
Liv shrugged. “She didn’t mention that. Just said she wanted to catch up with an old friend.”
“Old friend …” Lucian snarled under his breath.
I sighed. “I’ll deal with that next week. Was that all?”
Liv gnawed on her lip. “Your … uh … your dad called too. I told him you were out of the country, like you said to.”
I nodded. “Good. And I’ll continue to be out of the country whenever he calls.”
“Of course, Henry.” Liv turned for the door. “Did you, um, want me to order lunch in for you both, before I go?” She directed the question to Lucian, who gave an odd half-shrug.
“I think I’ll go eat with Henry,” he mumbled.
Liv hovered in the doorway for a moment too long before she trotted off, and Lucian turned back to watch the yacht being berthed. “We should probably get down there to take possession of your new home.”
Shaking off the lingering tension in the atmosphere, I headed to my desk, took two pieces of gum from the pack I kept in my drawer and tossed them into my mouth.
I took a quick glance at my screen, checking that the glitch-remedying update had been pushed to all devices. It was showing ninety-eight percent. I tapped the desk, chewing vigorously on the gum until that bar hit one hundred.
“Alright, let’s go,” I told Lucian, locking my computer before grabbing my satchel and heading towards the lifts. Beau was there, scrolling mindlessly. I knew I should speak to him about the error in his code, but my head was filled with having to move my belongings into my new home and the fact that said home was going to be invaded by whoever Atlas decided to invite to this yacht christening party he’d foisted on me.
I was out of energy for dealing with another confrontation, so when the lift pinged and Beau stepped inside, I loitered behind.
“We’ll get the next one,” I murmured when Lucian went to follow the coder in. He grunted but stepped back to his spot slightly behind me.
“You know you don’t have to give in to every single one of Atlas’s dumbarse demands, right?” Lucian asked as I pressed the down button once Beau was well and truly gone.
“It won’t be that bad.”
Lucian snorted. “You’ve never been good at masking your facial expressions, Bax. And when he said, ‘yacht party’, you looked like he’d told you that you were going to be hosting a Satanic cat-killing ritual.”
I turned my horrified expression towards him. His mouth curled up at one corner, and he pointed at me. “Yes! That’s the one!”
“He’s not one to back down when he gets an idea in his head,” I muttered as the lift arrived, and we stepped inside. “Sometimes it’s less stressful to endure his plans than to try and stop him from making them.”
