Chapter Twenty-Five
After a weekend of nursing a stomach ache over walking out on Reid, Gabriel sat at his desk on Monday morning tired, miserable, and mad at himself.
He wished he could be what Reid wanted. What hedeserved. He’d never wanted to be perfect before, not for anyone, but for Reid…
All Gabriel wanted was to be with him, but he couldn’t do that. Reid didn’t need to be dragged down by someone who couldn’t make the leap to being out.
Reid deserved someone who could be proud of him in public, not just in private.
He’d looked up the award Reid was being given, and it was clearly a big deal. Reid had downplayed it, but that was exactly the kind of thing Reid would do.
This was a huge, important, national award, being given to someone Gabriel cared deeply about, and he couldn’t go and see it happen.
What kind of boyfriend was he?
Aside from completely useless.
Reid deserved better. It was as simple as that.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel caught an email popping up in his inbox. He looked automatically, his heart beating faster at the hope that it was from Reid, but it wasn’t.
It was from Thom Mason, head of Atmos.
The subject line wasJob Offer.
Gabriel swallowed, clicking on it with his heart in his throat.
He skimmed the email, reading the wordspermanent position, long-term contract, your own lab space, head of your department.
And more importantly,Florida.
Florida was a long, long way from Seattle. Pretty much as far away as it was possible to be without leaving the country.
Gabriel chewed on the inside of his cheek, his leg bouncing under the table.
On Friday morning, his answer would have been a polite but firm no, thanks, he liked his current consulting position.
But now…
He’d stayed in Seattle after the shuttle flight because he had no reason to be anywhere else. And then he’d met Reid, and the city he’d just been existing in had started to feel a little more like home, a little more like somewhere he reallywantedto be.
All of that had evaporated over the weekend. Gabriel had never felt so alone, so isolated in his life as he had over the last few days.
He’d felt as though he’d never be happy again, that nothing could ever fix this, that there was no point in trying to do anything other than work.
This sounded temptingly like a fresh start. And if not a fresh start, an important position at a company where the whole culture was to work yourself to death as fast as you could in the pursuit of progress.
Other people might have frowned at that idea, but to Gabriel, it sounded perfect right about now. He could bury himself in work and never emerge again, never have to worry about getting his heart broken, never disappoint anyone.
Love was hard. Rocket science, he could do.
Gabriel paused at the thought.Love.
He was in love with Reid. He’d never felt that before, but he knew it now. Nothing had ever hurt him this much before.
Running away seemed like a really good way of dealing with that. Or rather, not having to deal with that.
His experiment had been a failure due to unforeseen variables. Any self-respecting scientist would scrap the data and start again.
Far, far away.
Let me know if you want to talk about this,the email finished.
Gabriel gnawed on his lower lip, his stomach turning over as he clicked onreply.
It all sounds good,he typed.I’d love to sit down with you and discuss the details.
If he was going to be a coward, he might as well act like one.
