“Shit.”Atticus set his water bottle on the table.“Sorry, man.I totally forgot.”
“Forgot?Or just didn’t give a shit?”Slade accused, his gaze shifting to Archer.“Too busy laughin’ it up with him?”
“Don’t be like that,” Atticus said, his good mood turning sour quickly.
“Be like what?”Slade snapped.
Before he could embarrass him more, Atticus pushed Slade back, out of the conference room.“Outside.Now.”
“What?You don’t want him to hear that—”
Atticus cut him off with another shove toward the door.
“Seriously, Slade?This is where we work.”
“Where we’resupposedto work,” Slade argued.“Looks to me like—”
“The fuck it does,” Atticus bit out, cutting him off.“You’ve got to stop this shit.You know good and damn well that I’m workin’.Nothin’ else.Archer is my partner.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t be,” Slade said, eyes narrowed.“Maybe you should ask Reese to reassign you.”
Atticus flinched back, surprised.“What?”
“Ask Reese to reassign you,” Slade repeated.
“What the fuck for?”
“Let Archer work with Evan.You can partner with me.”
“Slade, be serious.”
“What?You don’t want to partner with me?”
“No, I don’t,” he told him.
If he’d slapped Slade across the face, he probably wouldn’t have looked as pained as he did right then.
Figuring it was a good time to explain, Atticus toned down his anger and took a step closer.“Look.We live together and work together.I think it’s safe to say that partnering would be pushin’ it a bit.”
“Brantley and Reese do it, why can’t we?”Slade countered.
While Atticus didn’t agree that the partner thing worked like that all the time, he couldn’t argue because Slade had a point.
“It obviously works for some people.But not everyone.And I happen to like comin’ home and listening to you talk about your day.If we were partners, I wouldn’t get that.”
Slade’s eyebrows unknotted, his expression losing some of the harsh lines.“For real?”
“Yes.”Atticus took a breath, let it out, grateful they’d avoided a nuclear meltdown.
“Do you mean that?”
Atticus wished he knew what set Slade down this path of intense insecurity.Someone had done a number on him at some point.
“Of course I do.”
At least he wanted to.At the moment, Atticus was having serious doubts about where this was going.He thought Slade was on the same page with the casual thing.He’d said he was.But here, now… That little explosion said otherwise.He wished he could say this was out of character for Slade, but the guy was prone to intense highs and devastating lows.And the jealousy … it seemed to manifest, growing in intensity with each encounter.
Taking a deep breath, Atticus stood tall.“I’m sorry about dinner.I honestly forgot.”
