Her eyes sparkle with mischief. “Alright then, one final question and I’ll take care of everything. Budget?”
Oh, that one’s easy.
“None. The more clothes she has, the longer it’ll take her to pack up if she tries to leave us. That should buy us enough time to fix whatever we fucked up and convince her to stay.”
She barks out a laugh. “If only all men were that wise. Why don’t you have a seat while you wait, and I’ll come get you when everything is bagged up?” She gestures to the chairs outside of the dressing room, promptly turning on her heel and grabbing a cart, loading it like she gets paid commission. I opt for leaning against the checkout counter and scrolling on my phone while waiting for her return, because I’d just feel like a creep sitting over there without waiting for someone inside.
“Mr. Evergreen?” a deep rumble jerks me out of my doomsday scrolling to find Dane approaching, a dress draped over his arm.
“Mr. Nocturne? I didn’t realize you were still in town.”
Dane lifts his arm. “Picking up a gift for my mate before heading home for the day.” He looks toward the front window. “I can see why she’s so fond of this place. I’ve set up a temporary office in town while your mate is handling my… special request. The commute here is shorter, and honestly, I’m thinking of making it permanent.”
Can’t say I blame him. If his mate is as fragile as he’s let on, every time he’s away for business, he must be going crazy with being so far away if there were an emergency. Running a multi-million dollar business alone must suck up nearly all of his free time; I can’t imagine he’d want to lose what little time he gets to spend with his mate on a long commute.
“Speaking of,” I hesitate before just going for it. “It would be incredibly helpful if Ever and I could speak with Sophia. Get a better sense of what’s going on so we can tailor the invention to her needs without so much guesswork.”
The words are barely out of my mouth before he’s shutting me down. “No. I’m sorry, but she’s been disappointed too many times before. Every time I brought a new doctor home, I had to watch her get her hopes up, just for her to wind up depressed in bed for weeks when they couldn’t do anything for her. I won’t put her through that again. Once you have a prototype, we’ll talk.”
It makes it harder for us, but ultimately, I get where he’s coming from. If there was a way I could save Ever from everyone that let her down in the past, I would do it in a heartbeat. We’ll just have to get creative, and fine-tune it after meeting her.
“While you’re here, though, I can give you an update.” He fills me in about the timeline for production of Ever’s console,namely, the controllers, since we’ll need to get ahead of that and stockpile if we have to infuse them each with ‘nanotech’ before release day. As I quickly do the math in my head and balk, I have to wonder if we massively fucked up and got in over our heads. If Dane wants to launch in a little over a year, we’ll need to do hundreds, if not thousands of controllers a day once they’re ready just to handle the estimated preorder numbers.
Maybe now that my powers have increased, I can do them in waves instead of having to touch each individually?
“Don’t worry, I’ll get it done.”
Somehow. Even if it means I don’t sleep for a week. Because likehellam I going to let Ever run herself ragged doing it all herself, no matter how much she doesn’t want to accept help.
Dane dips his head before pinning me with a fierce look. “I want to make my stance clear on the matter, though.My mateis to be your number one priority. I’ll delay the console launch if necessary.”
I swallow, hearing the underlying threat, and nod. “Of course. We’ll do everything we can for Sophia.”
I’m just afraid of what he hid in the fine print of Ever’s contract he can leverage to retaliate if we fail.
Chapter 20
Bellamy
“Here are your glasses babe.”
Your definitely not at all suspicious glasses.
She only tends to wear them when she's gaming or working with small parts for a long time and it strains her eyes, but with the new project she's been wearing them more often, and always has them on hand. Which makes them the perfect place to slip another camera.
Imaaaaaaybe a little obsessed, but in my defense, if my mate didn’t want me to stalk her, she wouldn’t give me so many perfect opportunities.
“Oh, thanks.” Ever clips them to the front of her shirt, which honestly, just makes my case.Shouldshe keep them in a safe case? Absolutely. AndnormallyI’d give her a hard time about it, but it serves my purposes well.
Ledger leads her towards the freshly renovated living room. It was hard keeping her out of the house for an entire day, but I swear, Ledger’s a miracle worker. When he’s determined, he gets shitdone.Built in bookshelves now line all of the walls, half of them filled.
“Holy shit,” she gasps, looking at the new space in awe.
Ledger sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “If you hate it, I can change it back; this isyourhouse, and I didn’t mean to overstep. I just thought-”
She throws herself at him, shutting him up with a fierce kiss. “I love it. Besides, this is technicallyourhouse now, right?” Her cheeks tint pink. “Shit, we haven’t really talked about that, have we? Do you guys even want to move in? We’ve all been tripping over each other and fighting over the bathroom. Should we talk to Ellis about a bigger place, or-”
Now it’s Ledger’s turn to kiss the hell out of her, stopping her anxiety spiral before it spins out of control. After several minutes of this, I glance at Myles and roll my eyes. He fights a smile before clearing his throat and interrupting before Ledger starts stripping our girl before we’re even done showing her the rest of her surprise.
