Page 30 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

He picks it up and starts reading. I wait for the nod that means I'm done for the evening.

It doesn't come.

"The phase three dependencies," he says.

"You've flagged them as medium risk."

"They are medium risk. We have a two-week buffer."

"A buffer that disappears if the client pushes back on the revised go-live." He sets the document down and looks at me directly.

"Flag themhigh."

"Flagging them high triggers an escalation protocol that pulls resources from phase two. The client hasn't pushed back yet. We'd be creating a problem preemptively."

"We'd be managing it preemptively," he says. The tone is final. He's already decided.

"The data doesn't support that call," I say.

He tilts his head slightly — the specific gesture of a man who is choosing to be patient and finding it a stretch.

"The data supports whatever the situation requires. Right now the situation requires high flags on phase three. Change them."

"I disagree."

The room goes quiet. Logan sets the document on the desk with deliberate care. He leans back in his chair and looks at me with the full, unblinking attention he gives things that require management.

"I'm not asking for your opinion on the call, Sutton. I'm telling you what needs to happen. Change the flags."

"You're asking me to misrepresent the risk level because—"

"I'm asking you," he says, his voice dropping in that way it does when he's done being reasonable, "to do your job."

Something hot moves through my chest.

"I am doing my job. I've been doing my job every day for three weeks, at every hour you've needed me, with every resource I have. What I turned in tonight is correct and you know it's correct."

He stands. Not aggressively — just fully. All six-foot-three of him behind that desk, and his expression has shifted into something harder.

"Is there a problem here?"

"Yes," I say. "There is."

He stares at me. I don't think he expected that answer.

"I don't have time for this tonight," he says.

And something in me — some last thread of composure that has been holding all day, through the cold sidewalk and Caleb's clean efficient exit and three more hours of a crisis that isn't mine and a day that has taken everything — simply lets go.

"Of course you don't," I say.

"You never have time for anything that isn't a deliverable. You don't have time for a conversation, you don't have time for basic acknowledgement, you don't have time to treat the people working themselves into the ground for you like they're actually human." My voice is steady. I don't know how.

"You communicate in corrections and commands and you wouldn't recognize a well done if it walked in here and sat across from you. You just raise the bar. Every time. Without a single word that suggests you notice what it costs."

"Sutton." A warning in his voice now.

"I'm not finished." I don't raise my voice. I don't need to.