Jensen stareddown at his phone for another moment before rushing out of the empty conference room and back to his desk. His heart beat fast in his ears, blocking out every other sound in the crowded office.
Never once had he heard Daniel so upset. So defeated. Jensen couldn’t imagine what he was going through. He knew Daniel was struggling with money and his job, but it seemed like everything was crashing down on top of him. And Jensen wasn’t there. He wasn’t there to help him get his car into a shop or drive him to work or hold him and tell him it would be okay. And that was unacceptable.
Jensen couldn’t stomach being so far away from Daniel anymore. Regardless of a potential position with Larsson and Fowl or any other firms, he had to move to Sevier. He would take on freelance jobs until he found something he enjoyed.
Ignoring all the other browsers and emails and software open on the monitor, he pulled up flights leaving out of San Francisco. There were a couple slated for late that night or in the morning, but that wouldn’t do. He had to get there as soon as possible, which left one option that would be boarding in just under two hours. The drive from the office would take at least a half hour iftraffic behaved. More than likely, it would take an entire hour to get to the airport, leaving him no time to go home and pack. Or finish out his workday.
Jensen selected the flight, entered in his information, and bought it without thought; the anxiety and second-guessing that usually accompanied his every decision was blessedly absent, overruled by his worry for Daniel.
“Wyatt,” Jensen said, his face turned toward his assistant’s cubicle while he quickly shut down his laptop and began gathering his things. “I’m leaving and probably won’t be in for the rest of the week.”
“Everything all right?”
He turned the volume on his phone up, then slipped it into his pocket. “I’m flying out to Sevier to see Daniel.”
“Uh.” Wyatt stood from his seat. “What about the Garner project? Mendes said we need to get the revisions finished and sent off by Wednesday.”
“I don’t care about the project,” Jensen admitted, though Wyatt was probably more than aware of this fact after his outburst on Friday.
Wyatt stared at him with wide eyes, speechless.
“I’ll bring my laptop and see what I can do,” he muttered. While he didn’t care about the project, Wyatt’s performance review and bonus relied on Jensen finishing it. He might be ready to take a match to his life, but he refused to take his assistant down with him.
Since there wasn’t much else to say, Jensen picked up his laptop and started toward his boss’s office with long strides. He only had to weave through a few displeasingly beige rows of cubicles and dodge a couple coworkers that were standing around talking before he stood in the doorway and looked at Mendes.
“I’m taking the week off.”
His boss looked up at him, his pen paused where it was marking up a document. “What?”
“I’m leaving town for the week. I have my laptop, though, so?—”
“The hell you are,” Mendes interrupted, his face turning red. “You are going back to your desk and finishing the job I pay you to do.”
Jensen’s palms started to sweat from the heat in his boss’s tone. “I have a plane to catch. But, like I was saying, I’ll bring my laptop and see what I can get done.”
“A plane?” Mendes spluttered. “It’s the middle of the workday, and you’re required to be here. I suggest you sit back down and get to work or our next conversation will have HR involved.”
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Jensen realized this was the moment he had to make a decision. Stay or go.
He’d imagined quitting his job countless times. Whenever a promised project disappeared, he’d storm through his house, slamming cupboards and muttering to himself about how he was going to leave the firm behind.
The inside of his car had heard endless rants and one-sided conversations where he told his boss exactly what he could do with his feedback on Jensen’s work.
His parents had patiently listened to his lists of all the things he hated about his job over many dinners.
But he’d never had the balls to actually bring up his issues inside the glass prison. During the sporadic one-on-one meetings he had with his boss, he kept his mouth shut about his grievances so he could escape the suffocating room faster. He even left neutral responses on the annual employee survey.
And look at where that had gotten him. Jensen had nothing to show for his compliance and restraint except for a job he dreaded going to and a thousand miles between him and Daniel.
He wasn’t going to get the things he wanted in life by being under Mendes’s heel. No amount of hard work was going to lead to any of the things he wanted. Not when that hard work was done for someone else. No, it was finally time for Jensen to put in that effort and work for himself.
Even if that meant … not working.
If you never take risks, you’ll never gain anything.His father’s words came back to him, cutting through the nerves fluttering in his stomach and the weight in the back of his throat.
Thiswashis opportunity to change where his life was headed. And at the moment, the only thing he wasn’t okay risking was his future in Sevier. His future with Daniel. His future at a job that allowed him to create. Ultimately, he couldn’t risk his future happiness.
He would give up all his comfort for Daniel. Except that wasn’t quite true. Daniel had become his comfort. What used to be carefully laid plans, a home of quiet solitude, and skirting social interactions had morphed into a man with winter eyes, soft hair, and determination to survive. Jensen would navigate airports, loud rooms, and unfamiliar situations for Daniel. He couldn’t not. Not when home and comfort and all the most wonderful things in the world were personified at his side.
