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If I could properly grind my teeth without the horrible scraping noise, I would have. Andrew and I didn’t see eye to eye often, and especially not on days like today when I found it hard to sink myself into my work.
I shot him a warning glare as I clicked my pen again. “Continue, Andrew.”
————
The sun had slipped behind the building opposite ours by the time I made it back to my office. For once, I was glad for it—the building headache between my temples really didn’t want to deal with the harsh rays of light or having to go to each of the five massive windows to manually shut the sliding blinds.
Making a mental note to install automatic ones, I dropped my laptop onto my desk and collapsed into the leather chair, scrubbing my face with the palms of my hands.
I had to get her out of my fucking head.
I couldn’t stop replaying her saying my name on a loop, couldn’t get the image of her in that goddamn dress out of my head. The way she’d looked on that stage, lit up like a mirror ball,or the way she’d looked with her legs just slightly spread and her hand in my hair, my mouth devouring her.
God, I could practically taste her.
I pulled at the seam where the legs of my slacks met, giving myself just a little extra room to deal with the minor, uncontrollable swelling of my cock. There was zero chance of me getting anything noteworthy done today.
I nearly jumped at the crackle of the speaker on my desk. “Hey, it’s Michael. Can you buzz me in?”
Groaning out an ounce of my frustration in the one bit of privacy I had left, I reluctantly pressed the button on the side of the speaker that unlocked my personal portion of the forty-fourth floor. It wasn’t that I didn’twantto see Michael. I just didn’t have the energy to keep my mind from wandering any more than it already was, and I didn’t necessarily want to inevitably dump my bad mood on one of my closest friends.
But I also knew myself. I could hold things together in front of most people, including my son—but not Michael. He knew me too well.
“Heard what happened with Andrew,” Michael said as he slipped through the door. It shut behind him automatically, and a second after I pressed the little button beneath the top of my desk, it locked. “Either someone’s royally pissed you off today, or something’s going on with Lucas.”
“Would you believe it’s neither?”
Sharp, brown eyes met mine across the room. “Unless you’re the person who pissed yourself off, then no.”
He looked far too casually dressed for the office, but as he walked across the floor and slumped down into the wingback, black leather chair across from my desk, I bit my tongue. It wasn’tbad, but Michael had a habit of dressing in a way that teetered betweencasualandbusiness casual. At least he was wearing slacks today, even if it was with a flannel shirt.
“So that’s what it is,” he chuckled.
“Just because I didn’t reply to that doesn’t mean it’s automatically true,” I scoffed. The creak from my chair as I leaned back filled the annoyed silence he shot in my direction, and I made a mental note to have someone grease the hardware on it.
Michael’s eyes narrowed, his dark brows knitting together.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Goddamn, you really are in a mood.” His fingers twisted around the end of his sleeve and popped the button. He began to roll it up, and I could have sworn a vein in my forehead nearly burst. “Would it make you feel better to know that we just got confirmation from Tony Robbins?”
“In all honesty, I don’t give a fuck about Tony Robins,” I snapped. “My issue with Andrew wasn’t because I was worried he wouldn’t confirm. It was because Andrew, I thought, was assuming confirmation without having it.”
“But that wasn’t the issue, was it?” Michael chuckled. “Not really, at least. If it was, you would have been fine when you heard otherwise.”
“Do we have to do this? We could just go out for a late lunch and talk about literally anything other than work,” I offered.
He pushed a hand through his mop of curly black hair. He’d started graying at his temples, but that seemed to be the only lighter bit of hair that had sprung up—a stark contrast to the lighter ones that peppered my head. “I have a sinking feeling you’d be just as snippy anywhere else. So why don’t you justtalkabout it, get it off your chest, and get on with it?”
“You’re not my therapist.”
“Oh, you finally got one?” he laughed. “I’ve been saying foryears?—”
“Don’t.” I steeled my jaw as I met his gaze across the desk.
He was my closest friend. My confidant. I could tell him anything, could trust him to the moon and back, but he got on my fucking nerves sometimes—mostly on days like today when I couldn’t see past the cloud that plagued me. But I could talk to him. I knew that and so did he, and on top of that, I knew damn well he wouldn’t leave my office until I actually spoke to him instead of jabbing at him. I could give him half of the truth.
“Lucas asked me this morning if I could try to work less,” I sighed. Michael’s mouth formed the shape of a silentoh.“He’s at that age where things are starting to make more and more sense to him, and with one parent permanently out of the picture, my absence is…obvious. And although I can cut down my hours, there will still be nights I won’t be home, there will still be trips I need to take, or meetings I need to attend. I can’t do it alone.”
