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I had next to no experience when it came to this—sex with another guy—whereas Dan had… literally all the experience. There probably wasn’t much he hadn’t done sex-wise.

And while I knew I’d be experiencing the benefits of that very soon, I couldn’t help but start to get anxious about the next time we… hung out.

I was exhausted by the time we got home late Thursday night after the show, so after parking up on my driveway, Dan had squeezed my knee and told me to get some sleep. A part of me had been a little disappointed, but the stress of the morning had caught up with me and I’d passed out almost as soon as I got into bed.

On Friday, he went into work earlier than me because he was performing that night and had to rehearse. Then there ended up being some technical issues with the ticket booking system that carried over into Saturday, so I’d been putting in long hours to get it fixed.

Because of that, I got to witness Holt truly stressed for the first time since starting at Goliaths. He kept wandering abruptly into my office and staring at me blankly—which didn’t help my own stress levels, to be honest—before saying, “I forgot why I came in here. Is it fixed yet?”

“Not yet,” I replied every time, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Getting there.”

“Great. Good. Total faith in you, Rafe.”

Are you sure? I’d wanted to ask, but forced myself not to take it personally. He wasn’t saying I was bad at my job, I just despised when stuff went wrong on my watch, even if it was out of my control.

Then I overheard him in his office while I was making a drink, and realised he really was just terrible at dealing with stress.

“Larkin,” he called from his office, sounding close to tears. “Did Shriek Shakes forget to put the calming syrup in my The Last Breakfast of a Man Marked for Death milkshake?”

I heard Larkin heave a huge sigh, then he called back, “I asked them to add it, boss.”

“I think they forgot.” I heard him dragging his feet across his office, before he sullenly mumbled, “What are you doing?”

“Working.”

“No, really.”

Larkin huffed in offence. “I am!”

Holt went quiet for a few seconds, then sighed dramatically. “I need a spa day. I’m going to take Taylor to a spa.”

“That’ll be nice,” Larkin said, very patiently.

There was another pause, before Holt whined, “Lark, will you go make me a Creamed Jeans?”

My brows shot up as I poured myself a cup of coffee. What the fuck was a Creamed Jeans?

“Really?” Larkin sounded doubtful. “But you said it was gross. Plus it’s, like, not even noon, boss.”

“I have a lot going on, okay?” he shot back.

“Like what?”

Another pause. “Like… the thing. The IT thing. With the booking system.”

“Isn’t Rafe fixing that?”

“But I’m overseeing it,” he insisted. My brow quirked again. He wasn’t. “I also lost out on a genuine mid-century dining set in an online auction the other day. It’s just—ugh, Larkin, this week. My god.”

“Sounds very stressful, boss,” Seb said solemnly.

“Thank you, Seb. It is.” Holt sniffed pitifully. “Forget the drink. Lark, get me a fruit cup. I need to watch my stories to calm down.”

I heard Holt’s office door close, followed by a suppressed snort of laughter from Larkin.

By Sunday afternoon, I’d managed to fix the issue, which caused Holt to burst into my office wearing a face mask and yank me into a hard hug before I could stop him.

“You’re a fucking genius,” he declared, then gestured at me as he stepped back. “Oops. Got a bit of clay mask on you.”