Page 30 of Never Say Yes To Your Boss

My parents came from old money, both of them, and despite that, they married for love, and they kept that love strong over the years, even after the accident. Even after things became bad for my dad.

“Fuck.” I drop my head into my hands and think about something else. Not my dad. That’s too sad. I hate thinking about how he was at the end. My mom was so strong and so determined to hold us together as a family. Disease is a cruel thing. But diseases of the mind are even worse.

I close my eyes, trying to catch my breath, but that’s a mistake because suddenly, I’m not in my garage anymore. I’m there on the road with my dad that night, saying something. Muffled words.Right, Dad, not left. It’s a right.Then, the world spinning and tilting out of control, the screaming and shredding of metal, the hot, burning pain ripping through my body, the car crumpling, crumpling, crumpling, the glass shattering into countless pieces, the sensation of my own body being torn apart, my flesh being flayed off my arm, the smell of burning rubber and burning skin and the hot metallic, salty taste of blood.

“Fuck, fuck!” I bail fast, my hand shooting out for the door handle. But it won’t give. It won’t open. It’s crushed. This car is crushed, and I’m trapped. “No!” No, no, no, no, no. I’m not trapped. My eyes are unfocused, but I’m not trapped. I can taste copper and salt, but I’m not trapped.Not trapped, not trapped, not trapped.

I push hard on the doorframe before levering myself up and over in a single leap. There isn’t any roof. This car isn’t crushed. It’s not destroyed. It’s not broken.I’mnot broken.

At least not until I catch my foot on the way over because I’m off balance and then land hard on my good shoulder and face.

“Oomph!”Ouch! Ouch, that fucking hurts.

“Darius!”

A shout comes from across the garage. I peel my head up because that voice isn’t manly, so it’s not Hans. It sounds a lot like…oh god, it is. It’s Everleigh, and she’s running across the empty bays, her bare feet slapping on the concrete floors.

She falls to her knees in front of me, her hands at my shoulders, and carefully picks me up as I pick myself up along with her. She doesn’t blurt out a string of questions. Questions about what’s wrong, why I’m on the ground, and why my face is soaking wet—holy shit, it reallyissoaking wet. Why is it soaking wet? Questions about why my lungs are like balloons, inflating and deflating as I gasp for oxygen. She just sets her warm hands on my shoulders, tucks her fingers into the sleeves of the hoodie she’s wearing—it’s something with some college letters on the front that her mom and sister must have brought her from home because I didn’t supply that in her wardrobe—and mops my face with it. She cleans me up, and shit, there might be blood because I practically hit the concrete face first, and I’m probably going to owe her a new hoodie after this. Then, she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me into her, which effectively silences the runaway thought train surging off the rails of my brain.

She smells like summer, vanilla, and peace.

“Fuck that car,” she whispers near my ear as her fingers thread through my hair.

“Did you see me faceplant?” I don’t want to ask it because it’s so damn embarrassing. What I do want to do, though, is taste her here, right by her earlobe. I think about how sweet she tasted last night in the kitchen. I don’t taste the fear, panic, or the ashes of my old life anymore. I just taste her. I also can’t smell the metal of blood. I just smell her. Wrapped around me with her sweater that smells like fresh laundry soap and her hair that smells like flowers and pears. My lungs are better, not a rancid nut, but a good nut.

“Yeah, I did. You weren’t in your office, and I found Hans in the hall, and he said to try here. I wanted to talk to you before anyone got up.”

“Awesome. I’ve probably started off the conversation in a great way.”

I pull back and grasp Everleigh’s hands in mine, turning them over to inspect her sweater. No blood. That’s a good sign. My face is throbbing enough that there could have been copious amounts of it.

Her smile is there, wobbly but real, and I can tell she’s nervous. She has something she wants to say. I wonder if she slept at all last night, either, or if she was on fire like I was. I blamed it on my shoulder, but that wasn’t just it at all. I just jacked off in the shower an hour ago, but I’m already rock fucking hard again in slacks and a white dress shirt because that’s what I put on for the day—my home office power attire.

“Here, we’ll start again.” She brushes her sunshine gold hair back over her shoulder and keeps twirling it while she looks at me. “Good morning, Darius. How did you sleep? Bad? Yeah, me too. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted to, uh…not be in my bed. Alone. I had a cold shower this morning, butit didn’t help because no amount of rationalizing my way out of this is working. I know we shouldn’t, and it can’t happen because this isn’t…this isn’t a relationship. It’s a very fragile friendship, and that should be enough for me. It has to be enough. Is our truce still good? Even if you haunt my dreams, I want it to still be good. I mean, still stand. A friendship truce. Because that’s safe, and it makes sense. I think anything else will just lead to confusion and hurt, and blah, blah, blah, complications, blah, blah, blah, bad things. But, that being said, I don’t want you to think I didn’t, uh, that it wasn’t…because it was. I just…this is for the best. I think. I don’t want to hurt you.” She brushes the flat of her hand over my cheek. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. We both got what we needed out of this and an unexpected friendship besides, and I think that’s amazing.”

I want to grasp her hand and brush kisses over her knuckles. I want to turn her hand over and inhale at her pulse point, inhale her skin and the clean, fresh scent of her. To suckle her finger into my mouth. I want to fold her under me and strip off those jeans she’s wearing, wrap her legs around my waist right here on the garage floor, and sink into her warm heat while she moans and writhes and cries against me because it’s good. So fucking good.

“My feelings aren’t hurt. I understand.”

“Do you?” She’s so solemn, so worried. She bites her lip a little, and my eyes are drawn there. I can’t help but think about kissing her again. Instead, I kissed the concrete earlier, and that’s the only action my lips are going to be getting.

I’m used to keeping my shit to myself or Hans because I trust him, and when one does things like shave a person and follow them around like a shadow, they become quite endeared, but I find myself saying something. Saying words that make it through the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. Words that sound like, “I’m worried I’ll never find love unless I buy it.”

Yup, I must have said it out loud, and it must have been what I think it was because Everleigh gets this look on her face like that jar of peanut butter from last night turned out to be rancid when we opened it, and she got the first sniff. Rancid PB is seriously gross.

Everleigh tilts my chin up, her forehead creased with worry lines, and her eyes burning clear through me. “Darius, you won’t ever have to buy love. You…anyone would like you. You’re a fantastic person.”

“But most people won’t see past the money, the big, slightly creepy house, the private jet, the fact that I walk everywhere, and my fucked up arm. It’s just fucking hopeless.”

“Are you lonely?” Everleigh’s face is so kind that I can barely look at her because it makes my chest hurt.

Yes, I’m lonely. I was lonely for her before I even met her. I was lonely for her when she went to Philly to see her family, and I was loneliest for her last night without her in my bed. “Was it bad last night and the friend zoneI don’t want to jeopardize what we foundtruce is code for I suck?”

“No.” She strokes my cheek. “No, it’s not code for that. Believe me, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

“After you just saw me freak out and face plant?”

“Especially after that. I bought the car for me, and I should never have asked you to sit in it. This isn’t helping. If you want, I can try to help you find something that does, though. You don’t have to force yourself to go through this. It’s terrible.”

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