Page 115 of Toxic

"It’s so subjective—"

"Your looks attract that alpha to you, but that’s not what draws me. I’m drawn to all of you. I’ve known you since we weretwelve; I’ve seen your soul inside and out, and its beauty pulls me to you."

The beauty of my soul? No, there was only ugliness and selfishness.

Liam’s gaze, so sweet on me… There it was again—that terrible feeling of being trapped by obligation. I couldn't see a way out of the situation, or at least a scenario that wouldn't hurt one of us. Someone was bound to suffer, and there's no getting out of it.

"Please, Liam." I closed my eyes and lowered my head over my tray. But he kept staring at me. "Don’t say it."

"What are you going to do, Soren? About that damn alpha?"

I knew Liam really needed an answer to that question; his face looked deeply focused. He wasn’t going to let the subject go.

"I don't know. Skye hasn't spoken to me or approached me. And he's been here for a week. So what should I do? What do you suggest?"

"You could kick him off your team, transfer him somewhere else so you don’t have to deal with him."

"That wouldn’t be a smart move, especially a day after getting this position. My boss is his brother."

"So what? You’re the team leader now. You can make interdepartmental transfers."

"But I’ve only been here for two months. They just offered me the team leader position. Should I start being picky right off the bat and removing people from my team just because I don’t like them—without a valid reason?"

I was surprised at how logically it all sounded, how smoothly the lies flowed when I spoke. The truth, of course, was that there were valid reasons, but I didn't want to remove Skye from the team. Period. And of course… I didn’t tell Liam that Director Nolan had given me the option to transfer Skye toanother team. I could have just accepted that, but… no, wait! I couldn’t. I already knew I couldn’t.

Ultimately, Liam needed to hear some kind of explanation, and this one sounded believable enough.

A little while later, we left the cafeteria and returned to our respective rooms. I spent the rest of the day in a fog. The only thing I could focus on was those long lines of code.

At the end of the day, someone from IT came by and told me they’d be moving my computer to a new office—Room 311. I just nodded and got up, gathering my stuff.

Tomorrow, I will start in a new office, with a new team, and a new challenge.

Liam was waiting for me by the elevator, and we rode down in silence, then headed to the car. Not a word passed between us—not now, and we barely spoke during dinner.

When I lay down in bed, Liam hesitantly moved closer, and I felt his small hand on my arm. He tried to pull me toward him, but I stayed stiff as a board. So he just rested his head on my shoulder, and that’s how we fell asleep.

***

The next day greeted me with a fresh wave of stress. This was the start of a new chapter in my life. Stuck in a room with Skye and my new team members—I couldn’t quite picture how this would go. The only thing that helped was focusing on the technical details. Rather quickly I figured out how I would coordinate the team’s work, deciding to appoint a second-in-command, even though in small teams like ours, this wasn’t common practice. We were going to be six people in total, but having an assistant manager would help delegate tasks like distributingassignments. This person could speak directly to Skye and pass on my instructions. The hope that this might work gave me a sense of optimism.

When I walked into the building, I felt a bit more upbeat—maybe there was a reasonable way to navigate this situation? But it didn’t mean that I was calm. No way in hell.

Clenching my fists and tightening my jaw, I stepped into Room 311. It was 8:45, and I wanted to arrive a little early. But someone else had the same idea. My desk was on the left side of the room, slightly recessed and not too far from the window. Right next to me, on my left, were the desks of the other employees, and at the one closest to mine, I saw an open laptop. From behind the screen, a face rose up—Skye’s face.

Damn, he’d chosen the desk closest to mine. I swore under my breath, but I couldn’t just go up to him and say, ‘Move; I don’t want you here!’. That would be insane and would immediately make me look bad as a manager, especially since I wanted to limit verbal skirmishes with Skye to the absolute minimum. Ideally, I didn’t want to interact with him at all, but now, in a room where it was just the two of us, that seemed impossible.

His turquoise eyes tracked my every move as I walked to my desk.

Then he grunted, "Hey."

"Hey," I grunted back, matching his quiet, seemingly meaningless tone—that was the extent of our conversation. I sat down, trying to steady my trembling hands. Damn it, how was I supposed to normalize this situation? How would the workday pass? The only consolation was that maybe, over time, I could numb myself to it.

Swallowing hard, I opened my laptop. An idea came to me. A safe topic.

"Have you been briefed on the ByteBites project yet?" I asked in a dry, bureaucratic tone.

"Not yet. I’d appreciate it if you could send me some materials to help me get familiar with it," Skye replied, mirroring my official tone. Just a standard exchange between a manager and his subordinate—nothing remarkable, nothing surprising, nothing suspicious.

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