Page 22 of Shameless With Him

Chapter 5

Caleb

I satbehind my desk and tried not to vomit. Jesus Christ. Why did it have to happen now? Oh, yeah, because it happened out of nowhere. At all times, of any day. There were signs, things that other people could see, at least. I couldn’t. I didn’t know when the migraines were going to hit, but I knew they were going to be bad.

Today, however, it wasn’t going to be too terrible. Felt more like a regular headache, and I could keep going. A friend of my brother’s had migraines that were similar to mine from what I heard. Those that made it hard to even want to eat or open your eyes.

Mine were getting just as bad, but the problem was that they came with other physical symptoms. Add in the fact that I wasn’t sure if what I saw was real... And, yeah. What was truth, what was fiction, what was an illusion?

It scared the fuck out of me.

Crippling migraines and something that could be far worse than a migraine meant that I didn’t work with my hands anymore. I wasn’t out in the field, wasn’t in Alaska any longer. I was home. Back in Denver. Because I needed my family, my brothers and my sister. And I needed to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. But no number of scans were going to figure that out.

At least, that’s what they told me. They needed more information.

And I hated that I didn’t have any to give.

My stomach hurt, and my palms were sweaty, but I kept going, working on plans for the next site. I had moved over to construction when I returned to Denver, thinking maybe I could work with my hands again. But I couldn’t.

I had a couple of friends in the business, people that were actually now Dimitri’s relatives, ironically. The small world that was Denver and all that. I wasn’t working for them, but I worked in a company that worked with them sometimes.

Right then, my job was as an overseer, getting all the little, nitty-gritty pieces of a construction site for a large company going. That meant I had to see to all the details, deal with emails and phone calls and materials and all that shit. I was the one who did all the planning now, and I had experience with it. After all, I did a bit of this when I was up in Alaska.

And now, I was doing it again, only this time with a damn headache that wouldn’t leave me be.

I hated feeling weak. But that’s what I felt. Weak and like a fucking loser.

“Caleb, how are we on that account?” Bobby asked as he walked past my door.

I had a corner office. I made decent money, and I got to wear a suit if I felt like it. I got to get all snazzy with the clients, or wear jeans and a tee shirt and work down at the site. I loved my job, I really did, but right then, I hated that I’d had to move to this job because my brain couldn’t do what it needed to do.

“Almost done. You need it?”

Bobby shook his head. “No, just wondering. I’m working on mine, but you’re always better at overseeing stuff than I am. I have no idea how you can get all those details in your head done without having fifty spreadsheets open in front of you.”

I grinned. “No, I just have five spreadsheets that are like master spreadsheets. Have you ever heard of a pivot table? It’s like God’s answer to organization.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “You know, you say things like that, and it’s kind of hard to imagine you in your last job.”

“What? Are you saying that roughnecks and boilermakers can’t have a brain?” I asked, only a little serious.

I was used to others thinking that my siblings were the smart ones, and that I was just the dumb jock who worked with my hands. I didn’t really like hearing it from a coworker who had seen my work, though. One who asked for help constantly when he couldn’t figure things out.

It wasn’t like I could change minds. I could only be who I was and hope to hell people understood. Even if I didn’t really understand it myself sometimes.

Bobby smiled, a blush creeping up his cheekbones. “Not saying that. I’m just saying that I kind of wish we had eight of you so we could get shit done faster.”

“Things don’t go fast in construction. You know that.”

“That is true. Hey, are you going down to the site to meet the new crew?” Bobby rolled on his heels—the man was unable to stand still. That was probably why he sucked at spreadsheets and focusing on the job at hand.

“I’m thinking about doing it a little later. Maybe tomorrow, actually. See what they’re up to.”

“I know the main guy we’re working with is good, but I don’t like the fact that he hired a whole new crew.”

“It’s kind of hard when the old boss kept fucking things up, and that meant the crew moved to the two bigger companies in town.”

Namely, the two construction companies that were related to Dimitri’s family. But I didn’t say that. I hadn’t taken a job with the Montgomerys or the Gallaghers because I didn’t want to use that connection to Dimitri. I’d probably shot myself in the foot because of it. Plus, working with the best meant that I got to be my best. Only I kind of liked working with a company that was on the way to floundering. I wanted to make it better. And I was.

---