Page 126 of Due Dilligence (Takeover)
Chapter Twenty-six
Two weeks. Todd sat on his couch after work and eyed his phone. Two weeks andnothingfrom Fazil. Not a call, not an e-mail. No texts.
Silence. As if he’d fallen off the face of the planet. Again.
Except work e-mails came to the engineering team bearing his name. Todd heard his voice on the weekly conference call with Sam Anderson as they tried to wrap this project up before BinBox Group came for a closer look. Those meetings were excruciating, especially when Fazil chuckled at some joke or palled around with Erin.
It was Sam who Todd interacted with now. All very professional.
Fazil was alive—just dead to Todd.
E-mails and texts had gone unanswered. Even the one he’d sent two days after their blowup.
Hey. I’m sorry. Can we talk?
Obviously Fazil’s answer was no.
He slid his phone onto the coffee table. He wanted to be angry, not hurt and lost and fuckingconfused. His body ached inside and out.
Everything had been perfect. Then it wasn’t. He went over the events in his head again and again. The rough sex hadn’t been an issue—Fazil had wanted that. The games they’d played had been Fazil’s fantasies, his desires. The only conclusion he could draw was that Fazil didn’t love him.
Hadneverloved him.
How do you choose a job over a person? Easy.Fun in bed, but not someone to take home to Mom.
Never mind that Fazil’s mom already knew him. Hell, they’d spent half of high school in her finished basement.
Everything was so fucking tied up in Fazil. The past, his memories, this job. Probably should go find some hot body to drown in or a beer to take the edge off. He stared at his television. The last thing he wanted was sex or alcohol. Or anyone to see him.
He missed hisfriend. More than anything else—he wanted their friendship back. He’d give up everything if he could just have that.
Todd eyed his phone. Fazil wouldn’t even accept an apology, so what hope was there for anything else?
***
Fazil stared at too many windows on his computer. One had a procedure and Todd’s suggestions for improvement. Another had his own notes about how Singularity’s engineering team worked. In yet another window, there were e-mails from Nathan and Stephen.
His head hurt, because all of the procedures conflicted too much. Unit testing was a simple thing that all the engineers should be doing. Why were they making this so damn hard?
He opened a Word doc and streamlined the procedure down to something that made sense. It was close to Todd’s original, with some additions.
Stephen and Nathan wouldn’t like it, but they weren’t paying Anderson to play nice, just fair. When he talked to Todd tonight he’d have to—
The sudden rush of pain left him gasping for air.
“Fazil?” Sertab, their network engineer extraordinaire, poked her head around the cube. “Are you okay? What happened?” She spoke in Turkish.
There’d be no calls to Todd. No messages. No nothing. “Banged my knee, I’m fine.” It was easier to lie in English for some reason.
She furrowed her brow and switched languages. “You sure?”
Harder and harder to answer that question. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Inshallah.”She vanished back to her cube.
God willing.God. Allah. Whoever. He should take her up on the offer to have dinner with the Turkish group she and her husband belonged to.
He dropped his face into his hands. Or not. All he wanted to do was hole up in bed for about three years. His gut—his body—shouldn’t hurt this much, not after two weeks. Not when he’d done the right thing. He and Todd were done. Done anddone. He looked up at his screen. Except he still had to work on the Singularity project, and Todd was a contact.
