Page 111 of Due Dilligence (Takeover)
Chapter Twenty-three
Fazil barely remembered the two flights, the layover, or the taxi ride back to his apartment in Squirrel Hill. He’d slept on and off in the air but was bone tired by the time he unlocked the door to his place. The luggage stayed in the living room and all his clothes hit the floor on the way to his bedroom. Cool sheets and soft pillows enveloped him, and he fell asleep immediately, despite the never-ending ache in his heart and head.
No Todd.His first thought when he woke up. He was home and Todd wasn’t here. Fazil scrubbed his face and stumbled to the bathroom. Work. He had to go to work. Had to face Sam.
He caught himself on the bathroom counter as memories flooded back. The burned pages. His hands gripping Nathan’s shirt and ramming him up against the wall. Todd prying him away.
Fazil’s stomach flipped, and he fought to keep the bile down.Shit. The man on the other side of the mirror looked like he’d been through hell. Red-eyed, haunted, and so pale he looked gray.
Shower and coffee. Maybe that would help.
By the time he left the apartment, he’d managed to put some color back into his skin and he no longer looked like he’d been run over by a truck repeatedly. It was after ten according to his phone, but his body refused to believe that, still stuck in a time zone somewhere out west.
Grounds N’at wasn’t busy, which was good, because it meant Brian started in on Fazil’s drink before he even hit the counter. “Hey, you’re back!”
Fazil nodded. “Mostly. I think half my brain is still in Seattle.” And all of his heart. The sudden pain in his chest had him placing a hand on the counter.
“Dude, you okay?”
“Yeah. Jet lag.”
Brian handed him his coffee. “On the house.”
He didn’t argue. He’d tried that once and Brian had turned from relaxed coffee dude to someone as stubborn as Eli. He did throw two bucks in the tip jar when Brian’s back was turned.
“I saw that!”
“Did not.” He headed toward the door and climbed the stairs to the office.
Once upstairs, he paused in the reception area. He wasn’t ready for Sam yet, but he doubted he could sneak past both Sam and Eli’s offices, even under the guise of wanting to dock his laptop. He squared his shoulders and headed in.
Justin was at his desk in the office outside Sam’s. Today his hair was spiked up and purple at the ends, but he’d done away with the guyliner. Probably because of the June heat. His nail polish matched his hair.
Still hard to believe he was Eli’shusband. “Hey.”
“Welcome home.” Justin’s grin was infectious, but his joy twisted against Fazil. “We’ve missed you.”
He’d missed them, too. Pittsburgh. The office. The people. “Ditto.” Except there was noTodd. He nodded at the inner office. “Sam told me to stop by.”
A softer smile. “Yeah. He’s been expecting you.”
The wince came, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
“It’s fine,” Justin said. “We’ve been worried, that’s all.”
A cough from inside. “Should I come out there, or are you going to come in here?”
Fazil swallowed, entered Sam’s office, and shut the door. He slumped into the guest chair. “Hi.”
Sam’s brows furrowed. “Do you need to take the day off?”
The coffee turned sour in his stomach and he set the cup down on the edge of Sam’s desk. “No. I’m fine.”
There was the raised eyebrow that every executive in the company was so damn good at. “Did you get that from Eli or did he get that from you? Because that’s totally an Eli look.”
Sam blinked, then leaned back. “I got it from Michael.” The grin was Sam’s own, though. “You’ll have to ask one of them who had it first. I’m not suretheyknow at this point.”
Fazil studied his coffee cup. “I feel like shit, Sam. I really fucked up out there.”
