Page 10 of Hard to Forgive

i’ll tell you later? waiting on team assignments

Eli

Shit. Good luck man.

Seb

Manifesting good vibes

Holden

wait i thought u already had a team?!?

Holden

what happened to your team?!

Holden

am i supposed to know this?!?

Jonas

okay muting you guys now

I put my phone away. Just a few texts from my friends and I had a smile on my face.

A smile that slid away when the door opened and three other men walked in. The first two looked nervous. They were older than I’d expected for new hires, late twenties or early thirties. The third man sauntered in, looking as if he owned the place.

Our eyes met, and my heart jolted.

It was the guy from last night.

4

I had never plannedon capitalizing on my uncle’s wealth or his tech company. I never wanted nepotism to give me a foot through any doors. I’d had multiple college friends tell me that I was an idiot for this particular decision, once they found out who my uncle was, but we all had to choose the hills we’d die on. This was mine.

Any name I made, I wanted to make for myself.

Then my uncle emailed me with an offer letter. It came with a higher salary than the job I’d been working in Charlotte. It came with a better benefits package. It came with the guarantee that I’d be working on a project more interesting than updating the inventory of the store chain that employed me and keeping their database stable. In fact, it offered me the chance to do more than be a glorified DBA who occasionally wrote a few lines of other code.

In short, it had been too good to pass up.

Even if it did take me back to King’s Bay, a place I never wanted to live again.

I’d lucked out and found a nice condo within walking distance from the office. I refused to live under the same roof as my parents. I loved them, but we were better in small doses. Our relationship improved any time there was distance between us, when we had holidays and a monthly video call. It improved when I could disconnect the moment my father started listing my shortcomings or my mother started harping about the fact that I didn’t have a partner yet.

It was irritating.

But I wasn’t thinking of them that day. I wasn’t thinking about the hot hookup I’d had the night before either, even though my bed still smelled like sex when I woke up. Sex and the stranger I’d brought home. I let thoughts of him float me through the dull hour long orientation we new hires had to sit through, replaying the highlights of the night before banishing them when the presentations ended.

Orientation included a tour of halls I’d walked for years and a meet and greet with my uncle. I avoided his gaze. The last thing I needed was for the two other men starting with me to realize I was related to him. They seemed nice, but I knew the way that would change. It always did when my uncle’s name was introduced into a conversation with other tech nerds.

When we were released to meet our team, I led the way without realizing that I probably shouldn’t have been able to do that. I watched as they exchanged glances and fell back as we neared the room. I pretended to look at the different room numbers, though I could count the doors to where we were going to be.

My uncle had showed me where it was the week before, when he’d had me come in and fill out paperwork. I fell behind the two other men and let them enter the room first.

There were already five people in the room when we entered. I watched as all five faces moved in our direction. There werethree men and two women. I barely paid any notice to the women or the two men sitting and talking at one of the desks.

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