Cary turned away, not even willing to listen to what Alexander had to say, and could anyone blame him? “It’s true,” he said to the group. “I was sued for sexual harassment. It was unfounded.” His voice was loud, strong, and clear.
“And we’re just supposed to take your word for that?” Linda asked.
“Of course you can’t,” Cary said. “All I can do is tell you what happened. I had an employee who kept making passes at me. When telling him to stop repeatedly didn’t work, I told him if it happened again, I’d have to fire him.” Alexander admired the way Cary made eye contact with everyone in the group as he calmly offered his explanation—the explanation Alex had known all along, in his heart, must exist. “He twisted that around, said I was blackmailing him. He sued me and my family’s company. I wanted to go to trial, but my uncle, who was the head of the firm, forced a settlement. Which came with a gag rule I am now in violation of by telling you this.”
“I’m sorry,” Alexander began, his voice shaky where Cary’s had been confident. He would explain everything. He could salvage the competition for Liu, if not…everything else.
But Cary help up a hand. “I told you not to talk.”
The betrayal in Cary’s voice nearly undid Alexander, but he tried again. “This is my fault,” he said, looking around to the group, not quite sure if he was directing the apology to the Lius or to Cary. “I can’t tell you how sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry,” Cary said. “Nothing is ever going to be enough for you, is it?” He shook his head sadly. “I can’t believe I ever entertained the notion that I could possibly be enough for you when there’s money to be made. Wars to be won.”
Alexander barely registered the sounds of people approaching from the direction of the cars. He was too preoccupied watching his world end as Cary turned toward the Lius and said, “I thank you so much for the opportunity to get to know you better, but I think you’ll be happiest with Dominion Bank. I wish you the best.”
“Alexander Evangelista?” A man dressed in ranger gear emerged into their clearing. “We’ve got an ambulance waiting for you out in the parking lot. The medics are right behind me with a stretcher.”
“Just a minute,” Alexander said, fear overtaking him. What if he couldn’t set this right? What if—
“Good-bye,” said Cary, directing the words to no one in particular as he turned and started walking away from the site.
“Wait—” He started after Cary but tripped suddenly as the truth hit him. The realization was like a wave, engulfing him so completely that there was no way he could turn from it.
He loved Cary. He fucking loved Cary. More than money, more than the Liu account, more than his gilded life. More than anything.
He doubled over, a physical pain in his gut making him feel like he was going to retch. He had to do something. He had to—
“I can’t,” Cary said, cutting off the ill-formed protest that was mustering in Alexander’s mind. “I can’t.” He was still walking as he spoke.
And he kept walking, right out of the campsite, leaving everything behind—his tent, his backpack, the Liu account.
And Alexander. He left Alexander. And Alexander’s wretched, worthless, broken heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Here you are!”
Cary stifled a groan as Rose strode into his office. He had been ignoring her texts, and he’d foolishly thought he would be safe, at seven on a Sunday morning, in the office. Didn’t newlyweds laze about on Sunday mornings doing crossword puzzles, arguing about where to go for brunch, and having straight-people sex that he didn’t want to think about?
“You said we could go to the Outdoors Expo!”
Cary refrained from banging his head against his desk, but only just. He had indeed promised to take his cousin’s wife to the Outdoors Expo. She, lover of high heels and creature comforts, had recently developed the idea that camping was somehow “romantic,” and was bent on acquiring the necessary accoutrements. He had tried to steer her toward a big-box store, but leave it to Rose to make buying a tent into an event. She’d texted a few days ago, asking him to take her to the Outdoors Expo, and he’d agreed. But that was before he’d had his own personal outdoors disaster.
“You can’t hide in your office all the time, Cary.”
The thing was, he could. Somehow, his office was where he’d ended up after he’d driven back to the city. His apartment was full of memories. Full of Alex. He couldn’t be in the kitchen without thinking of the time Alex had gone down on him there. He couldn’t walk through his fucking front door without the full-body memory of Alex, pressing against him as he unlocked it, whispering his sexy threats. Maybe it was that his apartment was so small, but it didn’t feel like any part of it was safe, neutral territory. Perhaps if he lived in a giant penthouse like Alex, he wouldn’t be having this trouble. Hell, there were whole rooms he hadn’t even seen at Alex’s place.
But he knew that wasn’t true. He could live in the Taj Mahal, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Even the office wasn’t really working. It was just that here, he at least was more immediately confronted with the mountain of work he had to do. He’d allowed himself to get distracted these recent weeks, to waver from what had always been his plan: a slow, steady, determined building of his client base and his business. If there was one silver lining in the whole Alex Evangelista train wreck, it was that it had reminded him he had agency. Just as he had done with his uncle, he could walk away from situations that weren’t serving him. He wasn’t doomed to play the role that had been assigned him, whether it was obedient nephew or defensive, combative entrepreneur blustering about false accusations because winning was the most important thing. He could do things his own way.
“Chop, chop,” Rose said, clapping her hands.
“We can get everything you need at Mountain Equipment Co-op in less than an hour,” he said, though he knew it was futile.
“Yes, but it’s a beautiful day!”
“All the more reason not to spend it inside the convention center,” he parried.
“Come on!” She grabbed his arm and fell back so that all her weight was pulling on him, effectively pitting them against one another in a tug of war. “Don’t you want to hear about the honeymoon?” He was about to assure her that, no, he most decidedly did not want to hear about the honeymoon when she added, “We’ll go to brunch after!”
What was it with straight people and brunch? “Tempting,” he said, pitching his tone to convey the exact opposite. “But I can’t. I lost that Liu account, and I spent so much time on it”—and on other things that he wouldn’t mention—“that I let other work pile up. I’m up to my eyeballs.”
“Please?” she whined.
“Rose, it’s not like you’re going to go camping this coming weekend, so can we just postpone the shopping until—”
“I bought a tent for Marcus!” she yelled.
“What?” She was being extra weird today.
“For a wedding present. I have to pick it up at the Expo. I need you to come with to make sure I’m not getting ripped off! We’ll just run in really quick. Pretty please?”
He sighed. Better to just get it over with. If Rose had her sights fixed on something, it was infinitely easier to just go along with it. And, hell, maybe a dose of Rose’s brand of insanity would help him snap out of his funk. “Okay. But no brunch.”
“I’ll just drop you here and go park and meet you inside,” Rose said as she pulled up in front of the downtown Toronto convention center. “The tent is in…hang on.” She picked up her phone and checked something. “Exhibit Hall B. The show isn’t quite open yet, but they said I could come by and get the tent. You go make sure it’s okay and that I’m not getting ripped off, and I’ll meet you there.” She grinned. “Then we’ll go to brunch.”
Cary sighed as he levered himself out of the car. Leave it to Rose to talk her way into the show early. Could she just buy a tent like a normal person? No. Why was he even aski
ng himself that? Rose was a lot of things, but normal wasn’t one of them.
The exhibit hall was unlocked but, as far as he could tell, deserted. He pushed open the door and took a moment to let his eyes adjust as there was only dim overhead lighting, which would no doubt be turned up when the show started for the day. The cavernous space was lined with booths hawking everything from hiking boots to camping stoves, to, yes, tents. How the hell was he supposed to find Rose’s vendor? “Hello?” he called, making his way toward the center of the space, which appeared to be filled with sample tents, punctuated by the occasional artificial tree, looking a bit like a fake, deserted Boy Scouts’ jamboree.
“Over here,” called a voice from the other side of the line of tents, and Cary froze. No. He was imagining things. He shook his head and made his way around the row of tents just as the lights in the exhibit hall went from dim to non-existent.
No, that wasn’t right. There was a light source up ahead, in front of a tent in the middle of the display. It was…a campfire? Well, it was one of those metal fire pit things that people used in their backyards or on their decks. It was at the center of a little domestic woodsy display—a tent, some fake laundry hanging on a line strung between two fake trees. It was—
“The best I could do.”
Cary inhaled sharply. No. He was not doing this. Fury surged through him.
“Because I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of luring you back out to the wilds.” Alex struggled to stand. “And there was also the part where I can’t really walk.”
“Look at you,” Cary said, momentarily distracted from his anger by the sight of invincible Alexander Evangelista leaning on a pair of crutches. “Is it broken?”
“Hairline fracture,” Alex said.
“Oh, God. We shouldn’t have walked out. I’m sorry.” Guilt prickled at Cary, but he shoved it away. He needed to hold on to the anger. He was done making himself vulnerable when it came to Alex.
“It’s not your fault,” Alex said, hobbling a little closer. “None of it was your fault.”
Cary was tempted to agree, but that would just prolong this encounter, and he had a cousin-in-law to murder. So he turned, or tried to, but Alex was faster than he was, sticking a crutch into Cary’s path and blocking his way.
“Will you just hear me out?”
Cary tried desperately to hold onto the anger that had been there just a moment ago. He would even settle for annoyance. But he couldn’t manage anything except…defeat. “There’s nothing you can say that—”
“I love you.”
Cary blinked, stunned.
Alex took his crutch back and kept his eyes on Cary as he maneuvered himself closer, not stopping until he was right in Cary’s face. “Or how about this? There’s more to life than money.” He took a deep breath in, and it sounded a little shaky coming out. He smiled a crooked, self-deprecating smile. “I’m still working on that one. I mean, I know it’s true here”—he tapped his forehead—“but twenty years of bad habits are hard to break.”
“Alex, I…” Cary trailed off, not sure what to say. Not sure what to feel. Well, he knew what he felt—wild, irrational, all-consuming hope. But was he setting himself up to be duped again?
“But that other thing,” Alex pressed on. “The thing where I love you? I don’t need to work on that at all because I know it’s true here.” Alex laid one hand on his heart, and, balancing his crutches under his armpits, slowly extended the other to Cary. “Will you sit down and hear me out?
Cary could only nod. Maybe he was being foolish, naive. Maybe everything his uncle always said was true, when push came to shove. But he couldn’t not take that hand when it was offered to him. He just couldn’t. And more importantly, he didn’t want to be the kind of person who could turn away from something like this.
Alex led them to the fire pit. There was a blanket laid out on the fake grass next to it, and Cary smiled to see a pair of skewers and s’mores ingredients laid out on a small table nearby. Alex lowered himself to sit on the turf and set aside his crutches. But he didn’t stop at sitting. He lay all the way back, and then he patted the ground next to him, seeming to indicate that he wanted Cary to lie down, too. When Cary hesitated—foolishness was one thing, abject foolishness another—Alex said, “I want to tell you how it should have gone.” Then he stretched out fully, rested his head back on his clasped hands, and smiled up at the ceiling. “There are all these shooting stars, see…”
Well, shit. Cary took the bait. But when he lay down, he said, “I don’t know, all I see is duct work.”
“The sky is full of shooting stars. It seems impossible. The whole night seems impossible. It’s like a fairy tale, and not just because of the stars, because it ends with the boy I love kissing me.”
Cary exhaled a shaky exhale, and Alex rolled over on his side, though there was still a good foot of space between them.
“And then they had a disagreement.”
“It was more than a disagreement,” Cary said, needing to name the truth.
“What would you call it?” Alex asked, his voice gentle.
“I’d say one boy betrayed the other.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “And then the second boy got his revenge.”
Alex smiled. “Well, whatever you call it, here’s what should have happened. They should have been brave. They should have had it out. And then they should have made up. Because everything…” His voice cracked, and hearing the anguish in it just about broke Cary. “Everything would have been different, then.”
“You think?”
“Yes. The first boy wouldn’t have taken twenty years to learn that substituting money for happiness doesn’t actually work.”
Cary saw then how much pain Alex had been carrying around all these years, and it almost took his breath away.
Alex continued. “He would have realized that throwing away a chance at love for something as fleeting as money or as empty as revenge was a supremely stupid move.”
Cary reached a hand out, intending to touch Alex’s face, but Alex flinched and leaned out of Cary’s reach.
“I need you to know two more things.”
Cary took his hand back.
“First, I did have that letter sent, way back at the beginning, when I…thought I hated you. When I thought winning was worth any price. I regretted it. I tried to undo it, and I thought I had a way to intercept it, but…I was wrong. I really did come around to wanting the competition over Liu to be fair.”
“He was always going to choose you, anyway,” Cary said.
Alex grinned. “He didn’t. He went with Evergreen.”
Cary raised his eyebrows. “Damn. After all that?”
“Can you really blame him?”
Cary laughed. “You mean billionaires don’t actually want their money guys to act like drama-obsessed teenagers?”
Alex’s eyes filled with tears. “How can you be so good?”
Cary shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m not sure making childish jokes in a situation like this counts as good.”
“You were never childish. To be able to let something go like you did, walking away from the Liu account, walking away from your uncle—hell, not fucking punching my lights out right now—that’s not childish. That’s what a confident man does. He has his priorities in line, and he acts on them.”
“I guess some things are more important than money,” Cary said. “I’ve always believed that despite the fact that my job was to make piles of it.”
“Which is why I quit the bank—that’s the second thing.”
“You what?”
“I’m going to teachers’ college. Well, eventually. I told the board I’d stay until we could map out a succession plan. So I’m probably stuck for a while, and it doesn’t look like most of the universities I’ve looked into take kindly to transferring twenty-year-old credits, so I basically have to start over with a new undergrad degree, but—”
“Wait. What?”
Alex laughed at the interrup
tion. “Yeah, well, I went into banking to make money. I think I have enough of that now, so—”
Alex did not laugh at the next interruption because Cary made sure he couldn’t. He grabbed Alex’s shirt, hauled him over, and came home to that mouth he loved so well, letting the happy electricity race through him when Alex opened for him and moaned softly. After a few seconds of increasingly frantic kissing, Alex broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against Cary’s. “I missed you so much.”
“It’s only been a day,” Cary teased, taking the opportunity to tug Alex’s shirt from his jeans and slide his hands up, skin to skin.
“No,” Alex said sharply, drawing Cary’s attention. Then he framed Cary’s face with his hands. “It’s only been twenty years.”
It was Cary’s turn to moan, then, as hands and fingers and mouths tangled and touched, caressed and licked. It took only a moment for that bone-deep lust that only Alex inspired to take hold. He had to have more of Alex, more of his skin, more of his mouth, more.
The lights flicked on.
“Fuck,” Alex muttered, pulling away from him. “We were supposed to be out of here by 8:30 when they come in to set up.”
It took everything he had for Cary to take his hands off Alex. “How did you ever manage this?”
Alex grinned and shrugged. “It turns out I have an in with an LL Bean model. An LL Bean model with a very big heart.” Cary stood. Alex was struggling a bit with getting back on his feet. Cary offered him a hand and was suffused with satisfaction when Alex took it unhesitatingly, leaning on Cary and accepting his help. “We also need to call Rose,” he said as Cary set up his crutches for him.
“Yeah, what about Rose?” Cary said with mock anger. “She just left me here!”
“That is incorrect,” Alex said, straightening Cary’s shirt and smiling. “Rose is waiting outside for word from us. She won’t go home until, and I’m quoting her here, she has definitive proof that she doesn’t need to cut off my balls.”
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