“You weren’t stopping. I didn’t —”
“So you thought that touching a man who’s fucking punching a heavy bag is a good idea.”
“I knew I was safe. I was —”
His fingers tighten around my hand as he growls again, his chest heaving, “Oh yeah, you knew that, did you?”
I take a step toward him then. “Yes, I knew. I knew you were ignoring me and I just wanted to get your attention. I —”
“Attention,” he cuts me off, his eyes flashing. “Right.”
“I just —”
“Because that’s what you want,” he goes on, his thumb mashing my pulse. “That’s what you fucking live for, isn’t it?”
I swallow at his tight grip, a grip that’s slowly inching from tight to painful. “Alaric, I —”
“That’s what you always want, Poe.” His jaw clenches. “Don’t you? Attention.”
I take another step toward him and press my other hand on his wildly breathing chest. “Please let me talk, okay? I was just trying to get you to stop. I was just…” I study his tight, angry features; sweat is still dripping down his face, his mouth parted to drag in breaths. “You were going at it for so long, Alaric. I thought you were gonna hurt yourself. So I just wanted you to stop and maybe give it a rest. Something is clearly bothering you but you can’t take your frustrations out on it and —”
“Yeah, something’s bothering me all right.”
“Please just —”
Leaning in, he rasps, “Would you like to know what’s bothering me, Poe?”
I’ve come to a point now where my breaths are matching his. It could be his proximity, the fact that he’s all bare-chested and sweaty. Or the fact that he’s still holding my wrist in a punishing grip and his eyes are all feral now.
All wild and out of control.
Which makes me realize that as many times as I’ve seen him all angry and upset and agitated, I’ve never seen him this far gone. I’ve never seen him this on edge.
But it’s okay.
It’s him.
No matter how angry he is or how upset, he would never hurt me. He’d hurt himself first.
So I nod. “Yes.”
A shudder overcomes him for a second at my easy acquiescence and his grip loosens from my wrist, but then his features tighten again and so does his grip before he says, “Yeah? Well, what’s bothering me, Poe, is the fact that I had a meeting today. Early morning. And for the first time ever, I was late to it.” I open my mouth to say something but he keeps going. “Which is fine, really. First time for everything, right? Besides, it was about the new branch of St. Mary’s and technically, I’m the boss right now so people can wait. But then I got later because I walked into the wrong room.” He nods as if to emphasize and mock himself simultaneously. “My screwed-up brain mixed up the floor numbers and I walked into a different conference hall than I was supposed to.”
“But it’s f-fine. It happens.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It happens. Not to me, Dr. Alaric Rule Marshall, with two PhDs and a post-doctoral fellowship from an Ivy League school who’s gotten countless grants and papers published, but it does happen to people. So yeah, let’s say that it’s fine. Again. But it just so happened that along with getting the wrong room, I also got the wrong file. And turns out that it wasn’t only for the meeting but also for people over in California who needed it urgently. So now I have to go to California tomorrow because the deadline to submit those papers that should’ve been in that file is tomorrow.”
My heart drops. “You’re going to California?”
“Yeah.” He bends further down. “But that’s not the worst part, Poe.”
“It isn’t?” I ask in despair.
Because it sounds like it.
That he’s going to California tomorrow.
Why didn’t he tell me before? For how many days?
Because suddenly I can’t imagine not seeing him even for a single day. I can’t imagine not being able to talk to him and touch him and be with him like this.
But wait a second.
Just wait.
Isn’t that what’s coming? In the future I mean.
The future that’s all good and set and something that he’s planned for.
And he’s planned for everything, hasn’t he?
Every single detail about where I’ll live and where I’ll go to college and who’ll cook for me and all the investments, but he’s never said a word about us.
He’s never said anything about this.
I’m about to ask him that, I’m about to ask him, what about us, is that in my future, are you, but he doesn’t give me a chance. “The worst part is why, Poe.”
“What?”
His eyes turn all dark and somehow accusatory as he looks down at me. “The worst part is why I was late and why I walked into the wrong room and sent the wrong file to California.”