“Wouldn’t go as far as likeable,” said Owen. “I’d give him tolerable.”
Not so long ago Reid would have insisted being likeable had nothing to do with business, that it was irrelevant at best, a hindrance at worst. Likeable didn’t get you up mountains or out of danger quickly. Being an asshole was better for getting people to do things they never thought possible, but now he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps less asshole and more coach was a better approach. Perhaps trying to understand what each person needed most to do their best, like Zarley’s Costin, was the secret.
“My inner asshole still needs rehab.”
Owen groaned and Sarina grinned at him. “Admitting it is a good first step. Tell me you haven’t learned something from all this, from losing Plus and finding Zarley.”
Giraffe heart explosion. Blood and viscera all over the room. He’d learned two hundred million different things from trying to escape into a bottle; from pole dancers and fast women who tried to pick him up in bars, from the wisdom of multiple stools, to joining the mile-high club and finding a comrade in the dark; from disappointing the people he loved the most, and facing the fact he was a half-formed man who had a long way to go to be whole, but had found the incredible woman who would stand by him while he worked it all out.
But getting Plus back, that was outside the realm of any magic Zarley had and any expectation he’d factored for.
“I can’t do it.”
“You can. We’ll help,” said Sarina.
“I’m not helping, not till I can piss standing up,” said Owen.
Could he do this without fucking it up? Zarley had wanted rules and then only came up with two, that he couldn’t buy her and she needed him to need her. “I need a rule.”
“The no asshole rule is still in effect,” said Sarina.
He smiled for the first time since seeing Owen, pale and bruised and scarily packed in his hospital bed as if he was never getting free of the drips and wires and cages.
“It needs a modifier.” It needed Zarley’s rule. “You can’t buy me.”
Sarina clapped her hand on her knee. “Bargain. My best hire ever. You’re going to work for free.”
He’d consider it. Strike a deal where he only earned a payment if Ziggurat launched on time with no major bugs or loss of customers. “You can’t buy my way out of trouble. I need to be held fully accountable for any misery I make.” He pointed at Sarina. “You can’t come along behind me and mop up the tears. Dev can’t quietly talk folk I’m evil to off the ledge. I can’t learn to be less of an asshole if you protect me from the damage I cause.”
Sarina looked at Owen. “You sure you want him back?”
Owen blinked with heavy lids, then pinned Reid’s eyes with his. “Pretty damn sure I’m not going to remember any of this. Go back to work Reid, and don’t ever let Zarley go.”
When he left Owen’s room and met Zarley in the waiting room, Reid’s giraffe heart was back inside his chest, and pounding an entirely different rhythm, to an old favorite tune with a sultry pole-dance beat.
THIRTY
Zarley woke with a start and glanced at the clock. 4 a.m., was he kidding?
Reid slipped into the bed beside her. “Sorry, Flygirl, was trying not to wake you.”
His voice was froggy with exhaustion and she was well and truly awake. “It’s almost morning.”
“Hmm, need a few hours.”
He’d called at ten, told her not to wait up. It’d been this way since they got back, but never this late. He worked and worked and rarely came home to do anything but sit in his office and work or crash into bed, where they inevitably made each other feel good before Reid slept like someone pulled the plug on him.
Cara joked that if she didn’t see Reid in passing at Plus where she worked in the customer team, Zarley could well have killed him and disposed of the body in an acid bath. The occasional random men’s t-shirt left over a chair or an empty juice carton on the kitchen counter were merely placed there strategically to cover her tracks.
Cara’s main concern about living with them hadn’t come to pass. Cara wasn’t the third wheel, Reid was.
And sometimes Zarley was.
“You can’t keep working like this.”
Other gymnasts had said, you can’t keep training this hard, but she had.
“Hmm.” He was almost asleep, but roused himself enough to find her hand to hold.