Page 141 of Not Safe For Work

Chapter 33

My skull throbbed. My eyes ached. I never drank like that, especially not before work, but I had last night, and now I was paying dearly for it. Hopefully I hadn’t kept working on my résumé. God, I didn’t send it to anyone, did I? Guess I’d find out.

Sunglasses on and coffee in hand, I shuffled into work about twenty minutes late. The door to the Zone must have weighed a thousand pounds as I pushed it open. I didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t speak. Put my coffee on my desk. Dropped my sunglasses next to them.

While the daily banter went on around me, I dug up as much focus as I could find and made myself get to work. Measure. Cut. Fit. Glue. I wasn’t good for much else today. Just as well there were still some simpler tasks on the current model. Measure. Cut. Fit. Glue. I wouldn’t be screwed until later when I had to fabricate a railing for the exterior staircase. It figured this would be one of those models where the client wanted every detail brought to life. In the meantime, measure. Cut. Fit. Glue.

And think about Rick.

And how much I’d blown with one badly timed kiss.

And how much I never expected this to hurt.

Measure. Cut. Fit. Glue.

“Hey, Jon.” Teagan’s voice nudged me back to the present. “You in the mood for sushi today?”

“No.” My response was flat, bordering on terse. I glanced up at her, mostly to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently hurt her feelings, but the way she cocked her head and furrowed her brow spoke of puzzlement, not offense.

“You sure? I’ll buy.”

I shook my head and went back measuring…cutting…fitting…gluing.

Shortly before lunch, payroll dropped off our pay stubs. I didn’t usually look at mine unless I’d been on overtime, but I wasn’t getting anything else done today, so what the hell. I opened the envelope, pulled out the slip of paper and stared at it.

Numbers. Dollars. A chunk for Uncle Sam. A little something toward my retirement. Health insurance. Whatever was left went to college funds, bills and necessities first, and what was left after that went to anything I damn well pleased, like toys. A new flogger. A coil of rope. Some overpriced but amazing coffee to be rationed until the next period of overtime. That pay stub documented every minute I’d been here for the past two weeks. Everything I’d squirreled into a retirement fund over the years. Everything.

Everything except for what I didn’t have.

Nowhere on the pay stub did it break down what I gave up for the privilege of coming here and earning this money. There was no line for Rick. No deductions for pride or a guilty conscience. No bonuses for keeping the client happy.

What could come walking through that door any goddamned minute, just like every day last week, this week, and every week in the foreseeable future.

I pushed the pay stub back into its envelope and shoved it into a drawer. I needed this job because I needed the money. I was too close to the red line to play fast and loose with my income.

There was still the option of a lawsuit, but I had yet to be convinced that wouldn’t make things worse. It sure as fuck wouldn’t fix everything. Especially since nothing—no amount of suing, reasoning, budgeting, or fuming—could make this morning hurt any less. Crossed lines couldn’t be uncrossed. I couldn’t unlove him any more than I could unfuck him. There was no undoing any of this. We could stop, but we couldn’t go back, and what we’d been would always be, even if it existed only in the past tense.

My bosses came by to check our progress, and the sight of them—especially Mitchell, the fucking rat—nauseated me. So did his voice. And the condescending way he spoke to my crew. Dread climbed up from my stomach as he came toward my table. Normally, he’d just grill me from an arm’s length away, but he stopped way too close to me this time.

I stood straighter. No way in hell was I looking up at him.

I gave up Rick because of you.

“How’s everything going, Mr. McNeill?”

All because I can’t handle taking out some loans?

I swallowed. “Fine. Sir.”

“Glad to hear it.”

In the name of keeping my job…

He put a hand on my shoulder, and it seemed to weigh a ton, especially as his eyes narrowed. “Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

…working for you…

“Everything’s fine.” Two words couldn’t have hurt more than those two did. For the sake of my job, I had to pretend they were true, but I was dying on the inside.