AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Landry narrowed his eyes, and for the first time all morning, I felt like he really looked at me. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. No.” I blew out a breath that sounded like a frustrated groan and sank down onto the side of the bed, near Landry’s knee. “I don’t know.”
He sat forward, bending his legs. “Talk to me.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. “I don’t even know where to start. God, this is so absurd. Seriously, the most overly emotional, ridiculous—”
“All my favorite things. You came to the right place.” Landry prodded my shoulder. “Go on.”
“I like the guy,” I admitted. “I… care about him. I’m attracted to him, yes, but it’s… more than that. I think. And I know what you’re gonna say, okay? I’ve known the guy for a day and a half. And none of it was real—he lied about being Sterling Chase nearly the whole time; I lied about being his assistant, too. And even though we talked about all that and why he lied, he still has a project he wants funded—”
“I know.”
“What? How?”
“From Dev.” Landry rolled his eyes. “Honestly, do you never check the group chat?”
Rarely, and especially not this weekend. “Then you know what all the others—Dev, Silas, even Kenji— are saying. Rowe can’t be trusted. I’m getting in too deep too fast. I run a billion-dollar company, and he delivers burritos. There’s no future between us—I can’t fathom what one would look like, even if I were sure I wanted one. I assure you, I know all of that. Iknewthis weekend with him was a one-time thing.”
I waited for Landry to say something cutting, but all he said was “And?”
“And?Nothing.” I worried my top lip and stared at the artwork over the bed without really seeing it. “AndI don’t know. I mean, Jesus, what do you do when you feel drawn to someone, but the situation is all wrong? When you feel like you know someone, and they know you, but it was probably all just the heat of the moment or the novelty of the thing? What do you do when you don’t want to let someone go, but there’s no room for them to stay because you already know what your priorities are? The potential for this to go staggeringly wrong is just… enormous.”
Landry watched me pensively for a long moment before speaking. “You remember the night before we sold ETC?”
“Huh?” I blinked and focused on him. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You were a nervous wreck.” He grinned suddenly. “We were still crammed into that little office over by the Flatiron that barely fit three desks for the five of us because it was all we could afford when we left New Haven, and we’d stuck there because it was easier than moving, remember? The other guys were exhausted that night because you’d made us go overeverythingfor the hundredth time—the system, the notes, the contracts that our lawyer had already gone over with us. Finally, Silas went to grab food, and Zane and Dev went back to that shitty apartment we were renting, but you were still working, working, working. Compulsively.”
“Yes, I know.” I scrubbed both hands over my face. “I’m a workaholic. Sterling Chase is my life. That’s theproblem.”
“Shhh. Don’t interrupt. So, that night, I was waiting around for you, but you kept biting my head off.‘Five more minutes, Landry. Five more minutes. Can’t you see I’m busy?’without even looking up from your desk. And finally, I snapped. I was like,‘I am hungry. I am tired. It’s the middle of the night. What the fuck, Sebastian? There is no more to do here.’And you looked up at me, right? And you said,‘But what if I’m wrong, Landry? What if we weren’t supposed to sell? What if there was more for us to do?’I was so used to seeing you as this guy who was born with money and privilege, who had confidence baked into his pores, and you were practically paralyzed by second-guessing yourself. I’d never seen you like that before or since. Freaked me out.”
I grunted. “I remember you decided the best course of action was to fuck up the router so I couldn’t get online anymore and force me out the door because your pizza was getting cold. Thank you for reminding me of this happy time in our history. Why are we still friends?”
Landry laughed—not mocking or self-deprecating, but a real, genuine laugh—and shoved my shoulder. “My strategy worked, didn’t it? You do supportive friendship your way, and I’ll do it mine, m’kay? My point is, you were nervous because you cared, Bash. You didn’t want to make a mistake or let anyone down. And so, if this thing with that guy out there—” He nodded toward the living area. “—has got you this unsure? I say that’s a good thing. It’s easy to take risks when you’re not so invested in the outcome, but the biggest payoffs happen when you are. And I trust your instincts. I always have. So if you think there’s something there, or therecouldbe something there? Then go after it with that single-minded Sebastian Dayne intensity that made us billionaires, man.”
He made it sound so easy. “But… how? It’s way more complicated than you’re making it. Rowe doesn’t know about ETC or who founded the company, and I can’t tell him. I’ve only spent a handful of hours with him. I don’t know if I can actually trust him not to be using me for contacts or social capital, like—”
“Like Justin.” Landry’s voice hardened. “Yeah, that’s valid. Has Rowe been asking you for shit, trying to get you to give him money for his project? Because that’s a whole other situation.”
“He hasn’t asked me for anything.” I swallowed, remembering last night. How close I’d been to telling Rowe truths. How much we’d talked about my work, even when I’d made him promise he wouldn’t talk about his. “The opposite, actually. I asked him not to talk about his project with me, and he didn’t. At least not yet.”
Landry nodded slowly. “So why not get to know him? Bash, that promise we made to our brotherhood… It was never supposed to be a forever thing, was it? If we can’t ever share our lives with anyone else, that would really suck since I’m not remotely attracted to any of you fuckers, and none of you have ever had the good taste to be attracted to me.”
A startled laugh erupted from my chest. “No. I… I don’t know.”
“And how are you supposed to tell if Rowe’s trustworthy unless you take the chance of trusting him, at least a little?”
“I don’t know that, either,” I admitted.
“All this not-knowing,” Landry teased. “No wonder you’re going out of your mind, Big Daddy.”
“You’ve gotta stop with that nickname,” I said severely. “That’s not going to be a thing.”
Landry’s mischievous smile told me he was going to ensure that itwas.
“You’re such an ass.”
