Chapter Sixteen

Julian

“I'm fine. Get some rest” 

Julian didn’t get a single ounce of rest. Fine wasn’t the word he would have used for a man who had looked, in the space of a single knock, like he had swallowed something that threatened to come back up. 

He arrived at the office early, coffee in hand, replaying how Ethan’s hand rested in his jaw tilting his head towards his before Preston’s knock ruined everything. It kept replaying in his head like a maddening loop. 

He began rehearsing versions of a conversation he had no idea where to start from as he neared Ethan’s office. 

Hey, about last night. What was that about? Are we going to talk about it or pretend it didn’t happen? Because I need to know.

He shook his head.

None of them sounded right. 

He decided in the end to simply knock and see what would happen, which in retrospect was possibly the least strategic plan he’d committed to.

Ethan’s door was shut when he got there, blinds drawn the way they’d been the night before.

He drew a deep breath and knocked twice, immediately letting himself in before he could lose his confidence.

Ethan was behind his desk, and the moment Julian saw his face, he understood, with a sinking, immediate certainty, that this was not going to go the way he’d hoped.

“Do you not know how to knock and wait for a response,” Ethan said, not looking up from whatever was in front of him, his voice held no emotion in a way Julian hadn’t heard from him before. It sounded sharp, like something with teeth in it.

“I did knock.” Julian shut the door behind him, some instinct telling him this conversation shouldn’t happen with it open. “I wanted to talk about last night.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Ethan—”

“Mr. Cross.” The correction came fast and hard, like a slap. Ethan finally looked up, and his expression almost took  Julian bolting off.

“You will address me as Mr. Cross. We are not on a first-name basis. We are not on any basis that involves you walking into my office uninvited to discuss things that did not happen.”

Julian felt the floor tilt slightly under him. “Something happened. I was there.”

“Nothing happened.” Ethan stood, and the movement had an edge to it, restless, keeping his eyes wandering from his door to his windows like a man barely carrying something in. “You misread a moment of exhaustion for something it wasn’t. That’s on me for not being clearer, and I’m being clear now. It will not happen again.”

“You touched my face.” Julian hated how small his voice sounded, hated it, and pushed forward anyway, because backing down felt worse than being humiliated. “You said you didn’t know how it ends. That wasn’t about the manuscript and we both know it.”

A flicker of something he couldn't place passed across Ethan’s face. “Watch what you say. Everything we discuss here is only about the progress of the manuscript, nothing else Mr Hayes.”

“I’m not — “ Julian took a step closer, which made Ethan move back so fast making him almost tumble into his desk. This was embarrassing, Ethan was treating him as though he were contagious. “I just want to understand what’s happening. One minute you’re inches from kissing me and the next you’re talking to me like I’m —”

“You are nothing but an employee in this space Mr Hayes, I want you to remember that!” Ethan’s voice rose, sharp enough that Julian actually flinched, and the sound of it seemed to surprise Ethan too, some flicker of something crossing his face before it hardened again. “This is a business arrangement, Mr. Hayes. You were hired to write a manuscript, not to indulge whatever fantasy you’ve built out of a few late nights and a contract you needed badly enough to take without reading the fine print.”

The words landed like a physical blow. Julian actually took a step back, chest tight, certain for one disorienting second that he’d misheard.

“That’s not fair.”

“I’m not interested in being fair. I’m interested in you doing the job I’m paying you an obscene amount of money to do.” Ethan rounded the desk, and for a moment Julian genuinely thought he might keep coming, might close the distance the way he had the night before, except this time there was nothing underneath it but cold fury. When Julian didn’t move fast enough, Ethan’s hand closed briefly around his arm, practically pushing him hard enough that Julian felt it, toward the door. “Get out. Send me the revised pages by the end of the day. And do not walk into my office again without an appointment.”

The door shut behind him almost before Julian had cleared the threshold, the sound of it final and absolute, and he stood in the hallway for a long moment, arm still stinging faintly where Ethan’s hand had been, utterly unable to process what had just happened to him.

He didn’t remember the walk back to his own office. He sat down at his desk, opened his laptop, and stared at the blinking cursor for what felt like twenty minutes without writing a single word.

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense, not the tenderness from the night before, not the venom this morning, not the particular cruelty of “whatever fantasy you’ve built”, as though Julian had imagined the whole thing, as though he’d been the only one leaning in, as though Ethan’s own hand hadn’t been the one that moved first.

He thought about texting Maya and decided against it. He didn’t have the words yet, and he suspected if he tried to explain it out loud, he might actually start crying at his desk, which was not an option he was willing to entertain in the middle of a Tuesday.

The office, meanwhile, seemed determined to have the best day of its collective life without him.

“Did you hear?” Sarah appeared in his doorway sometime around eleven, practically vibrating. “Mark from editorial proposed to his boyfriend at the coffee cart. Actual ring, actual kneeling, the whole floor stopped working to watch.”

“That’s nice,” Julian said, in a voice that clearly conveyed he had heard approximately none of the words in that sentence.

“He said yes, obviously. There’s cake happening in the breakroom in twenty minutes if you want some. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s honestly the most exciting thing that’s happened here since well you know never” she laughed.

I’ll pass on the cake.”

Sarah studied him for a second, her enthusiasm dimming into concern. “You okay? You look like someone ran over your dog.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“That wasn’t really the question.”

Julian managed something approximating a smile. “I’m fine. Just behind on revisions.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she let it go, backing out of the doorway with a small, sympathetic wave, and Julian was alone again with the cursor and the empty page and the ugly, looping replay of Ethan’s hand on his arm, pushing him away.

He tried, for the better part of an hour, to force himself back into the manuscript. It didn’t work. Every sentence he attempted about a powerful man losing his composure felt suddenly, sickeningly ironic, and he closed the laptop before he could do something as embarrassing as cry over a fictional argument that was really just this morning’s actual one wearing a costume. He regrets putting this piece in a public space. 

By early afternoon, the sting had curdled into something angrier, which was, if nothing else, easier to sit with than the hurt had been. He was tired of being the only one who seemed to be feeling any of this out loud. He was tired of being pulled close and shoved away on a schedule that made sense to no one but Ethan Cross. He was tired, mostly, of caring this much about a man who apparently thought so little of him that he could accuse him, in the same breath, of both imagining a kiss and being reckless enough to want one.

He thought about Richard. About the easy warmth of that dinner, the low, unbothered laugh, the total absence of anyone slamming a door in his face over a moment of honesty. Richard, who had told him to figure out what he actually wanted and then simply waited, without punishing him for taking his time.

Julian pulled out his phone before he could talk himself out of it.

Julian: This is going to sound needy, but do you have plans tonight? I could use a friend.

The reply came faster than he expected.

Richard: I always have room for a friend in crisis. My place or yours? I promise to behave, unless you’d rather I didn’t.

Julian huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh, the first real crack in the tight, miserable knot that had been sitting in his chest since he’d left Ethan’s office.

Julian: Yours. I don’t think I can look at my own apartment right now without thinking about how much of my life is currently a mess.

Richard: Say no more. I’ll order in. Come whenever you’re ready.

Julian set the phone down and looked out his window at the gray sliver of city visible between two buildings, and told himself, the way he’d told himself so many things over the last month, that this was fine. That he was allowed to want something simple after a day this unkind. That reaching for the person who made things easy wasn’t a betrayal of anything, since whatever this morning had been, it had made one thing abundantly clear.

Whatever he’d thought was happening between him and Ethan Cross, Ethan clearly didn’t think it was happening at all.

He packed up his things early, sent Lena a short note about leaving for the day, and didn’t look toward the closed blinds of Ethan’s office once on his way to the elevator.

He told himself that took no effort at all. He didn’t quite believe it.