My Boyfriend's Brother의 모든 챕터: 챕터 31 - 챕터 36

Liam's flight was Tuesday, which meant Monday night was ours. He'd come over at seven like we'd planned, and the talk we were supposed to have had mostly turned into an apology from both directions, given and accepted in about ten minutes, quicker than either of the fights deserved. He said he'd overreacted. I said he hadn't, not really, and meant it, which was its own small discomfort I didn't hand over to him. "I don't want to spend my last night here arguing about a seating plan," he'd said, and I'd laughed, actually laughed, for what felt like the first time all week, and something between us had eased back into place. Not entirely. Enough. So now it was Monday, and we were doing what we always did the night before he left: ordering too much food, not finishing any of it, sitting on the sofa with his feet in my lap because he claimed it helped with the flight anxiety, though I suspected it mostly helped him feel like leaving was a smaller thing than it was. "You'll call whe

The Kessler contract needed to be rewritten by Friday, which was Rhett's problem and, by nine a.m., mine too.He called me into his office with the specific tone he used when he already knew he was asking too much of someone. "I need eyes on this before end of day. All of it. I know it's a lot.""It's fine. I've got nothing better to do than reread three hundred pages of indemnity clauses.""That's the spirit."We worked through the morning at a careful, deliberate pace, more careful than three hundred pages of indemnity clauses actually required. Neither of us had said anything about Wednesday, not directly, but it sat in the room with us anyway, in the extra foot of space Rhett left between his chair and mine, in the way I kept both hands visibly on my own side of the desk like a woman on her best behavior."Read me clause fourteen again," he said, rubbing his eyes, somewhere around six. "I think I've stopped understanding English.""'The Purchaser shall indemnify and hold harmless

"Geneva," Rhett said, like the word itself was an inconvenience.He'd called me into his office at nine, door shut, which usually meant either a problem with a client or a problem with his family, and from the look on his face this was closer to the second than the first, even though the sentence that followed was entirely about work."The Belvoir deal's stalling. Client wants someone on the ground for the final push, full-time, not flying back and forth every week like we've been doing." He rubbed the back of his neck, a habit I'd learned meant he already knew he wasn't going to like his own answer. "I have to go for a month. Starting next week.""A month.""A month." He said it like he was testing the shape of the sentence out loud to see if it got any better the second time. It didn't seem to. "You're coming with me. I need someone who actually knows the file, and Amara's got the office to run while I'm gone."I should have felt some version of dread at that, the specific dread of