Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 42461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 142(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 142(@300wpm)
Eight years of waking up alone in a freezing bed. Eight years of a shattered heart. Eight years of going out into a world that no longer held joy because his husband was no longer in it.
He flinched at the caption OneDrive had generated.
You and Dan were in Williamsburg on this day. Best day ever.
It had been the best day.
Skinny-dipping in his parents’ pool. Drinking at the local pub until they were sloppy drunk and stumbling back to the house. Dan had miraculously convinced him to do karaoke since they were over seven hundred miles away from anyone who knew him.
Stone couldn’t remember a time that he’d made Dan as happy as he had that weekend. He missed the playful sound of his deep laugh. The way the huskiness of his voice would dip to a smooth murmur when he was flirting, or the way he slid his warm, roughened hands up Stone’s shirt, showing more than telling what he wanted.
Fuck these computers and their damn algorithms.
Stone put in his password and navigated to the settings and turned off the OneDrive notifications.
He could’ve done without that sucker punch to start his day, but he took it on the chin and pulled himself together. He grabbed his tool belt, leather gloves and black beanie off his coat rack and opened his cabin door, ready to bury himself in work until he fell back into bed and passed out from exhaustion.
A rush of frigid air in his face greeted and shocked him like a surprise visit from a family member.
The crunch of hardened snow beneath his steel-toe boots was the only sound in his otherwise silent existence as he got into his truck and headed down his long driveway.
Royal
“Come on Royal, you do know what happened to Cavanaugh wasn’t your fault, right?” His assistant, Joel, attempted to convince him for the hundredth time. “What the guy did was his own decision…I mean, you didn’t pull the trigger.”
Didn’t I?
“It was a bold move on your part, it shows you’re not afraid to take ultimate risk. And it’s made you a shoo-in for partner next year. Who the hell walks away from that?”
“Me,” Royal muttered as he continued to pack the last of his personal items into a box.
“What more do you want?” Joel spread his arms wide, gesturing at Royal’s massive corner office on the sixty-fourth floor of their Manhattan finance firm. “Six-figure salary plus annual incentives. Company car, penthouse, platinum status at the most exclusive gentlemen’s club on the East coast, and don’t even get me started on your benefits.”
Royal pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to breathe through the onslaught of another migraine.
“Thank fuck I have good health care, Joel, otherwise I wouldn’t’ve been able to get treatment for that last heart attack scare or afford the medication for my recent hypertension diagnosis. Pills that I’ll probably be on for the rest of my life.”
At least Joel had the decency to look somewhat apologetic. With his dark blond, slicked-back hair and haughty attitude, Joel had the appearance of a classic Wall Street wolf.
Wearing a five thousand-dollar suit, he paced back and forth across the polished floor, his Gucci shoes click-clacking to an anxious rhythm that only added to Royal’s headache.
Joel sat on the Ralph Lauren couch facing the panoramic view and lightened his tone before he continued. “Then take a couple months off. Swing by Miami and visit your folks. Rent a condo on South Beach and have an escort service send over their best talent to take your mind off all this dumb shit. Sunbathe, get a tan, go deep sea fishing, scuba dive with angel fish, what-the-hell-ever, boss. Then come back revived and ready to kick some ass.”
“Joel, I’m leaving, all right. I’m done.”
Royal threw his extra ties he kept in the closet into the box. It didn’t escape him that he had no framed pictures of family or a lover on his huge glass-topped desk. It’d been so long since he’d seen his parents—he didn’t even give them five minutes of his week to Facetime—he’d almost forgotten what they looked like. At least they still had one good son, his little brother, Cameron, who Royal also hadn’t seen or spoken to in over a year.
“Don’t worry about your position, okay.” Royal aimed a fake smile at his secretary when she came in with a plastic tote to retrieve his files. “You and Shelly are actually being promoted. I got you both a position with Grainger, which means a higher salary, and a better office.”
“And more work,” Shelly muttered, “Grainger has twice as many clients as you, Royal, in order to keep up with your numbers. It’s no wonder he has three secretaries and five assistants.”
Royal should’ve known better than to expect understanding from his staff. In the cutthroat world of corporate finance, a person toughed it out. They battled through sickness, pain, headaches, loneliness and depression. There was no such thing as sympathy for too much hard work. So, he didn’t know why he thought he’d get a wish-you-well or a modicum of appreciation when they’d never shown any before.