Page 23 of The Boss

The days dragged on, and my mood only got worse.

I buried myself in meetings, in emails, in troubleshooting a server issue with the IT department, pretending like I wasn’t so fucking on edge that I wanted to break something. Everything irritated me—Alicia’s constant chatter, the never-ending pings of my inbox, the way people knocked on my door with questions they should already know the answers to. I snapped at my team over the smallest mistakes, barked at a junior developer for missing a deadline by a few hours, and by the end of the week, I’d officially becomethatkind of boss.

Even Chris had started giving me wary looks.

The gym wasn’t much better. Usually, lifting helped clear my head, but now, every time I tried to focus, my attention kept slipping. And it was even worse when Chris trained with me. I tried aiming my workouts early before work, when I thought he wouldn’t be there. But he kept surprising me, appearing when Ileast expected him to, almost like he tried to synch his schedule to mine. He was just… there. All the fucking time.

I couldn’t flat-out tell him to bugger off. We had finally smoothed things out, and I didn’t want to make it weird again. So, I grinded my teeth and kept working out with him. But every now and then, my gaze caught on him, noticing the way his shirt rode up when he stretched, baring the sharp V of his lower abdomen. The way sweat trickled down his throat and into his collar. The way his shorts clung to his bubble butt.

And that? That was unacceptable.

It fucking pissed me off. It pissed me off because I shouldn’t have been noticing these things. Because my body wasn’tlistening.Because, at the end of the day, no matter what I did, no matter how many times I jerked off, it just wasn’t enough.

* * *

The next Monday, the inevitable happened.

Alicia knocked on my office door that afternoon, stepping in hesitantly. “Isaac, do you have a minute?”

I didn’t look up from my monitor. “What is it?”

She faltered. “I was going over the DevOps reports, and I think there’s a discrepancy in the—”

“Alicia.” I cut her off, already exhausted. “I hired you because you’re good at your job. So do your damn job. I don’t need a play-by-play of every minor issue!”

I had no reason to snap at her. She was just being thorough. But my voice came out sharp, clipped, the tension slipping out. Her face barely flickered, but I caught it—the tightness in her jaw, the way her fingers curled at her sides. Then, just as quickly, she smoothed her expression and gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

She turned and left without another word.

I blew out a heavy breath and dropped my head into my hands.Fuck.I wasn’t that kind of boss. Didn’t want tobethat kind of boss. I just… I just needed to get my head on straight.

The next knock came harder. The door opened before I could answer and Chris stepped in, gaze sharp. “Okay, what the hell’s up with you?”

I stiffened. “Excuse me?”

Chris crossed his arms. “You’ve been an ass all week, Zac. You’re snappish, you’re scowling, but that?” He jerked his head toward the door. “That was unnecessary. You just chewed out Alicia over nothing. She looked like she was ready to quit.”

“Stay out of it,” I muttered.

“Not until you tell me.” Chris stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “What’s going on?”

Teeth grinding, jaw tight, my fingers pressed into the wood of my desk like I was about to snap it in half. “Chris, I’m not in the mood—”

“Yeah, no shit. But that doesn’t give you the right to take it out on everyone else.”

He was right, and I knew it. But knowing that didn’t help me in the slightest. So I kept glaring at him, hoping he would take the hint and get the hell out of my office. He didn’t back down.

“And quit glowering at me like that. You won’t scare me that easily.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to force the tension out of my skull, regretting the day I asked this brash, impudent brat to work for me in the first place. “I’m just stressed. Chantelle’s been in New York for the past week.”

He blinked. “That’s it?”

“She’s been gonefor a week,” I repeated with added emphasis.

It took him all of two seconds to put it together. His eyebrows lifted, and for a second, he just stared at me. Then he sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “So you need to get laid.”

I let out a humorless laugh. “Thanks for the insight, Freud.”

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