Page 50 of The Probability of Us

He sits up and puts his hands on my cheeks, looking me deep in my eyes. “I’d rather have you than any promotion.”

“You’ve been working so hard. You deserve to be recognized for it,” I say, grabbing onto his arms and closing my eyes. “What can we do about this?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, there has to be something.” I flop back in bed and think for a while. “I could look for another job so you can get your promotion.”

“Analise.”

I sit up at his tone and frown. “I’m serious. If it will help you, I’ll do it.”

He has to know I would do anything for him.

“Do I want to work at a place that would do something like this though?” He thinks out loud.

“Well, then you could look for another job,” I chime in. “Get that promotion you deserve at a company who won’t penalize you for being in love.”

He laughs and my heart melts. There’s the light, sunshine man I love. “You think I should?”

“It’s up to you,” I say, leaning forward to kiss him. “But it couldn’t hurt to at least see what’s out there.”

Nineteen

AUGUST CURRENT DAY (SUNDAY)

For a moment, I forget the man I love is lying in my bed. But it’s a beautiful reminder, rolling over to see honey-colored hair and the light scruff of a day gone without shaving. He’s gorgeous with the first rays of light haloing him in a brilliant golden glow. This has to be heaven. There’s no other way to explain how perfect this is, how perfect he is.

How perfectweare.

The way we move together and have each other memorized so completely is intoxicating. Nothing will ever compare to this feeling, this connection.

It wasn’t until he was back that I realized how lonely I’d been since he left. I’d become so good at faking it, I had started to convince myself it wasn’t so bad—that I could find something better, that I could live without this, that it wasn’t as perfect as I remembered.

But it’s better than I remembered, and not just the sex—although, that is mind-blowingly good. The way we interact, the way we’re so in sync, even the way we work together is on a different level than it was before.

I think I understand what he meant when he said we felt too good to last. What we have doesn’t feel like what I see other people have—Ali and Trent, Sterling and Will. They love each other, there’s no doubt about it, but Warren feels like so much more than just someone I love. It feels more like our names were always meant to be spoken in the same sentence, like neither of us is supposed to exist without the other.

It’s why I always thought of him as the sun to my summer. Because those two words go hand in hand, and they will for eternity. Just like I will be his for eternity, and without him, my life lacks meaning—like summer without a sun.

Tears well up in my eyes from this overwhelming feeling, this overwhelming love. He’s the picture of peacefulness, and I don’t want to disturb him so I quietly creep out of bed and grab the first piece of clothing I can find. After closing the bedroom door behind me, I slip on the shirt and grin when I discover it’s one of his long-sleeved button-up work shirts. I roll up the sleeves, button the bottom half of the shirt that fits me closer to a dress, and start up the espresso machine.

As it brews, I pull out my work computer and start searching for that tax code I need to find, praying that it’s the solution I need to make this work. It takes a few different searches, a few different wordings for the search engine to decipher what I’m trying to find, but I click on a link and gasp.

Tax Law #709. This is it.

The language of the actual law goes right over my head—it’s not what I’m trained in. So I open a new tab and search for a summarized version of the law until I finally find a website that looks promising.

I skim the page looking for keywords.In the case of an acquisition that causes a clear conflict of interest, a parent company must be established, and the entities must remain completely separate under its umbrella.

Okay, that’s good. That means we can still operate exactly as is without legal issues, they’ll just have to create a parent company to manage both businesses. But wait, how is this beneficial to the company acquiring the other? It’s no different than just contracting out the services since services would still have to be paid.

And why is this a Tax Law? I haven’t seen anything about taxes. I reread the article, paying more attention this time.

Holy shit.

The services have to be paid but the parent company gets to write off the cost of the two companies doing business together. So, we could provide value-based care consulting services that can be written off, making the cost neutral, but still generating the savings, and still continue making revenue by consulting out to others as we have been.

This is exactly what we needed.

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