Page 19 of Love Spell

“Yes!We can only have interactions in a professional, work-related capacity, or I’m l-le-leaving right now and never coming b-back.You choose.Just t-tell me which it is.”

Timo swallowed.If Noah only understood how much he meant to Timo, how much Timo wanted his arms around Noah at this very moment, how much it was tearing him apart to hear Noah say Timo was worse than nothing to him, then surely Noah would change his mind.But how was Timo supposed to explain the simple truth when he was banned from non-work topics and when the truth was, well, really bloody stupid?

Timo cleared his throat before saying, “Work only, of course.You don’t have to go anywhere, Noah.”

“Thank you.”Noah’s jaw twitched.Again, he spoke in a measured, clear, clipped fashion, as if aimed at particularly inept speech-to-text software.“Then I’ll get back to work.”

* * *

Noah was shaking with his own adrenaline come-down by the time he sank into his desk chair.It took him a minute, just breathing, eyes closed, before he could pull everything back out of the box for his desk.

Years of speech and cognitive therapies, essentially conquering his speech disorder by adulthood, and now this?Yes, they’d told him that stuttering would be with him for life and to be compassionate with himself and remember the exercises, especially in times of stress, but how long had it been since anything like that had happened?

He wouldn’t let it come back.It was a blip.It was his damn boss, not his whole life.He was fine.He’d stood up for himself; he’d got what he wanted, and he wasn’t even facing criminal charges.Better than fine.

Why, then, did he feel like the one who’d been kicked this morning?

7

By the middle of September, Timo had fallen into a new routine: Extra biking, extra workouts, extra insider meetups, extra podcast and audiobook listening, extra work, extra networking parties, extra drinking, extra coffee, extra joints, four or five hours of sleep a night, start again.

It had to work; his tactics could save him from whatever was happening to his brain.Disallowing space for thoughts about Noah would force him to snap loose of this uncontrollable obsession that had crawled into his ear one night and laid its eggs.No one could focus on Noah when they had to focus on keeping up with Timo.

So he worked and he ran and he worked and he smoked and he worked and he went from thinking about Noah three or four times an hour to a dozen times an hour to every bloody minute of every bloody day.Imagined conversations with Noah interrupted his audiobooks.Imagined holidays with Noah interrupted his party nights.Imagined sex with Noah interrupted his showers.Imagined visions of Noah interrupted numbers feeding onto a dozen screens in his office.

At work, he was missing patterns he’d never missed.Trading patterns became nonsensical.He stared as red and green candlesticks turned into head and shoulder patterns, saw wedges and triangles forming, cups and handles, saw it all reverse again — and none of it made sense, none of it prompted him into committing to a trade.He used to love this stuff, but he hesitated, second-guessing himself until the opportunity had passed.He took to prowling corridors more than usual, talking with everyone else, making sure at least they were staying on their toes to conceal the fact that Timo wasn’t.

He never knew if he wanted to run into Noah or not.Rather, he always wanted to run into Noah, but always regretted it, so he shouldn’t want to.After Noah’s ultimatum, threatening to leave early, Timo played his part.He wouldn’t be the one to drive Noah thousands of miles away, so he went out of his way to demonstrate how much he would only talk to Noah about work-related matters.

He might ask Arthur about the game last night, or tell Simon to get a proper tailor, that those trousers were practically capris, or generally discuss which clubs to visit with the Arab traders who would be at the conference next month, but with Noah it was only numbers and trades.

Surely his efforts would win points.Surely Noah would accept more invitations to their nights out, or at least offer polite conversation in the kitchen.

No.Not only did Noah refuse to go out with any of them after the night he’d stormed out on Timo; if Timo entered the kitchen, Noah exited it.His work was capable.Not brilliant, but not a travesty like some juniors who never found their feet and only lasted a matter of weeks.He was always in early, often left late — in fact, often left after Timo — and he wasn’t taking anymore grief from the likes of Dave and Arthur and Chandler thanks to a gentle word to them from Timo after the incident.

If Timo did everything right, everything Noah wanted, then Noah would come around.Except that he wasn’t.If Noah didn’t, Timo could train his own thinking out of caring what Noah did, so it wouldn’t matter.Except Timo was also failing there.

Two weeks of his new strategy and Timo was at a loss, his profit/loss ratio suffering, his restless nights tangled in disturbing dreams and muddled images interwoven with dreams of Noah when he could sleep.

It didn’t at first occur to him that extra sex might also be a workable strategy to add to his improved life of extras since the only person he wanted anymore was Noah.Desperate to try anything after the first fortnight, he rang an old fuck buddy, only to end up walking out.

He just didn’t care, kept thinking of Noah, even felt uncomfortable about the whole thing — a queasy, breath-quickening sensation that he only later began to suspect might have been guilt.As if he’d been going to cheat on Noah, which was so incredibly stupid he tried again the next night just to prove to himself he could.He trolled a club, spending two hours watching for anyone who looked like Noah, brought the guy home, kept all his focus on pretending this was Noah, and … it was okay.Like ordering a Ramos gin fizz and getting sparkling water.He wouldn’t die of thirst, but there wasn’t any other point.

He’d rather be alone thinking of Noah, imagine the whole event with the help of his right hand, than have to make such an effort with a tedious partner.Just as well since he could always manage to squeeze in a few minutes of quality time with himself lately, especially after anything that resembled close contact with Noah, such as stopping at his desk when Noah had a legitimate trading question.Luckily, Timo spending slightly excessive amounts of time in the toilet at work was perfectly normal thanks to his nosebleeds.

Timo hadn’t thought this much about another person since the height of his time with Rhys, in between the first rush of discovery and his own stress- and drug-fuelled breakdown that led to him accepting a transfer to Hong Kong when his company offered either that or a one-way ticket back to Moscow as the only options.

In hindsight, he should have told them to go fuck themselves and stayed in London, but everything had worked out.A year in Hong Kong, then back to London, finally got his citizenship, relinquished the Russian citizenship, and set up his own prop shop.

His biggest regret wasn’t anything to do with the work.It wasn’t even that he’d allowed himself to remain entangled with Moscow for so many years; it was Rhys.If he’d not fled, not accepted the Hong Kong placement and left Rhys in London, how different might his life be right now?

He should have started his own shop long ago, should have pressed Rhys to marry him, knew perfectly well that Rhys wanted to take that step.They’d talked about it, made it sound like it was mostly for the visa in case the other one used it as emotional leverage.

But no, Timo had had other priorities.Some in the form of white powder, some in the form of adding extra zeros on the tail of every pay cheque, and he’d never been willing to make that choice to stay.

That could have been him two weeks ago: tuxedo and cake.Was that what he wanted in his life?Was it Rhys?Because he’d never really got over Rhys?Reminded of that time when Rhys had almost died and Timo had been a world away in Hong Kong and that realisation had shaken him more than he could ever admit?

It was easy not to worry about being far from loved ones when you didn’t love anyone who was still living.Then Rhys and … was that what this was about?This Noah obsession had started right after the wedding.Was Timo’s own brain messing with him?He had to resign himself to no second chances with Rhys, so he woke up the next morning smitten with someone totally unsuitable?More self-sabotage?

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