Page 22 of The Authenticity Clause
But his legs kept moving.
When he reached the desk, Leo was hunched over his tablet, headphones on, humming softly to himself. He was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t notice Julian standing there. For a moment, Julian just watched him. He watched the way Leo’s brow furrowed in concentration, the way he chewed on his lower lip, the way a stray lock of brown hair fell across his forehead. The urge to reach out and brush it away was so sudden andoverwhelming that Julian had to physically clench his fists at his sides.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
Leo jumped, yanking his headphones off. “Jeez! You need to wear a bell or something.” He looked up at Julian, his eyes wide. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I have a query regarding the licensing for the Montserrat font variant Anya is proposing for the H2 headers,” Julian said, his voice coming out more formal than ever, a desperate overcorrection.
Leo blinked. “The… right. The font. You could have Slacked me.”
“I prefer face-to-face communication for matters of potential legal and financial impact,” Julian lied smoothly.Impressive.Atruly first-class fabrication, Thorne. Give yourself a bonus.
“Right. Of course,” Leo said, turning to his monitor. As he did, Julian’s gaze fell on a book lying on the corner of his desk. It was a worn paperback, the spine creased from multiple readings. The cover was a minimalist design, showing a single, stark tree with two different sets of leaves, one for each half. The title wasThe Hidden Self, and the author was an obscure, almost cult-favorite writer named Elara Vance—an artist known for her lyrical, melancholic novels about identity, secrets, and the faces we show the world. It was a book Julian had read in college, a book that had left a permanent, thoughtful mark on him.
“Is that Vance?” Julian asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it.
Leo’s eyes lit up with genuine, unadulterated pleasure. “You know Elara Vance? No one knows Elara Vance! I thought I was the only one.”
“Her prose is… precise,” Julian said, which was his highest form of praise.
“Precise? It’s devastating,” Leo countered passionately. “It’s like she can see directly into the most hidden parts of you and just… writes it all down. This one,” he tapped the cover, “is my favorite. The idea that we all have these secret lives, these hidden selves that no one ever gets to see.”
Julian’s throat went dry. The dramatic irony was a physical weight in the air. Here was Leo, the man living the biggest secret of all, praising a book about hidden selves. And here was Julian, the man who prided himself on seeing everything, feeling an undeniable connection to him over it.
“I… agree,” Julian managed.
The air between them shifted again, charged with this new, unexpected point of connection. It was more potent than the storm, more intimate than the shared secret about the cello. This was a shared language, a mutual appreciation for something that spoke to a deeper part of both of them.
Leo was smiling at him, a soft, open smile that was different from his usual cheerful grin. It was a smile that reached his eyes, making them shine. And Julian’s entire, carefully constructed system went into critical failure. His resolve, his professionalism, his self-control—all of it just… blue-screened.
He was drowning in the warm brown of Leo’s eyes, completely and utterly lost.
“The font,” he croaked, grabbing onto the word like a life raft. “Anya needs the approval.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, it’s all cleared. Legal sent the confirmation this morning,” Leo said, his smile still lingering.
“Good,” Julian said, nodding dumbly. “Excellent.”
He turned and walked away, his movements stiff. He could feel Leo’s gaze on his back the entire way to his office. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.
He shut the glass door behind him and leaned against it for a second, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He looked at his hands. They were unsteady.
He had walked over there to re-establish boundaries, to put Leo back in his box. Instead, he had discovered another piece of the puzzle, another reason why this chaotic, impossible man was slowly, methodically, and against all logic, beginning to feel like the only thing
Chapter 16: The Midpoint
Of all the circles of corporate hell, Leo was convinced that the deepest, most infernal layer was reserved for mandatory team-building events.
The email from HR had landed in his inbox two weeks ago with the cheerful, ominous subject line: “Get Ready for the V&S Team Synergy Summit!” Leo’s soul had shriveled. Synergy was a word used by people who enjoyed icebreakers. Leo did not enjoy icebreakers. He enjoyed quiet corners, good coffee, and the absence of forced fun.
So now here he was, standing in the slightly dusty lobby of “Escape Velocity,” a local escape room establishment that smelled faintly of old pizza and desperation. The entire V&S team was present, all looking varying degrees of uncomfortable in their casual Friday attire, which for most of them was just a slightly more expensive black t-shirt. The theme of the day was “Collaborative Problem-Solving Under Pressure.” The theme, in Leo’s mind, was “A Hostage Situation with Better Branding.”
“Alright, Synergy Seekers!” a painfully enthusiastic facilitator named Chad, who wore a branded polo shirt with the straining energy of a man holding in a scream, clapped his hands together. “We’re going to be breaking you up into pairs to tackle ourmost challenging room: ‘The Curse of Pharaoh Amun-Hotep’s Tomb’!”
A collective groan rippled through the V&S employees. David from marketing muttered, “I’d rather be cursed by Pharaoh Amun-Hotep’s quarterly earnings report.”
Leo just prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that he would be paired with Maya. With Maya, he could at least turn the experience into a running commentary of sarcastic jokes. Anyone but—
