That Telling MomentChapter 21

Stephen Huxley was a proper adult. A functioning member of society who paid taxes, remembered to put the bins out on Thursday nights, and occasionally managed to eat vegetables that weren’t deep-fried or smothered in cheese. He had a first-class law degree, for God’s sake.

So why, precisely, was he hiding in the third-floor toilets at Dabney, breathing into a folded paper towel like it was a bloody brown bag?

Because David sodding Ryland was back from Geneva. Back in the same building. Back in the same conference room where the quarterly performance review was scheduled to begin in approximately seven minutes.

“Get it together, Huxley,” he muttered, glaring at his reflection. His tie was crooked. His hair refused to lie flat where he’d been running anxious fingers through it. And there was a look in his eyes that screamed “recently traumatised by catastrophic sexual rejection” to anyone with functioning retinas.

Six days had passed since the Text. Six days of Stephen staring at those cold, clinical words that had effectively relegated their night together to a regrettable clerical error. I believe our physical interaction was a mistake. The professional and personal complications created by such an association are suboptimal for both our careers and emotional well-being.

Suboptimal. Like a disappointing coffee order. Like a slightly too warm beer. Not like Stephen’s heart being fed through an industrial shredder while his dignity watched from the sidelines, eating popcorn and slow-clapping.

He smoothed his tie for the fourteenth time. “You are going to walk into that conference room,” he told his reflection sternly, “and you are going to be so bloody professional that they’ll erect a statue of you in the lobby. ‘Stephen Huxley: So Professional He Didn’t Even Cry When Confronted With the Alpha Who Shagged Him and Ran Away to Another Country.’ It’ll be very tasteful. Possibly bronze.”

The toilet door swung open and Philip from Accounting gave him an alarmed look.

“Just practising my presentation,” Stephen said brightly.

Philip backed out without washing his hands. Gross.

With a final glance at his reflection, Stephen squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and marched toward the conference room with the determined stride of someone heading to their own execution but was committed to maintaining excellent posture throughout.

The room was already half full when he arrived. Victoria Harlow held court at the far end, terrifying a junior associate with nothing but the subtle movements of her eyebrows. Eames scrolled through his phone with the bored expression of someone whose net worth had increased by several million pounds in the time it had taken to reach the meeting. There in the corner, hunched over a laptop, was Ryland.

Stephen’s stride faltered for precisely 0.4 seconds before he recovered, making a beeline for the empty chair furthest from the alpha. Ryland didn’t look up. His hair was a disaster, the shadows under his eyes deep enough to store luggage in.

Good. Let him suffer. Let him marinate in his regrets. Stephen hoped it felt like food poisoning.

He pulled out his materials and arranged his notepad and pen at exact right angles to the edge of the table. He was going to get through this meeting, the next meeting, the next fifty years of meetings. Eventually he would die, and his obituary would read “Never Once Made a Scene at Dabney, Despite Abundant Provocation.”

“Morning, Huxley.” Dominic Harcourt dropped into the chair beside him, coffee in hand. “Rough night? You look like you’ve just finished a night shift at Tesco.”

“Thanks for that assessment,” Stephen replied, his smile fixed rigidly in place. “Always a pleasure to have one’s appearance critiqued before nine AM.”

“Just saying. You seemed distracted in Geneva after Ryland left.” Harcourt’s gaze slid meaningfully across the room. “Trouble in paradise?”

Stephen’s fingers tightened on his pen. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come off it. The entire legal department has a betting pool on how long you two have been shagging. My money was on ‘since the gala,’ but Johnson swears it’s been going on since that server room incident with Mick from IT.”

“Your money would be better spent on a personality transplant,” Stephen suggested pleasantly. “I hear they’re doing wonders with pig organs these days.”

Harcourt’s retort was cut off by Victoria Harlow calling the meeting to order, and Stephen sent up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity looked after emotionally devastated omegas in corporate hellscapes.

“Before we begin the quarterly review,” Harlow announced, “Dr. Ryland will present the findings from the European Renewable Energy Conference.”

Stephen’s stomach plummeted to approximately the basement level of the building.

Ryland rose from his seat, moving to the front of the room with none of his usual confidence. He looked awful. Not in the way that normal people looked awful, where a nap and an aggressive regime of multivitamins might sort him. No, Ryland looked awful in the way of a man who hadn’t slept in six days and had stopped pretending otherwise.

“The conference,” Ryland began, his voice slightly hoarse, “yielded significant opportunities for Dabney’s renewable energy division. The EM-74 prototype generated considerable interest, particularly from the Japanese delegation…”

Stephen tried to focus on the words rather than the man speaking them. Tried not to remember those same lips against his neck, that same voice roughened with want rather than exhaustion. Ryland’s hands trembled slightly as he changed slides.

“The projected market penetration for Q3 indicates…” Ryland faltered, his gaze lifting to meet Stephen’s across the room.

Stephen couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look away. Those blue eyes held nothing of the clinical detachment from that bloody text message, and for a long, terrible second, neither of them moved.

Then Ryland looked down, clearing his throat. “Indicates approximately 27% growth potential,” he continued, but his voice had lost what little steadiness it had possessed.

Stephen became aware that his own breathing had gone shallow and fast. His hands were flat on the table, pressing down. He would not comfort the alpha who had humiliated him, who had treated their connection like a failed laboratory experiment. He was an adult. He was mature.

He was completely fucked.

Because no matter how much he wanted to hate Ryland, to write him off as yet another alpha who saw omegas as disposable entertainment, his body remembered everything. The weight of Ryland’s hands. The sound he’d made against Stephen’s throat. How real it had been, how rare, right up until the moment it had all gone catastrophically wrong.

Stephen forced himself to look at the presentation slides. Market penetration. Growth potential. Investment metrics. The words slid past without sticking. His pen moved across the notepad, jotting down numbers he wouldn’t remember, while his jaw ached from clenching.

Ryland’s presentation ended with polite applause. He returned to his seat without looking at Stephen again, shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow.

A hot flare of anger surged through Stephen, so intense it momentarily blinded him to the PowerPoint slide about Q3 forecasts. How dare he? How dare Ryland treat what had happened between them like a failed laboratory experiment, complete with hasty evacuation procedures when the results proved unsatisfactory?

Dabney was a vast corporate behemoth with seventeen thousand employees spread across four continents. Its London headquarters alone occupied forty floors of prime real estate. There were plenty of other server rooms for Stephen to hide in, for Christ’s sake. Plenty of other alphas here to practise sex with.

That’s what he needed. A sexual palate cleanser. A post-Ryland rehabilitation programme. He would have heaps of sex. Tons of it. Absolutely industrial quantities of shagging. He’d get so bloody good at it, turn himself into such a legendary fuck that it would echo through Dabney’s gossip network like whispers through the world’s horniest playground.

Then Ryland would hear about it.

Ryland would hear how Stephen Huxley, the omega he’d discarded like a disappointing takeaway, had become the stuff of alpha wet dreams throughout the corporate hierarchy. How executives were practically coming in their bespoke trousers at the mere thought of getting Stephen into bed. How his skill at taking knots had become the subject of breathless speculation in the executive bathroom.

Then Ryland would want him again. Would beg for a second chance. Would let Stephen nuzzle against that perfect neck and lose himself in that beautiful alpha scent…

Stephen scanned the room, mentally assessing his options for this sexual revenge tour. Eames was out, obviously, what with being the CEO and him clearly having watched at least one of Lysander’s videos. Harcourt was kind of hot, even with the developing dad bod, but he had the personality of a LinkedIn profile brought to life by a dark wizard. Thompson from Compliance had nice hands but laughed like a goose being slowly strangled.

His gaze moved methodically around the table, assessing and discarding candidates with brutal efficiency.

Jenkins? Receding hairline and permanent expression of digestive discomfort.

Priya from Contracts? Beta, not alpha, though those forearms were genuinely impressive.

Janet from Accounts? Alpha, but with a wedding ring so prominent it could probably be seen from space.

Everyone was wrong. Every last one of them. None of them had Ryland’s brilliant mind, his unexpected kindness, his scent, his ability to make Stephen feel simultaneously exasperated and understood.

Shit.

Stephen didn’t want another alpha. He wanted Ryland. Wanted his methodical touches, his scientific observations, his ability to weaponise advanced aeronautical engineering to manipulate airline seating assignments. Wanted access to his spreadsheets ranking Swiss cheese by molecular composition and his poorly disguised amusement when Stephen said something particularly cutting.

“Meeting adjourned,” Harlow announced, and the room erupted in the rustle of papers and the scraping of chairs.

Stephen gathered his materials with rigid precision, refusing to look up as Ryland passed his chair. The alpha paused, just for a moment, close enough that Stephen caught his scent. Something in it had gone sharp, wrong, distressed in a way that made Stephen grip onto the edge of the table.

“Stephen,” Ryland said, so quietly that only someone listening for the sound of his voice would have heard.

Stephen kept his eyes fixed on his notepad. “Dr. Ryland,” he replied, proud of how level his voice sounded. “I’ll email you my notes about the regulatory framework project.”

A beat of silence stretched between them, heavy with all the things neither of them was saying.

“Of course,” Ryland finally said. “Thank you.”

Then he was gone, leaving nothing but the trace of his scent and a silence that sat in Stephen’s chest like something swallowed wrong.