The Boss's Weakness

Fourteen months in the bullpen, a chair that squeaks, a lamp that does not work, and a pitch rewritten six times. That is the sum total of Leo Castellano's professional standing on the morning everything changes. The coffee comes out bitter, which feels right. Three packets of sugar dissolve into nothing. Out of the break-room window there is an alley, a rusted fire escape, and one stray tabby working through a pizza box, and he has stood here every morning for over a year without getting used to the smell. His sister texts. *Appointment's at 3. Don't freak out.* He types and deletes three replies before settling on something that says nothing. The drive in his bag is black with an orange cap and the words VANCOUVER BIDS MASTER on it in permanent marker. Everything he has is on it. Mia's tuition is not going to wait another year. Then Julian Hartley walks into the presentation room and the room gets smaller. Leo has seen him before, obviously. Three days a week, door shut, phone against his ear, wearing the expression of a man who would rather be anywhere else. Seeing him across a conference table turns out to be an entirely different problem, and Leo does not have room in his life for a different problem. Aidan sits opposite the whiteboard with his arms crossed and his cologne arriving three seconds ahead of him. What follows is a late night that changes the game, a sound he was never meant to overhear, a retreat he dreaded and needed in equal measure, and one kiss that launches a thousand rumours. There is a photograph that tells two stories depending on who is holding it, and a meeting that breaks a ceiling nobody admitted was there. *I want you to be able to kiss me in the break room and hold my hand at dinner and tell everyone that I'm yours.* *You're mine?* *If you want me.* Cam knows. Cam has known since roughly the second week and has been insufferable about it. A workplace romance about the distance between a corner office and a broken desk lamp, and about a man who spent fourteen months making himself small finding out he never had to. The answer, when it comes, is yes. Saying it out loud where everyone can hear is the part still ahead of them.