Page 51 of The Associate
Gael’s hand…
Samuel’s breath hitched. He leaned closer to the mirror, as if he might see the ghostly impression of long, elegant fingers.
It grounded you, a treacherous voice inside him whispered.It stopped the fall.
A flash, vivid and sensory rushed through his mind: the dark walls of the cube morphing into the polished bronze of the elevator doors. The Director’s sour-starch smell dissolving into sandalwood and clean wool. The crushing weight of despair transforming into the overwhelming, anchoring pressure of a hand on his nape.
“Look at me.”
“Good boy.”
The two memories collided in his mind, blurring at the edges until the terror of one became entwined with the shocking, shameful relief of the other.
Why?
Why did it feel like damnation in one instance, and like… like salvation in the other?
The Director’s touch had made him feel small. Broken. A thing to be corrected.
Gael’s touch had made him feel…seen. Known in his brokenness, and yet, in that knowing, held together. It had carved out a space of stillness in the center of his panic and commanded him to inhabit it.
And he had.Oh, God, he had. He’d melted into it. He’dwhimpered.
The shame was a hot flood, climbing his throat. He bent over the sink, gripping the cool porcelain, waiting for the nausea to pass.
∞∞∞
Samuel moved through the hushed corridors of the sixteenth floor like a ghost, his shoulders tense, his gaze fixed on a point six feet ahead. He mumbled a greeting to the receptionist, the sound dying in his throat. Every open doorway was a potential ambush. Every footfall behind him sent a jolt of adrenalinethrough his system. He avoided the kitchen, the common areas, any place where he might be forced into conversation.
At his desk, he buried himself in a dense discovery file, the words swimming on the page. He typed emails carefully, checking each sentence three times for errors that would draw attention. His body was a live wire, flinching at every sudden noise, every passing shadow.
At lunch, he hid in a small, disused conference room with a protein bar he didn’t taste. The door opened, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Sam? You in here?”
Alina. Her face, usually bright, was furrowed with concern. She leaned in, closing the door softly behind her. “You’ve been radio silent all morning. You look like you haven’t slept in a week.” She studied him, her gaze missing nothing; the pallor, the slight tremor in his hands as he set the protein bar down. “Are you okay?”
He forced a weak smile. It felt like a crack in his face. “Yeah. Just… tired. Long night.”
The lie was ash in his mouth. He didn’t believe it. He could see from the lingering doubt in her eyes that she didn’t either.
“Okay,” she said, not pushing. “Well, the Phillips brief is a beast. Don’t let it eat you alive. And… eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine, yeah?”
He nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. She gave him one last, worried look and slipped out.
He wasn’t okay.
He was unraveling.
The past was not past. It was here, in this sleek, modern office, wearing a tailored suit and speaking in a voice that could command a room or shatter a soul with a whisper.
And the most shameful part, the secret that coiled in the deepest, most broken part of him, was the treacherous, undeniableneed.
He was afraid of Gael Wise.
He was ashamed of his own response to him.
But the ghost of that hand on his neck, the echo of those two words, had carved a hollow in him. And that hollow ached with a longing that felt like the oldest wound of all.
