Page 89 of The Associate
Eventually, the panic was gone. In its place was a hollowed-out calm, and the acute, burning awareness of the man sitting so close to him.
“Good boy.”
The words were soft. They landed in the center of Samuel’s chest and bloomed there, a warm, radiant glow that spread through his veins, chasing away the last remnants of the cold. A fierce blush heated his cheeks. It felt like absolution. It felt like a reward he didn’t deserve but craved with his entire being.
“I am sorry,” he muttered, the words barely audible, spoken into the scant space between them.
Gael’s head tilted slightly. The stark planes of his face softened, just a fraction. A faint, almost imperceptible easing around his eyes and mouth. Samuel liked it. He liked it more than he could process.
“Don’t be,” Gael said, his voice still low, but gentler now. “It’s alright.”
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. But in the firm certainty of that tone, Samuel almost believed it could.
The moment held, suspended. Then Gael’s expression shifted again, the softness receding. “Now, you will go into the bathroom, clean yourself up, and then you will come to the kitchen and eat breakfast.” His voice had regained its sharper edge. “Understood?”
Samuel nodded. “Yes… Yes, Sir.”
Gael held his gaze for a moment longer, as if ensuring the understanding had truly taken root. The hand in Samuel’s hair relaxed its hold, the fingers trailing through the strands in a final, gentle caress against the back of his head before withdrawing completely. Then he stood up.
He looked down at Samuel, who still sat curled on the sofa, feeling both shattered and newly assembled. “Don’t take too long,” Gael said, turning toward the kitchen. “You don’t want your food to get cold.”
And then he was gone, leaving Samuel alone in the living room.
Samuel sat perfectly still. He waited. He braced himself for the panic to come surging back now that the source of his calm had left the room. He waited for the shame to descend again in full, crushing force.
It didn’t come.
The quiet held. The warmth in his chest, ignited by those two words, remained, a small, steady flame.
He took one last, big, deliberate breath.In.Andout.
Then, on legs that were still unsteady, he pushed himself up from the sofa and walked toward the bathroom.
Chapter 23
Samuel
The rest of the morning unfolded in a strange, elastic time. Minutes stretched into hours, heavy and slow, while the hours themselves seemed to slip by in a blur, one indistinguishable from the next. Samuel moved through it in a state of suspended animation, his mind circling the morning’s events like a wary animal around a fire it had been burned by.
He’d taken to calling it theincidentin the privacy of his thoughts. To name it anything else, to think the wordsI came in my pants because he kissed me against a wall, was to invite a level of humiliation that threatened to short-circuit his brain entirely.
After cleaning up in the bathroom, he’d finally retrieved his duffel from the entrance hall. He changed his underwear, bundling the soiled pair into a plastic bag at the bottom of his bag, a secret buried evidence of his own loss of control.
Then he ventured back into the kitchen. Gael was seated on a stool at the polished stone island, a broadsheet newspaper open before him. A heavy white mug of coffee steamed at his elbow. He was dressed now in soft, dark trousers and a thin charcoalsweater. The terrifying, bare-skinned deity was gone, replaced by this composed, unreadable man.
On the island, precisely placed before the empty stool beside Gael, was a white plate. On it, fluffy yellow scrambled eggs, two pieces of perfectly golden toast, and a small porcelain pot of deep red jam. A tall glass of orange juice, beaded with condensation, stood beside it.
Samuel hovered in the doorway. The space beside Gael felt charged, like stepping into a quiet electrical storm. After a few heartbeats of paralyzing indecision, he crossed the room and slid onto the stool, the leather cool through his jeans.
He stared at the food. It looked perfect. He had no appetite. A knot of anxiety and residual sensation sat like a stone in his stomach.
Should he just… eat? Was there a protocol? A blessing to be said?
He glanced at Gael, but the man’s attention was absorbed by the financial section, his expression one of mild interest. He gave no sign of noticing Samuel’s internal crisis.
“Eat.”
For what felt like the hundredth time, Samuel wondered, with a touch of genuine suspicion, if the man was omniscient.Did he have eyes in the back of his head? Could he sense hesitation through some preternatural radar?It was unnerving. It made the space around Gael feel like a panopticon, a place where every flutter of an eyelash was observed, cataloged, and understood.
