CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thorne heard something outside his door. The doorman hadn’t alerted him that he had a guest. The locking mechanism lit up green, and the knob turned. Dash? Had he come back? He still had Thorne’s key, though he never used it.
Thorne’s sister, Kathryn, opened the door and stepped in, closing it firmly behind her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“You haven’t been answering your phone. Yesterday you left Lauren a cryptic message about being sick, and today you just didn’t show up. She was worried.”
Was it Tuesday already? “I screwed up everything.” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“Thorne, what are you talking about? Something at work?”
He shook his head. “Not work.”
She frowned. “But work is your everything.”
“Yeah, that’s part of the problem.”
Kathryn studied him, looking as worried as he’d ever seen her. How bad did he look?
“Jesus, Thorne, what happened to you?”
Pretty damn bad, apparently. He gestured to the half-empty decanter of bourbon on the coffee table. “You might want a drink before I explain. You can refill mine while you’re at it.”
She took the glass he held out. “You do realize it’s ten in the morning, right?”
“I don’t fucking care.”
Probably knowing it was pointless to argue with him in this state, she got herself a glass from the sideboard and poured a heavy measure of bourbon for each of them.
After Thorne downed most of his in one go, he leaned his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. “I’m gay.”
Kathryn sputtered and sat her glass down. “What?”
“You heard me.”
She tossed back about half the liquid in her glass. “Wow. When you said I should sit down…”
“I really meant it.”
She took another sip, a smaller one, and set her glass down. “How long have you known?”
“That I liked men?”
She nodded.
“Since college.”
“No one at work knows?”
He nodded to confirm and then polished off the rest of his drink. He needed fortification after his confession. At least she wasn’t ranting at him.
“And this…” She waved her hand to indicate the blanket, the bourbon, his unkempt appearance.
“A complete breakdown.”
“If you’re admitting to it, then it’s worse than I thought. What the fuck happened?” His sister rarely cussed. He must have seriously shocked her.
“I fell in love.”
“With a man?”
“With a man I hired.”
“Hired? For…?”
He gave her a withering look.
“Ah.” She studied him for a few seconds. “The drink seems to have done you some good. You look more like yourself now.”
“My real self is an ass according to Dash.”
“Is that the man you fell for?”
Thorne nodded. “God. This… I didn’t mean to tell you all this. What do you think of me now?”
“I think you’re hurting worse than I’ve seen you since high school.”
“High school was never this bad.”
Kathryn moved to the couch, settled beside him, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “So, what are we going to do about it?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to leave and let me wallow in misery.”
“What about work?”
“What about it?”
“Thorne, despite the fact that I’ve been telling you to take some time off for approximately a decade, you have a job. You can’t just ignore it.”
“I actually could. I’m owed several months off. I’m going to take some time.”
“First, you have to at least call the office and put people on your projects. You can’t just disappear and… Wow, this man has really changed you, hasn’t he?”
“You like the new me? Unwashed, undressed, and drunk at ten a.m.”
“No, but there’s something under all that, something good. I can hear it in your voice.”
“It was good, but he’s gone, and I’m worse off now than if…”
Kathryn shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Thorne scowled at her.
“Eventually—the sooner the better if we’re going to fix this situation—you need to tell me what happened in more detail, and—”
“I hired him to fuck me. Then, instead of telling him I’d fallen in love with him, I offered to hire him full time.”
“To hire him full time?”
“Yeah, that’s basically what he said but with more colorful language.”
“Oh, Thorne.”
How could he explain without sounding even stupider than he already did? “I thought…”
“I’m sure you did. You might not be very wise when it comes to relationships, but you aren’t cruel.”
“Just because you have a perfect marriage to the perfect man doesn’t mean the rest of us have your powers.”
Kathryn snorted. “My marriage is far from perfect.”
“The fuck it isn’t.”
She poured herself another drink. He’d always had this effect on her. “Thorne, no marriage is perfect. And even if mine was, that doesn’t mean you and Dash don’t deserve a chance to be happy.”
“He’s young. Did I mention that? Very young. And he does deserve happiness, but he’ll have a better chance of finding it without me.”
Kathryn ignored his self-deprecation. “How young is he?”
“Twenty-two. That’s partly why I didn’t think he’d want to date me.”
“Whew! That is young.”
Thorne wasn’t sure he liked how readily she agreed with him. “Not a lot of old guys working for escort services. And it’s not what you’re thinking. We’d joked about him being my personal chef. I was going to hire him to cook for me.”
“Did he understand what you were hiring him for?”
“I thought so, but now I’m not sure.”
Kathryn sighed. “Have you tried to contact him?”
Thorne laughed, the sound brittle. “I called him—I don’t know—ten or twenty times over the weekend, like a fucking stalker. Then yesterday morning, he called me and told me he wanted to hate me, but he couldn’t. I started to hope… But then he asked me to stop calling.”
“Did you?” Kathryn asked.
“I did, but I deposited a ‘tip’ into his account with the service.”
“How much?” Kathryn frowned like she knew he’d done something else idiotic. It was the same look she’d given him every time he fucked up as a kid.
“Sixty-five thousand dollars.”
“Oh my God.” Kathryn downed the rest of her drink.
“It’s enough for his baking and pastry arts degree. That’s why he’s working as an escort, to earn money for school. He refused it, though. The woman who runs the service called me and explained that the tip was being refunded.”
“Thorne…” Kathryn shook her head.
“I screwed up again, right?”
“Did you really think he was going to take your money after you insulted him?”
Thorne poured himself another drink, though he wanted to give up and just take a swig from the decanter. “I didn’t mean to insult him. All I wanted was to take care of him.”
She nodded. “Possibly he understands that, but his pride took a hit, and—” She gestured toward the half-empty bourbon bottle. “So did yours.”
“My pride could handle it.”
Kathryn raised her brows, obviously questioning his assessment.
“It hurts so bad. Losing someone.” Not even losing Clint had made him this desperate to crawl under the covers and never come out.
She sighed. “Give him some time. Work on yourself.”
“Me? What’s the point?”
Kathryn narrowed her eyes. “If you can’t answer that, there’s no hope of getting him back.”
“You’re taking all this rather well. Your brother is gay. He hires prostitutes. He’s an idiot.”
“The last I knew. The first I suspected, and the second… Well, there are worse things, and it’s not like you hired Dash off the street. I think a hell of a lot more men and women pay for it than we think.”
Apparently, based on what had happened at the art opening. “Maybe they do. By work on myself, do you mean come out?”
“Possibly, but there are other things you could do, like find something you care about other than work and—” She frowned. “Sex.”
Thorne held up his hand. “We are so not discussing that.”
Kathryn smiled. “I won’t say it again.”
“You do realize I have clients who won’t accept an openly gay consultant.”
“Fuck ’em.”
“Oh my God. Did you really just say that?”
“I did. Also, there’s a difference between hiding and announcing you’re gay to everyone you meet. Tell Lauren and the other senior partners and quit worrying what everyone else knows or thinks.”
“Lauren probably knows. I brought Dash to the art opening. If she didn’t know before that, I’m fairly certain she did afterward.”
Kathryn nodded. “I bet she does, but knowing and being told are not the same. She deserves to be in your confidence, considering what she puts up with from you.”
Thorne couldn’t argue with that.
“Start there. When you’re ready,” Kathryn said.
“I’ll think about it.”
“That will have to do for now. That and getting off the couch, eating instead of drinking your meals, and generally acting like a grown-up with a job.”
Thorne flipped her off.
***
Despite Kathryn’s encouragement, Thorne barely got off the couch for the next two days, continuing the fiction that he was sick, and he was, just not with the flu or whatever people at work imagined. If it hadn’t been for Kathryn bringing food by, he might not have eaten either. But on Thursday night, he realized he couldn’t hide forever. Kathryn was right, damn her; if he was going to take time off—and he was—he had to do it like a grown-up.
He showed up at work on Friday morning, groomed, sober, well fed—he’d grabbed an egg-and-cheese wrap on the way to work in deference to Dash’s insistence on the importance of breakfast. As soon as he’d made the decision the night before to start being a functioning adult again, he’d sent an e-mail calling a meeting of the senior partners. Then he’d stayed up until three working, which was easy since he’d done nothing but doze for days. First, he’d strategized how to delegate his workload for the next two weeks. Then he’d gotten online and rented a lakeside cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains. As soon as he wrapped up his meeting, he’d be looking into sailboat rentals. Hell, maybe he’d just buy one while he was up there.
Lauren rose from her desk as he approached. “Are you okay? What happened?”
He inclined his head toward his office door. “Let’s talk in there.”
Once inside, he shut the door and leaned against his desk.
Lauren studied him. “You weren’t really sick, were you? What’s going on?”
“Have a seat.” His legs no longer wanted to hold him up, but he managed to circle his desk before crashing into his chair. He’d thought this part would be easy, but Lauren’s opinion mattered more than he’d realized. Over the last several years, he’d come to rely on her more than anyone else in his life, even Kathryn. The thought of her looking at him in disgust made him ill. But she deserved to know, didn’t she…?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Physically at least. Although if anyone asks, tell them I was hit with a serious case of food poisoning.” He’d rather he had been.
“O-kaaay.”
He couldn’t keep her guessing any longer. “I’m assuming you’ve noticed that I’ve been different for a while now.”
“You mean how you haven’t e-mailed me ten times over the weekend or asked if I could come in at six a.m. to go over notes for a meeting? That sort of different?”
Had he really been that bad? “Yes, that.”
“You’ve been looking more relaxed too, at least until today.”
“I’d never expected to change like this. I’d never had anything in my life more important than this job, never let myself care about anything else until I couldn’t help it.” He paused and stared out the window.
“Wait. Are you trying to say you fell in love?”
He nodded, a short, sharp movement.
“With the young man you brought to the opening? The one you defended?”
He sagged back against his chair, relieved he didn’t have to say it. “So you did know.”
“That you were gay?”
He nodded.
“I wasn’t sure if you were gay or bi, but I knew you weren’t simply friends with that young man.”
Thorne turned away, looking out the window. He forced himself to ignore the tightness of his chest and the burning behind his eyes. He had to keep it together. “Now we’re not anything at all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her voice was low and soft, like she was unsure whether to speak at all.
“So am I. I need some time to…process. I’m taking two weeks off.”
“T-two weeks? I don’t think you’ve ever taken more than a day except when your mother was in the hospital.”
“When my sister had her first baby, I took…two days.”
“Yes, but you checked in every few minutes.”
He had. “I’m ready to make some serious changes in my life.”
“Does that include coming out?”
He nodded. “It does.”
“So this early meeting with the senior partners…?”
“I’m going to tell them. I don’t feel like I owe that to anyone here but you. However, if I’m going to stop hiding, word will get around. I’d rather tell them than deal with rumors.”
Lauren nodded. “Good decision.”
“Thank you. I’ll leave shortly after the meeting and be back in the office two weeks from Monday. I’ve worked out the best way to divide my workload and rescheduled my trip to New York.”
“I saw that when I got in this morning,” Lauren said.
“I’ll e-mail you everything else you need along with a number where I can be reached in an emergency. Kathryn will also be able to get in touch with me, but no one else.”
“Where are you heading?”
“A lake near Bryson City, North Carolina. I’m going sailing.”
Her eyes widened. “Sailing? Like on a sailboat?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I used to own a boat.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m struggling to imagine you doing something so…outdoorsy.”
He wanted to be offended, but he couldn’t. “I enjoy the water. I don’t always wear suits, you know.”
“I’d wondered.”
Thorne gave her a mock glare.
She was undaunted. “I like this new you.”
“Thank you. Maybe…well, hopefully this trip will be good for me.”
Lauren smiled. “It will. I’m sure of it.”
He finished his coffee and glanced at the time.
“You have a meeting to get to,” Lauren said. “Should I join you?”
Thorne wanted to say yes, but if anything did turn ugly, he didn’t want her there. “No, thank you. I’m going to do this alone.”
Thorne had told himself the meeting would go smoothly. A few conservative clients were the ones he was worried about, the ones who might refuse to work with him. His senior partners already knew him well, they weren’t going to care who he was fucking as long as he got it together and did his job. But as he opened the conference room door and faced them, he realized that was all bullshit. His mouth went dry, his pulse sped up, and he was sorry he’d eaten breakfast.
Five curious faces stared back at him as Thorne fought to hide his nerves. If only Dash were there to hold his hand. Before Thorne had screwed everything up, he would’ve come if Thorne had asked.
“So what’s up?” Dan, the next most senior team member asked. He was always anxious for meetings to end so he could get moving.
“I need, uncharacteristically, to discuss a personal matter. I’m choosing to tell you rather than having you hear it through gossip and because there’s the potential for it to”—How to phrase it?—“disturb clients.” Dan was frowning. Sandra looked concerned. The others looked a combination of annoyed and curious. Why had he thought this was a good idea?
Just do it. “I’m gay.”
The words hung in the air, thick and heavy.
Thorne started breathing again when Lisa smiled. “Thank you for telling us. I wish I could say it won’t cause any issues. It’s sad that you still have to be concerned.” She glanced toward Dan as if expecting him to say something. He didn’t look particularly surprised or concerned. In fact, his expression said he thought Thorne was wasting his time with such trivia.
“I know of a few clients who won’t be thrilled, but I doubt most of them will care,” Sandra said. She’d shown a touch of shock but no malice.
“I don’t plan to announce my sexuality or anything about my personal life to clients, but they may find out anyway, especially those whom I see socially.”
Sandra and Dan nodded.
Bob looked like he was working through a difficult puzzle. “How long… No, that’s none of my business. But I just can’t see it.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter though. I mean, you don’t work with your dick.”
Bob had always had a way with words. How he managed to turn his filters on and win over clients, Thorne still didn’t know. At least he was being supportive in his own way.
Jack stared at Thorne and then glanced around the room as if confused. When his gaze landed back on Thorne, he spoke. “This is a joke, right? It’s like April Fool’s Day or something and I forgot.”
Thorne scowled. “I assure you I’m not joking.”
“So I’m just supposed to be okay with this?”
“If by okay you mean continuing to work with me in the same way you have before, then yes.”
“Wow, that’s just…wow.” Jack looked around the room again. “So I’m the only one who has a problem with Shipton being a…?” The word “fag” hovered in the air, though he didn’t say it.
“Who the hell cares who he sleeps with?” Dan asked.
“Clients who don’t want to work with a fucking fairy.” So much for holding back on name-calling.
Jack grabbed his briefcase and stormed out.
Sandra stood as if ready to go after him, but Thorne held up his hand.
“Let him go. He’ll either come to terms with who I am, or I’ll give him a reference for another job. I’m not looking for approval. I’m giving information and expecting the same job from you that you were doing yesterday.”
Dan nodded. “Not a problem for me.”
“Me either,” Bob said.
Thorne took a slow breath and tried to adjust to what had happened. He’d never have guessed Jack would be the one to reject him. He’d been far more concerned about Bob or Dan. Bob had predictably been crude, but he didn’t seem truly bothered. Dan was unfazed, supportive even. Maybe he didn’t know his partners as well as he thought he did.
“One more announcement.” He could feel the tension in the room. “I’m also going to be taking two weeks off—”
“Wait, what?” Now Lisa was shocked. “You? Time off?”
“Yes. Me. Time off.”
“Well, this is a day of revelation.” Bob rolled his chair over to the window and gazed out. “Hmm, no signs of the apocalypse yet.”
Thorne gave a halfhearted laugh. “So far.”
“You’re truly not coming into the office for two entire weeks?” Sandra asked.
“Or e-mailing us about work?” Bob added.
“Or working at one a.m. on a Sunday?” Dan apparently needed to get in on this too.
“That’s right. I will not be working for the next two weeks.”
“Is this like a midlife crisis or something?” Bob asked.
“No. I’ve always been gay.”
Bob rolled his eyes. “I meant the time off thing.”
“Oh.” Once again he’d misjudged, expecting to be challenged. “Possibly. It’s time I made some changes.”
Dan nodded. “I’m assuming you have assignments for us while you’re gone.”
Now that was normal. Dan wanting him to get to the point. “I do.”
He explained how they could handle the clients he’d been working with while he was gone. Fortunately, there weren’t any projects needing a final briefing during the next two weeks. “Ask Lauren if you need anything. She knows how to get in touch with me if there’s an emergency.”
“Wait—” Lisa held up a hand. “Tell me you’re not going to be out in the wilderness with no cell phone or internet. Because if you are, I’m going to stage an intervention.” She looked truly horrified.
“Nothing quite that uncivilized, but I won’t be taking my work phone.” He tapped the phone he’d laid on the table.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sandra asked.
“Very sure. More all right than I’ve been in a long time.”
Bob frowned. “You don’t look it.” Ah yes, blunt as ever.
“Maybe I will in two weeks.”
Dan, Bob, and Lisa packed up their things and left the room, but Sandra lingered. “What you just did was very brave. I’m assuming you’re not making announcements to anyone else.”
Thorne nodded. “That’s right, but word will get around. I felt like I owed my top people this courtesy in case it does change things with clients.”
“It sucks that there’s even a chance of that.”
It did. “I’ve got to be realistic.”
She nodded. “Call me if you need anything or just someone to talk to.”
Thorne shouldn’t have been surprised by her concern, but he wasn’t used to people wanting to take care of him. “Thank you. That means a lot. I don’t show how much I appreciate you and the other partners nearly enough.”
“If you started getting too complimentary, we’d be sure something was wrong.”
He smiled. “I could do better, though.”
“Maybe, but you’re a good man. I think most of us know that.” Thorne hadn’t realized how much her approval mattered until she said that.
“Thank you.” He barely got the words out with a steady voice.
Sandra smiled. “See you in two weeks.”
He waved to her as she exited the room.