“You look…bad.” Simon was already at the office, looking hesitantly at the door.

Evan could barely lift his head. It wasn’t so much the hangover, although that was bad enough. It was the guilt over what he knew he had to do.

When the alarm went off this morning, he’d thought about calling in sick. Avoid the day. Avoid Simon, avoid everything. His body would have agreed to that; dehydrated, confused, skull throbbing. Pieces of last night simply missing from memory.

But if he was going to go down, he was going to do it honestly. No disappearing on Simon. No jetting off to an island to escape. There had been enough of that in his life.

He slumped into his chair. “I’m sorry for disappearing on you.”

Simon moved closer, but Evan couldn’t help it, he stiffened at Simon’s approach. Simon noticed. Of course he did. He blinked, and went back to his desk. “I guess it was a bad meeting, then.”

“Great meeting, got a lot accomplished, lots of notes, lots of plans. Step one: My life is over.”

His head wouldn’t stop pounding. He tried setting it on his desk, but that didn’t help.

Simon’s voice was oddly flat, as though he was restraining himself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Guilt flooded Evan’s soul. How could he be here right now? How could he talk to Simon about this? Simon had done nothing wrong. He’d brought happiness into Evan’s life, and a love he never thought he would feel.

Now I’ve got to ruin that.

Time to sit up straight, look him in the eye, and be honest.

Sitting up straight was the hard part, but he managed it.

“They know,” he said, the words like gravel in his mouth. “Ash, Archie, everybody. They know we’re together.”

“But…how?”

“I don’t know. Spies. Cameras. Educated guess. They’re fucking evil, Simon. I don’t know how evil gets its information. But they know.”

“Your uncle told you? Did he—”

“Simon…please. I don’t want to do a whole play-by-play. Just trust me. Archie knows, and he doesn’t like it.”

“All right. So he knows. What’s he going to do about it?”

“He doesn’t have to do anything about it,” Evan said, his words in a rush. “That’s the benefit of being evil. All he has to do is threaten, and we’ll fall in line.”

Simon approached again, and this time wouldn’t be stopped. He put his hands on Evan’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Evan. Seriously. It’s going to be okay.”

Evan shook his head. “It’s not. There’s no okay to be had here. Don’t you get it? We’ve talked about it again and again. This is it, this is the trap. He wants to fire you. He’s going to fire you, if we stay together.”

“He can’t fire us if we both quit. Come on. Think, Evan! We don’t need the company. There are other jobs out there, other things to do.”

“For you, maybe. But not for me. But it’s not just about the job, Simon, you know that. It’s Reg, too. I can’t lose my shot at getting my trust fund back.”

Simon knelt beside him. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m telling you, I can’t make this work. I can’t figure it out. No matter how much I think about it, I can’t see a way through this. If I stay with you—and I want to, Simon, you don’t even know how much I want to—I’m cutting off my son. And if I save my son, I lose you.”

Simon nodded. He pushed himself back up onto his feet, and walked to his desk. His look was far away, and his fingers played against the edge of his desk. “Okay. Okay. It’s a quandary, I admit that. But we’re not licked yet. There’s got to be a way—”

“There isn’t,” said Evan. “Archie wins. Same as he won against my dad, same as he wins everything. I was just born on the wrong side of the family, I guess.”

Evan wasn’t so wrapped up in himself that he couldn’t tell what was going on with Simon. He saw Simon’s anger, his shock, and the way he was trying so hard not to show them.

“So you’re going to give up?” Simon asked. “Yes Uncle Archie, whatever you say Uncle Archie.”

“Give me a little credit. This isn’t my pride talking. It’s my need to make money for my kid.”

“Lots of people make money for their kids without requiring a trust fund.”

“Yeah, and lots of people don’t. Lots of people find themselves at the mercy of bad jobs, and they can’t provide. That’s not a risk I can take.”

Simon wouldn’t look at him now. His back was to Evan, even though his voice was clear in this silent room: “What exactly are you telling me, Evan? Are you breaking up with me?”

“I don’t want to,” he said, his voice trembling.

“Then don’t. I promise you, there’s a way out. You’re stressed, you’ve got all this family stuff weighing on you, you’re not thinking clearly. If we can just sit and think for a little bit…”

“They’re poison, Simon. That’s what you’re not understanding. You and your friends might have fought Ash and Callum back at the quarry, but you didn’t learn the lesson. The Crays are poison. Everything we touch, dies. I was stupid to think I could ever have a relationship where I was truly happy. Not with this last name. Not with this sick Cray blood in my veins.”

Simon turned to look at him. “Just promise me you’ll stay. Promise we don’t have to break up because of this. Give me a day to think it through, let me—”

“No!” said Evan, rising from his chair. His bones screamed in agony, but the pain in his skull was nothing compared to how badly his heart hurt. “Let me do this, Simon, please. Let me just end it here, end it cleanly, so you don’t get pulled into any more of this. You don’t want my family after you. You don’t want to be in their grasp.”

“I’m not scared of your family, Evan.”

The reason he wasn’t scared, was that he didn’t understand what the Crays were capable of. How they could destroy lives. How they could turn the whole town against Simon, if they wanted to. Fire him? Hell, they could just keep him from getting a job anywhere in town…ever.

“Maybe you should be scared,” Evan said. “They’re willing to destroy your reputation.”

Simon shrugged. “How? They don’t know anything about me.”

Evan was silent for a moment. He didn’t want to say this. He didn’t want to talk about it. He should have just sent Simon a breakup text. That would have been easier than this. Cleaner. No questions asked. He should have been Evan The Rich Asshole, rather than trying to care about Simon’s feelings, about the pain he was about to cause.

“They have this idea,” he said, “about you and my dad.”

Simon scowled and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“That the whole reason you got your job, was that my dad…was attracted to you. That you were sleeping together.”

Simon’s face grew red, but this wasn’t the blush of shyness. His shoulders bunched, and his hands became fists.

“What…the…fuck.”

“I know, it’s ridiculous, it’s evil, but they’re going to—”

“Forget them!” shouted Simon. “Is that why you’ve been so fucking weird around me the past few days? Because you thought I might have fucked your dad?”

Evan raised a placating hand. “Seriously, I never—”

“You have been freezing me out for days, and I’ve been trying so hard to reach you, trying to help you, and all this time you’re thinking that you’re getting sloppy fucking seconds? And you didn’t tell me? Holy shit, Evan, what kind of monster are you? How could you not tell me?”

“I am telling you.”

“Let me ask you: Do you believe it? Is that why it’s so easy for you to do this? Because you’re sitting there thinking, gross, what kind of guy is this, he’s nothing like I thought he was, he’s—”

“God no!” said Evan. “Why aren’t you listening to me? I didn’t say I believed it, I said they would—”

“No. No! You have been holding onto this for days. You wouldn’t trust me with it. Now you’re standing there acting like you’re in agony over it. Boo-fucking-hoo. Now I know what you really think of me, so I suppose I should be thankful for that.” He strode over to the office door, then looked back. “I hope you’re fucking happy, Evan. I hope your trust fund is really fucking comfortable, as you sit there doing Archie’s bidding for the rest of your life. At least you will be happy, even if everybody else in the world is miserable.”

Evan was so stunned he could not move. He stared at the door, watching as Simon stormed down the hall.

There on Evan’s desk, the phone began to ring.