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The hours have flown by. Two hours became four as Gabe, Damien and I caught up with our business here and in Singapore. And although I’m getting exhausted, I can’t help the exhilaration flowing through me on being here in my office, right in the thick of things. Working from home, like I did in London, is so not the same as being in the center of everything. Still, my injury is recent and hence the exhaustion is more prominent. My torso has also begun to throb and I press a weary hand to it.
Damien catches that movement immediately and stops the discussion with Gabe.
“You shouldn’t have come today, I told you not to,” he reproaches me.
I drop my hand in my lap. “Please, I can’t be sitting at home and leaving you all alone to experience all your new first times here. It’s not like I can’t see how disturbed you are and how irritable it makes you to be here.”
Gabe’s attention snaps on Damien.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you’re uncomfortable to be here. Do you want to talk about it?” he asks him.
“No!” Damien shoots back, before glaring at me. “I am not irritable. I am fine. So, stop passing judgment. You should go home, Aaliya, and rest.”
His tone fuels my exasperation because it’s clear as day that he is not himself and yet, he refuses to accept it. Throughout the last hours we’ve been discussing the various projects with Gabriel, Damien has cancelled several pre-approved design plans, many that he had approved himself in the past. This behavior is so unlike him. And he’s even refused to consider taking up any new work until the backlog work is completed. That idea of course makes sense, but it’s his aggression that’s putting me off.
So I snap. “I will go home when I think it’s right for me and not because of your misguided guilt over the shooting and last...” I shut up when I see Gabe watching us.
He stares from me to Damien and back at me. “What is going on with you two? You’ve just arrived here in India and you are already fighting?”
“Well, if Damien stops behaving difficult for one tiny minute and talks to me, then things will be better. But no. He has to mope and think the weight of the world rests on his shoulders.”
Damien glares at me and I return it with one of my own and stand up.
“I’m done talking to you,” I throw at him.
“Seems to me you are the only one talking and I’m listening as usual,” he spits back.
My lips purse and I huff out a breath. God! He drives me mad.
“Damien, you are behaving bloody impossible. I’m going home,” I inform him, trying to rein my temper in.
“Good, go home, where you belong,” he retorts, his eyes alight with fury.
“Excuse me?! I can’t believe you said that.”
“Yeah. Whatever,” he dismisses me, lifting his cell phone and scrolling through it.
Okay, now I want to throw something at him.
I turn to Gabe who is watching us, bemused.
“Gabe, I will see you uh...whenever.”
I spin around and Gabriel calls my name. “Aaliya, I’m leaving tomorrow morning for London.”
“So soon? Why?”
“We have almost completed Jonathan’s renovation project and we need to hand it over to him. Someone needs to be there when that happens to ensure Jonathan doesn’t go berserk with last minute demands. You know how he is.”
I smile. “Yes, he can be too demanding and difficult. I know that.”
“Yeah,” Gabe agrees. “Besides, we have too much going on in London for me to sit here when this office is back in both your capable hands. Incidentally, when will you two return?”
My eyes flit to Damien who finally raises his head from his phone screen. But he refuses to respond. I lift my jaw and stare him down, which doesn’t work on him. He just fixes those grey green eyes on me, without a care that he has started an unnecessary clash between us.
Annoyed by his testy behavior, I splay my hands out and address Gabe, “You’ll know when we are ready to return, I guess.”
And with that parting statement, I leave the room and the two men behind.
