by L. A. Witt
The Torches We Carry
by
L.A. Witt
Copyright Information
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition
Copyright © 2018 L.A. Witt
Cover Art by Lori Witt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-64230-006-2
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
About the Author
About The Torches We Carry
It’s been six years since Marcus Peterson and Reuben Kelly broke up, but they’ve made it work as friends and coworkers. That is until a few too many drinks at the company Christmas party leads to a night they both regret.
Eight awkward weeks later, when their boss—Reuben’s dad—needs someone to fill in at a trade show, Marcus and Reuben find themselves in close confines. A road trip, a booth, a hotel room… and that’s before the weather goes south.
There’s no escape from each other, and there’s no ignoring the guilt, the awkwardness… and the spark that desperately wants to come back to life. Because if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed after all this time, it’s how they feel about each other.
But if they can’t cut through all the barriers keeping them apart, this old flame will go out for good.
Chapter 1
Reuben
“Could you swing by my office as soon as you have a minute?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and fought the urge to snap my desk phone in half. I didn’t have a minute and wouldn’t for a while, but when Dad summoned me to his office, it meant now so I forced the frustration out of my voice. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”
He hung up without further comment. I sighed heavily and put the phone back on the cradle. With a knot in the pit of my stomach, I surveyed the paperwork spread out across my desk. I shot a plaintive look at my email browser, hoping the number next to New Messages hadn’t increased in the fourteen seconds I’d been on the phone with my father. It had. Of course it had. By the time I came back from Dad’s office, the pile would be higher and that number would be bigger. So much for not coming in this weekend.
And everyone wonders why I went gray so young.
Okay, so that was mostly genetics, but I suspected my dad had contributed more than just DNA to me being completely gray at thirty-five.
My phone started ringing because of course it did. According to the caller ID, it was Jan Harper, one of my engineers. I suspected it was about a set of schematics that we desperately needed to finalize by the end of the month, but I let her go to voicemail because the only thing more urgent than that project was whatever Dad wanted.
I got up and walked away from my desk, my phone still ringing behind me, and headed down the hall to Dad’s office.
Maya, his secretary, smiled at me. “He’s ready for you. Go on in.”
I returned the smile. “Thanks.” Then I continued past her, gave his door a cursory knock, and went inside.
“Have a seat.” Dad’s voice was terse as always, and he didn’t look away from whatever he was typing.
I took my usual chair and waited while he finished his—I assumed—email.
When he’d finished a moment later, he faced me, folding his hands behind his keyboard. “Is there something I need to know about between you and Marcus?”
My heart stopped. “Uh…” Well, shit. This wasn’t what I’d expected when I’d come in here. “Why… why do you ask?”
“Because you’ve seemed a little, I don’t know, uncomfortable around each other lately.”
If I hadn’t been so startled by this line of conversation, I might have laughed. Uncomfortable around each other? A little uncomfortable? Right. That was a hilarious understatement. Or at least it would have been if I hadn’t been filled with so much horror that my father had noticed the tension between me and the company’s marketing manager. He was usually oblivious to things like that. Oblivious enough that my year-long relationship with Marcus had slipped completely under his radar. As had our breakup almost six years ago.
Then again, Marcus and I hadn’t had to work together on a near-daily basis back then. And our split had been amicable, complete with a long conversation about making sure things didn’t get weird at the office. These days, we were constantly in each other’s space, and thanks to a certain incident at the company Christmas party two months ago, things were… well, weird didn’t begin to describe it. We still couldn’t even look at each other.
“Reuben?”
Shit, how long had I been sitting here like a dumbass, trying to come up with an answer? I cleared my throat. “Um. Sorry. Look, everything’s fine. We’ve just both had a lot on our plates lately. Or at least I have.”
Dad grimaced. “I suppose you have. How are things going with Michelle?”
Wincing, I avoided his gaze. “They’re… moving along.” Because goddamn, I needed to think about my divorce-in-progress on top of everything else right now. Fuck this. I had work to do. I pulled in a breath and looked at my father. “Is that what you brought me in here for? To ask about me and Marcus?”
My own phrasing almost gave me heart failure, as if Dad might read between the lines and realize there had ever been a “me and Marcus.”
He obviously didn’t, though. “That’s not all I brought you in here for, no.” His chair creaked as he settled back. “But I do need to make sure the two of you are getting along.”
“We are. I promise.” It was true enough. Wasn’t like we were at each other’s throats. Things were painfully awkward, but Marcus and I both took our jobs seriously, and we didn’t let our bullshit interfere with our work. Much. We’d definitely need to sit down and clear the air about a few things, but Dad didn’t need to know that. “It’s all good. Seriously.”
“Excellent.” He nodded sharply. “Because I need you to go with him to next week’s trade show in Boise.”
I blinked, struggling to comprehend all the WTF in that sentence. A trade show. Me. On short notice. With Marcus. W. T. F. “I… really?”
Dad nodded. “You leave tomorrow.”
“But… but I—”
“Listen, I know it’s sudden,” he said. “And I know you’re busy. But—”
“He’ll be there with John and Allen. What does he need me for?”
Dad sighed, shaking his head. “John’s still sick. Doc says he can’t travel for at least another week. And Allen…” Dad’s lips tightened. “He just gave me his two weeks’ notice.”
Damn. The hits just kept on coming, didn’t they?
“He’s quitting?”
“Yep. Got poached by a comp
etitor who shall not be named,” Dad grumbled. “Which is why I can’t go fill in at the trade show—Karen and I need to interview replacements for Allen.”
I bit back a curse. Karen, the director who oversaw our field representatives, would have been my next suggestion to fill in. But with one field rep quitting, another out on medical leave, and both Dad and Karen occupied with scrambling to replace Allen, that didn’t leave many options. I was pretty sure none of the other eight field reps could be pulled in for it either; their schedules were jam-packed as it was. We also had three in-house project managers who could theoretically fill in, but one was on maternity leave, one was in Germany to train our European reps, and the third was basically chained to his desk until the other two came back.
Which left me.
My mouth went dry. “I don’t know if I can leave, though. I’ve got—”
“I don’t have a choice, son,” Dad insisted. “This is a huge trade show, and I need someone there who has a working knowledge of the products. Especially the new line of cutting torches.”
I couldn’t suppress the grimace. No one knew the new line of torches better than I did. I’d designed the goddamned things and built two of the early prototypes myself. “But if I’m there, I’m not here to keep the department moving so we can release the new products on time.” I shook my head. “Dad, there’s no way—”
“I need you on this, Reuben.” There was a note of pleading in his voice that was so bizarrely out of character it rendered me speechless.
There really was no way out, was there? I was the only person who was both available—sort of—and knew the products. Marcus knew the products too, but only to a point. When potential customers had in-depth technical questions, they needed a field rep, a project manager, or an engineer. And since none of the engineers could be spared for something like this—and would probably resign in a heartbeat if someone said they were on trade show detail—that left me.
Deflating a bit, I said, “Okay. Just, um, email me the information about the show. I’ll let my department know I’ll be out of the office for a few days.”
Dad blew out a relieved sigh. “Good. I’ll have Maya forward you the itinerary.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Just please tell me Marcus and I won’t be rooming together.
Chapter 2
Marcus
“Make sure we’ve got two of the full-size banners,” I told Aaron. “Just in case one gets torn or something again.”
“Got it.” The blond kid pulled two of the rolled banners down from a shelf and propped them next to the box they’d be packed into. “What about the smaller banners? Just in case you have less space than you think?”
I pursed my lips. We’d reserved an end cap booth, and this convention center had a ton of space, but the trade show itself sometimes had low-hanging banners of their own as well as displays that encroached on our space. And it wasn’t like we had to pay shipping since we were taking everything in the company van. “Good thinking. Grab a couple of those too.”
He nodded and did as he was told.
“Hey, Marcus?” Leanne poked her head into the storage room where we were staging everything. “Did you still need an HDMI cable?”
“Yes, please.” I had two packed already, but I’d learned the hard way that there was no such thing as too many HDMI cables. In fact, that was the name of the game for pretty much anything when it came to conventions and trade shows—if you might need one, bring three.
I skimmed over the checklist in my hand. We’d packed the signs, pieces of our booth, literature, demo products, IT equipment, displays—
My phone chimed, snapping me out of my concentration. I swore as I tugged it off my belt. Always something.
Without even checking the caller ID, I tucked the phone against my shoulder. “Marketing, this is Marcus.”
“Hey. It’s Reuben.”
My stomach flipped, and I froze. “Oh. Hey.”
We were both silent for a couple of awkward seconds. Damn, when were we going to get over this? Guilt and shame twisted behind my ribs. For the millionth time, I vowed never to drink at a company Christmas party ever again.
“Listen.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have a few minutes if I come by your office?”
I glanced around at the barely organized chaos of crap that needed to be packed into the van. A few minutes? No, definitely not. “I’m pretty slammed with getting everything ready for the trade show. Is it urgent?”
“Um.” Reuben paused. “Yeah. It kind of is.”
I closed my eyes and forced out a breath. So help me, if he’d chosen today—this minute—to settle things between us, I was going to lose my shit. I really did want to clear the air, and I knew all too well how hard it was for Reuben to initiate conversations like that, but not now, for God’s sake. Especially since I’d have to do most of the emotional legwork, and even if I’d had the time, I just did not have that in me today. “All right. I have to keep it short, though.”
“Yeah. No problem. I’ll be down in ten.”
After we’d hung up, I surveyed the mess Aaron and I were making of the storage room turned staging area. It always looked like this before we loaded the van, and it always made me twitchy because it seemed like a disaster area that would be impossible to clean up, never mind fit everything into the vehicle. It didn’t matter that I knew we could do it—I’d be damn near breaking out in hives until I had visual confirmation that it had all fit this time and my storage room was back to some semblance of order.
But Reuben apparently had something to discuss that warranted us being in the same room together. He’d been avoiding me as much as I’d been avoiding him lately, so whatever it was, it must be important.
Fine. Fine.
“Hey, Aaron?”
“Yeah, boss?” He poked his head up from behind a stack of boxes marked CURTAINS.
“I need to step out for a few minutes. Can you take it from here until I get back?”
“No problem.” He gestured at the clipboard in my hand. “Could you leave that here so I can double-check everything?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Aaron was a boy after my own heart—worshipping lists and charts and checking them twice like he was goddamned Santa Claus. Why couldn’t I find a whole army of employees like this?
I left the clipboard on top of a box of literature and headed back to my office. On the way, my heart was in overdrive. What was this about? What was so important that Reuben and I needed to meet one-on-one? Prior to the Christmas party, it hadn’t been a big deal. In the eight weeks or so since, we’d gotten really good at having “meetings” via email. Sometimes face-to-face interaction was unavoidable, and we both frequently had to attend meetings with other departments—not to mention Bob, Reuben’s father—but we body-swerved them as much as we could. Bob had even commented about how impressed he was that we’d streamlined a lot of interdepartmental communications to emails rather than time-consuming meetings. I was fine with him believing that.
So what the hell did Reuben and I need to talk about that couldn’t be handled via email and needed to be handled right now?
Apparently I wasn’t going to have to wait long to find out—when I reached my office, Reuben was coming down the hall from the other direction.
Our eyes met, and we both plastered on professional smiles, but said nothing. I keyed us into my office, and after a moment’s hesitation, shut the door behind us.
“So.” I sat at my desk and gestured for him to take a seat. “I have to keep this short, but I—”
“I don’t think it’ll take long.” He sat down, and I didn’t like how he was avoiding my eyes and wringing his hands. God, he needed to Talk, didn’t he? Which he struggled hard with under the best of circumstances, so if he’d worked himself up to it now, it must have been eating him alive.
I rested my forearms on the desk. “What’s up?”
Reuben swallowed hard. After a moment, he looked at me through his
lashes. “I think we need to clear the air about—”
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “Reuben, I’m leaving for Boise first thing tomorrow, and I don’t have time to—”
“I’m going with you.”
The words stopped my breath in my throat. My office was suddenly dead silent, and we stared at each other.
Reuben moistened his lips. Voice softer, he repeated, “I’m going with you. To Boise.”
My jaw went slack. “You… come again?”
He sighed and leaned back in the chair as he once again avoided my gaze. “My dad just dropped it on me. John and Allen both had to bail, and I suggested everyone I could think of, but the punchline is I’m the only one who can go.”
I watched him, waiting for the real punchline. I’d be pissed if he told me he was wasting my time with a joke, but I liked that idea a hell of a lot more than the prospect of him joining me for an eight-hour road trip, five-day trade show, and eight-hour return trip. Especially since the convention hotel was booked solid, and I’d already been less than thrilled about sharing a room with John (who snored) and Allen (who ground his teeth).
“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said.
Reuben pursed his lips. “Hey, I’m not thrilled about it either. But rather than waste your time going through all the possible alternatives that my dad has already shot down, I’m thinking maybe we should cut to the part where we figure out how to make this work.”
That… that was definitely a Reuben answer. He’d always been the pragmatic one. Find a solution, and when the only available solution wasn’t a palatable one, suck it up and make it work even if it meant ignoring the baggage that desperately needed unpacking.
I sat back and sighed. “Fuck.”
“It’s not a picnic for me either, you know,” he growled.
Our eyes locked. There was a hint of hurt in his eyes, and I realized my reaction to this whole thing probably sounded a lot less like I’m not looking forward to a week of awkwardness and a whole lot more like I don’t want to be around you. Which, to be fair, was true, but not because I disliked him. Quite the contrary. We just had a lot of history together, and I didn’t think the jam-packed van was big enough to hold all our baggage.
