The Hookup Pact

35| Atlas

The tie was choking me. As I sat at the round table in a private dining room at one of the fanciest restaurants in the city, that was all I could think of. And that I wanted to go home and lie down on my bed.

I had spent the morning attending classes, then had a grueling practice session and now I was waiting for some arrogant assholes to arrive so I could eat overly expensive bland food. What a marvelous day!

All because Iris pushed the dinner with prospective investors on me instead of attending herself. While I was sitting here with a stiff back and an empty stomach, she must be out there frolicking with her fiancé.

Speaking of the devil, my phone screen lit up with her name and I immediately accepted the call. "I hate you. None of the assholes have arrived yet. I have been waiting alone for twenty minutes."

"Atlas, baby, are you hangry? Is this what it is?" she asked, completely ignoring what I had just said.

I scowled at the empty chair across from me. "Maybe."

"I knew it!" she chuckled on the other end. "I'm sorry, baby. You know I would have never sent you there if I wasn't busy handling the mess back at the company."

"So you're not with Jayden?" I asked even though I damn well knew he would be there somewhere. That man was whipped beyond belief.

There was some shuffling and whispering on the other side. "At least you're eating fancy food, asshole. We are eating out of take-out boxes." Jayden's voice boomed through the speakers as I had expected.

I barked out a laugh. "Wanna switch places?" I could kill to get a single french fry right now.

Hurrying over to the restaurant directly after practice didn't feel like such a good idea now. I naively thought I would be eating food immediately after I reached there. Screw whoever that made the stupid etiquette to wait for the other party to arrive before ordering food. People should be allowed to eat whenever they want to.

"Hang in there. I'll make sure you get two weeks free from all office work," Iris promised.

"You better." We hung up and I resumed aimlessly looking around the empty room.

Honestly, this impromptu dinner meeting wasn't the entire reason for my bad mood. I had been on edge ever since Everett dropped the bomb on me at the penthouse a few days ago. After ruminating over the news, I had immediately called Henry to confirm whether it was true. I wouldn't put it past Miller to try and mess with my head.

But Henry was unreachable. When all my calls went straight to voicemail, I shot him an email with a subject line saying urgent in all caps only to get a computer-generated reply that he was on vacation and would reach out as soon as possible.

I still hadn't heard back and it was driving me nuts. It didn't help that Evelyn and I had hit a rough patch as well. Apparently, someone had started spreading nasty rumors about her and she was naturally upset about it. She told me she wanted some space until everything settled down.

Although I was relieved that she didn't break things off immediately, I wasn't exactly appeased with how things were. I couldn't even walk up to Evelyn to talk without her getting skittish and trying to end the conversation as soon as possible in fear of others watching us.

However, I had a feeling that there was something more to it. Something she wasn't telling me. Evelyn wouldn't react so strongly just because of some rumors.

I tried digging into it but didn't hear a peep. Dylan hadn't said a word to anyone. Not even to our team. I had interrogated him thoroughly and even if I hadn't, he just wasn't that kind of guy to spread rumors. When I told him about it, he offered to help in looking into the matter.