(Joshua's POV - Sat. 26 April 2014)

My phone keeps ringing and I know I should switch it off because Mark will never give up. He has been calling me for the past twenty minutes, relentlessly. Each time he tries, he just reaches my voice mail but never leaves a message and dials again. I know that he won't stop until I take the call. I could switch off my device, but then he would try my landline, or worse, he would be capable to drive up here and ring the bell until I open the door. Mark can be very persistent sometimes, so with a sigh, I finally grab my phone and answer.

"You're not gonna stop, are you?" I bark at him.

"Actually, this was my last attempt. I was just about to get my car keys to drive to your place and continue with the doorbell, but since you have finally answered, I guess I can sit back on my couch and be happy with the sound of your voice without seeing you for now..." he replies in a smug tone. Bastard. I'm sure he is not even joking. Mark usually does a tour of his restaurant during the noon shift on Saturdays but then he is free and I wouldn't have been surprised to see him show up here.

"You're such a pain, Murray!" I sigh.

"I think you're a bigger pain, Pierce... just saying... How are you doing?" he asks rather seriously and with concern.

"I'm fine."

"Is that why you have been ignoring all my calls throughout the entire week?" he asks softly.

"I've been busy at work. The week was short so I had to catch up on things and stay late in the office," I explain.

"That's still not a good reason... And yeah, I heard it's been a hard week. That's the purpose of my next question by the way: are you coming to the Black Diamond tonight?" he then asks expectantly.

"Err... I don't think so, Mark..."

"Why? It would do you some good..." he insists.

"Not likely... Besides, I'm not ready to take a new Sub any time soon."

"Who talked about taking a new Sub? Why don't you just your butt here and spend the evening with us? Watching doesn't mean touching..." Mark suggests cheerfully.

"I'm just not in the mood..." I sigh. Honestly, the Black Diamond might look dull to me without Liam by my side.

"Hey, you can only blame yourself, Bro... You know what you have to do to make up for that," he accuses dryly, reviving the anger within me. Damn! The rather pleasant tone of his voice during the first minute of this conversation had managed to soothe me but this umpteenth accusation is one too many and once again, I lose my temper.

"Go fuck yourself, Mark! I don't need your advice and if you're calling me only to lecture me on what I should do or feel, I don't need it! I've had my share of reproaches, so just leave me the fuck alone!" I shout in the phone before I hang up and toss the device on my desk with rage. This is one of the reasons why I have been rejecting Mark's calls throughout the week: I didn't want to hear some more sermons other than what I already went through.

Fuck! As if I didn't get enough with Aaron, then Camden, then Allan and even Ally... Liz is the only one who managed to remain impartial. She hasn't been very talkative but at least she spared me her comments. Her husband is a different story. Ever since Wednesday morning, Tony has been sulking and barely spoken to me apart from a good morning or good evening. We did have a quick update meeting on Wednesday afternoon but he kept it very professional. Other than that, he refrained from revealing his thoughts to me, but he knows better than to mess up with me if he wants to keep his job. Lies... I would never fire him for anything like this and he knows it. However, he also knows that his current attitude irritates me much more than if he got things off his chest so he takes a malicious and wicked pleasure to remain silent while I won't start a conversation either.

So the end of this week has been rather detestable and before you stick in your oar, I know that I can only blame myself for it. However, this doesn't mean that I am ready to apologize or change anything. Yet. I have been thinking about the whole situation since my last conversation with Allan and if I am honest to myself, I have to admit that I now truly miss my sweet blond-head but I just don't know how to figure things out or how to sort out my feelings. Allan doesn't know the full extent of my moral issues but he knows enough of my past to understand what I am going through right now.

Being my roommate when we were in college, he was there when shit happened with Julian and he knows how much it hurt me when I found out that Julian was cheating on me. Every evening I was making his head reel talking about Julian. Julian this, Julian that. I spent my evenings blabbering on how much in love I was; on how I saw my future with the one guy who was about to become my fiancé. I was really in deep at the time. I was so naïve back then, fantasizing about the perfect relationship. Allan is actually the only person who witnessed how I broke down after my world crumbled to dust; he was the one to support me that first night I spent crying my soul out; he was there every time Julian attempted to get me back, begging for my pardon from behind our room door. Allan also knows what I went through when the jerk sent the pictures to my father as a vengeance for not forgiving him. And finally he knows how I promised myself that I would never fall again into the trap of love. So that's why he didn't get on his high horses on Wednesday, but his message was still clear enough though.

I understand his point of view. Liam is not Julian and I know that Liam wouldn't cheat on me if he is really in love with me and yet, I just can't get myself to let him in. Dealing with Subs and agreements has been so much easier. That way, I feel like I can control everything, from the frequency and ways to have sex to the guy's behavior and conduct, without mentioning the absence of feelings. Feelings are what kill the relationship. If you add feelings to a relationship, the pain you get from a break-up is awful whereas if you terminate a contract with a Sub, there's no pain at all. I know that it is an easy solution but that was just what I needed until now. The problem with Liam is that I started to let him in. I got used to having him to myself more often than I should have and I just led him to believe that we could evolve to something more which was a mistake. Or maybe not.

If I let him in, there must have been a reason for it. Acting with Liam had to be different from acting with my previous Subs. Everything felt natural with him. I had never felt the way I felt when I first saw him and I knew right from the start that he would be something more than anybody else. But what exactly, I didn't know. Could it be that I was really in love with him? But love means so much uncertainty to me and it is just not in my habits to doubt. It frustrates me to the point that it works on my nerves and affects my self-control. I just can't have this. I just can't let myself lose this strong temperament of mine because it also affects my relationships to others.

For the rest of the week, I was in such a bad mood that I could barely control my tone while speaking to my employees. This totally goes against my rules and I hate myself for losing my temper with people I appreciate dearly and even those I value a bit less. This is an attitude I don't tolerate among my teams and I could beat myself up for having acted like this. Poor Ally spent most of the time champing at the bit and gnawing on her cuticles. Derek got it the hard way through a proper argument - although that one was deserved after I reviewed some new messed up P&Ls; even if I shut the door of his office, I doubt that our argument went unnoticed, and at the moment, I didn't care, but now I kind of regret it because this is not in my habits and I don't want to be one of those temperamental bosses. Anyway, barking at people I work with is clearly something I despise and the week-end was more than welcome to give me some time on my own and think. Especially after the last argument on Friday afternoon with Ally who found out the truth about what I did with Shannon.

I stifle a bitter chuckle at the memory of how she barged into my office in the late afternoon and locked the door. I had noticed how she was fuming after she returned from her lunch break but I wasn't expecting her outburst. She was like a raging vixen and spoke out bluntly. "Okay, I don't care if you're going to fire me after this, but I really need to let it out and you're gonna hear me well! I know that something happened between Liam and you. From the moment you mentioned you wanted him to replace me during my maternity leave, I knew it would happen. I sincerely hoped you would treat him well but when I returned, I saw how happy he was and I thought he'd changed you for the better. Now I don't know what happened last week-end and it's none of my business, I agree, as long as it doesn't affect our work but it does, Joshua! So you'd better change that real fast if you don't want my resignation letter on your desk at some point! And it's not only me! People are talking and rumors are spreading! Do something, Joshua because this is just not like you to behave like a jerk!"

This was so unexpected that I didn't know what to say to this. Ally looked so furious and upset that I could only look at her with wide opened eyes. I was wondering what kind of rumors were spreading but I wasn't able to dwell on that matter as she continued, in a very disappointed tone. "Oh and by the way, now I know why you asked me to proceed with this huge donation to Earth Forest Association two weeks ago... Liam told me about his best friend leaving the city for two months to work in the Shawnee Forest for an association... That's low, Joshua... really low... especially in the current situation..."

After that, she returned to her desk, leaving me flabbergasted and speechless. I didn't have time to explain anything or defend myself and rather than consuming our already tense relationship since my return on Wednesday, I decided to let her calm down and to throw in the towel on her little outbreak. I was facing one more important issue there; an issue that constricted my heart in the most painful way. The truth is I knew that this was going to happen. Ally is a smart woman and it was obvious that once Liam would mention his friend going away for two months, she would put two and two together. Knowing me and how Machiavellian I can be, she would easily deduct that my intentions were not a hundred percent dedicated to offering a job to the young man, but also to send him away and have Liam to myself. The thing is that it just didn't happen as expected.

The president of Earth Forest, Osvald Stevenson, is one of my numerous contacts and his ecologic association is one I often donate to, among others. They are based in Chicago but they operate in North East America to reforest areas or to clean up existing forests, and I know that they often have job openings depending on their current donations and projects. I contacted Stevenson two weeks ago and he told me about this project in the Shawnee Forest about to start, saying that they were missing a few workers. He complained how hard it was to attract some volunteers to spend a few weeks in the forest, but admitted that the wages were rather low.

From there, it was so easy to offer a new donation with the promise in return that the association would propose better salaries together with a few more conditions. Throughout our various conversations, I knew from Liam in which temporary work agency Shannon was registered and I simply suggested them to Stevenson to recruit their missing staff. The rest was only a matter of huge luck; I wasn't certain that Shannon's profile would be selected, but I still took the risk and apparently, it worked well. I received an email from Stevenson earlier this week, thanking me once again for the donation and telling me that they were able to propose twice as much as what they usually offer in wages, hence getting many more candidates than necessary; he also said that due to the large amount of money, they would be able to expand the project in time and that the works would start next week. To be honest, with everything happening at the moment, I quickly discarded his email and didn't pay much attention to it. That was until Ally revealed the information about Shannon being part of the project.

What I wasn't expecting at the time I contacted Stevenson is that Liam would break up with me and worse, that the assignment would last for two months. I thought it would only be for two or three weeks which at the time sounded nice enough to enjoy Liam to myself. I already know how their separation is going to affect him, particularly in the present context. Even if we were still together, Liam would have been sad to see his friend leaving for a couple of months, but I would have been there to cheer him up. I would have proposed him to stay at my place. We would have spent all our time together like we did last December, and all in all, it wouldn't have been too much of a problem. I should hope that Liam got what he really wanted when he broke up with me, but from what I understood here and there, he doesn't seem to be that happy with the situation he put us in. Now I feel terribly guilty for depriving him of his best friend when he might need him the most. I wish he had Shannon with him now.

No. I wish I was with him, period. I wish I could fight my demons and let go of all the stress that the whole concept of love puts me in. I wish I could hold his small frame in my arms right now and kiss those delicious lips. I wish I could the one to comfort him when his friend leaves. I wish I could still enjoy his company and continue to cherish and pleasure him. But I'm here on my own. In this ridiculously big house. Alone. Rejecting my friends' attempts to help me. Drowning myself into work - which is at least better than to drown into alcohol. Missing some wonderful moments I could spend with the boy who had brightened my life.

A soft knock on the door of my study brings me out of my reverie and I swiftly wipe a tear from my cheek just as Liz walks in. Seeing the pain that immediately fills her eyes is evidence that I wasn't discreet enough though and she rushes to my side to hug me in her small arms. Liz is definitely the only one who hasn't changed her behavior toward me since last week and I relish in the comfort of her embrace for a minute.

"Oh Joshua, sweetheart..." she cooes, brushing my back like she used to after a bad fall when I was a little kid.

"I'm fine, Liz..." I grumble as I try to disentangle from her hold and she sighs, pulling away and leaning her backside against my desk.

"You don't look fine, Joshua and pretending to be fine is pointless. It's okay to say you're miserable, you know..."

"I'm not miserable..." I defend myself.

"Maybe not miserable, but you hurt and you're certainly not fine, sweetie..." she argues rightly.

"I've been better indeed..." I sigh and lean back in my chair. "I miss him..." Somehow, admitting it out loud already relieves a certain weight from my chest.

"Then get him back before it's too late. Liam does love you and even if the word scares you, you do love him too, Joshua."

"I don't know if I can do that... Julian..."

"Forget about Julian, Joshua. Liam is not Julian and I'm certainly not the first one to tell you. Love does exist and you should give Liam and yourself a chance."

"But it's not only Julian... There were Mother and Father first... and then Cam's parents... and then..." I argue, remembering how my mother cheated on my father and how Cam's parents treated each other.

"Stop it. If you only keep the negative images, it won't help you! Why the hell can't you look at the positive ones? Look at Mr. and Mrs. Murray! Look at Allan and Amely! Look at Tony and me... Tony and I have been married for twenty-seven years now and we still love each other like the first day, if not more. Every couple have their hard times but when love is here, it never breaks and there are always solutions to solve problems... without falling into adultery..." Liz softly explains.

"You're certainly right, but... I have become so used to my... lifestyle... Things are so easier..." I sigh.

"And...? Liam never rejected your lifestyle, so don't use this as an argument..." she scolds me. "Joshua," she adds after a pause. "You are trying to hide behind false truths. I can understand that your parents were no role models of what family means for you and I can understand how you suffered from your past experience with Julian, but I have seen you with Liam. I know that you love him and that he made you happy because you were able to combine a certain lifestyle and feelings. You just have to admit it. Your friends knew it before you did! I spoke with Mark a few weeks ago when he came here for dinner and he was truly envying your relationship with Liam. He said he is getting tired of all these... changes and would love to settle down like you and Liam were doing... I believe that... for some people, this can go only for a while but at some point, you will all need to settle down and maybe start a family... Don't look at me with those wide eyes!!! I'm not saying this should happen soon, but it will at some point..."

"I don't know, Liz..."

"You do miss him, don't you?"

"Of course, I do..." I grumble, feeling some tears prickling my eyes.

"Then get him back before it's too late, honey... Liam is young and... still innocent... He needs someone to guide him, but he also needs love. Hurry up before he gets what he needs from someone else..." she concludes, leaning forward and dropping a kiss on my head.

"Thank you, Liz... I'll think about it..."

"I brought you some dinner by the way..." she says as she heads back to the door.

"Thanks... Liz...? That remains between you and me, right?" I warn her.

"Of course, sweetheart..."

"Not even Tony..." I insist.

"Not even Tony," she repeats with a chuckle and turns away before she leaves.

A few minutes later, I get my dinner and get back to work since I wasn't really productive this afternoon after Mark called me. For the next hours, I manage to push my painful thoughts aside and work non-stop, mostly preparing the brainstorm I am supposed to have next week with some of the leaders. Just when I was thinking I should call it a day, around two in the morning, I get a text from Aaron that says: "Open your eyes before it's too late..." and attached is a blurry picture, probably coming from a video surveillance system, that shows two blond haired guys making out against a wall. Even though part of his face is covered by the other guy's head, I easily recognize Liam and this time, the pain I feel is much stronger than what I have ever felt before. Liz is right. Liam is young and he might want to get what he needs from someone else if I don't react. And it might already be too late...

"What the fuck is that?" I say straight forward when Aaron picks up my call. I can hear some music in the background and I guess that he is at the club.

"Hold on a second..." he says and soon I hear the noise fade away. "I guess you're talking about the picture I sent you?"

"What else??" I reply sarcastically.

"Well, that's Liam with another guy at the Lost Paradise," he simply says.

"How did you get that picture?"

"I sold the security team together with the club and you know how these guys have such a great physical memory? Well one of them recognized Liam and decided to send a screen capture to Mike. Not that it's any of their business, but he remembered that the blond head was with one of his former boss's friends and just wondered if the situation was normal. Mike doesn't know what happened last week-end but he thought he should warn me. Ahh, I love my security guys... Whatever, I just thought that it could be a good slap in your face, Bro..." he chuckles.

"Fuck! That's not even funny, Aaron!" I grumble at him, feeling my heart beat faster and faster in my chest at the thought of what Liam could be doing right now. "When was that?"

"Josh, it wouldn't have been funny if Liam had indeed left the club with the guy, but he hasn't, so don't fret! I spoke with the security guy who saw him and he told me that they're back on the dance floor with a group of other guys and nothing much happened between them. So keep cool and let him have some fun for tonight. At least you know what to expect if you don't get him back soon, Josh. It's all up to you now," he says firmly before he hangs up.

Running my hands through my hair, I sigh with relief but I am still boiling with rage inside. Fuck! Is that what I needed to finally figure things out? Seeing him make out with another guy? I now realize that I am really close to losing him for good and I just can't have that. I need him in my life. I need him beside me, with me, underneath me and around me. I have been such a fool for denying what I truly feel for him; because it is as simple as that: I love him. Of course I love him... I always have! How could I be so stupid and not simply admit what was so obvious to everyone else?

More determined than ever, I hurry to the entrance hall where I get the keys of my sports car and move on to the garage. There remains one little problem though... or two. How am I going to get him back? And will I be able to express how much I love him without facing his rejection? I don't have answers to these questions, but all I know is that I will try my best.

Published on 14 Nov 2016

Hey there! Just two quick notes... One is that my A/N in last chapter was absolutely not some ranting! I just wanted to explain how I work on those drafts I wrote a few months ago... (that damn chapter 57 took me 10 freaking hours!!!). So, don't get me wrong! I'm totally honored when I read people saying that they can't wait for the next update. I never expected so much, and well... thank you all for reading this story!

Second one: I am publishing at the same time a small part that includes pictures of men that look like my characters. Nothing of great interest but someone suggested it and I thought, why not...? If you want to see it, it should be just after the preface.

And lastly: I prepared the fourth story (Aaron's) and published its cover in my profile. I just wanted to see what it looked like next to the others and I thought it would go unnoticed, but it seems like some of you got a notification, so rather than removing it, I'll just leave it there for now. Anyway, you know I won't start publishing until the story is fully written, so don't expect anything any time soon ^^

And that's it for today! Have a good start to the week!