Chapter 60

Dinner was nice.

Both Joshua and Henry were in agreement with that statement. Dinner had been calm and lowkey. Perhaps it was due to the lack of work the rest of the family had done during the day, or maybe it was down to the residual hangover – excluding Penelope of course, but the atmosphere had been much the opposite of the post-dinner ordeal a week earlier.

It also helped that, aside from the PA's, knew of how bad Henry had gotten during the meeting. If they had known, the Reyes family would have spent the entire day coddling their youngest.

As a whole, dinner was nice.

But not nice enough for the tired 'couple' to stay under the same roof as them.

It was not that there was anything wrong, per se, however both felt a little strange, watched even. Neither has realised it earlier with one crazy turn of events after another, which was immediately followed by the grind to ensure that the merger was a success. They had been too pre-occupied to realise just how much more attention was on them now.

For Henry, it was not too drastic. He was the baby of his family. He had grown up with a similar level of attention; of course, it would always return the second he ran into any trouble his family caught on to. Thankfully, having been through this before, he had established his own place. Somewhere he could be away from his family when he needed a quiet moment. And with the nicotine withdrawal, the young man felt like he would need as many quiet moments as he could get.

All in all, while Henry did find the extra attention mildly irritating, he was not too worked up over it. He was returning to his own apartment tonight, and that would be the end of it, albeit temporarily.

Joshua Lore, on the other hand, he hated it. Now that he saw it, he found himself more and more annoyed by it with every passing minute. And to make it worse, while most of his family exercised some discretion, his older brother did no such thing. Throughout the evening, the man had felt eyes on him constantly. It was making him feel insane, self-conscious. He was starting to wonder if his parent had always paid so much attention to him, and he had just been oblivious to it.

Unlike Henry, Joshua had never even considered going independent from his family. There had been a few incidences where his parents' concern had been obvious, but overall, it had always been Penelope or Archer with the attention on them. Joshua was a middle child; he was left alone enough for the independence he does have to never be impeded. This meant he had never even considered having a place to escape, let alone had one ready. He did not even have a friend he would be able to hide with from his family's gaze – Gin's number one rule was that no one was allowed in his house.

The most he could do was follow after Henry as he went to grab a few things he needed from his room at the Reyes' house. And it was as he was sat on the other man's bed, watching his fidgety tinkering, did Joshua recall something that had been said earlier.

"Would it be strange if I asked to stay at your apartment for a few days?"

"Strange?" Henry mused, a sarcastic smile playing on his lips even though he had no intention to share his expression. "Everyone would have a field day. Remember they think we are a couple? Actually, remember that look they gave us last night?" By look, obviously Henry was referring to the disbelief when the two had revealed their worries of being caught in the lie before the party.

"Hah, but remember the looks we got when they saw us trying to act?"

A short snort escaped the younger man. "Right, my brother and his little harem." They both shared a quick laugh at the reminder of the hilarious sight. Henry, however, did not forget how the conversation had started. "You don't want to go home?"

"Not really," Joshua answered with a sigh, leaning back on his hands. "Not with all of them looking at me like that. It's driving me insane."

"Which is why I have my own apartment, welcome to the world of being your family's prime focus. Anyway, I don't mind you staying."

Joshua was surprised by the level of relief he felt when he was given affirmation.

"I guess you want a lift back to yours first?"

"Yes please. We can just take my car from home to your place. We're both at different buildings tomorrow."

"I'll be late home tomorrow, the secretarial department is having their meeting in their afternoon, me and my brother are doing the minutes for it, we're the only trained people who aren't involved in the meeting. We want all the members of the department to be able to put their full attention on the discussion rather than worrying about noting it all down. Plus, even though we temporarily worked through it, your family's secretarial and admin department is structured completely differently to ours. The department is not even in charge of admin."

"Ah, I remember Archer bringing it up over the weekend, I think he is sitting in on the meeting with Caroline. Personally, I think the fact you have each individual department responsible for their own admin and compliance is quite practical. My parents did try to instate it a few years ago, but it collapse because the secretarial department were considered the bottom rung by a lot of the department heads. Archer finally managed to clean up a lot of it a couple years ago, but it still took him and my dad a combined effort of 8 years trying to correct just the mentality. I've noticed it a few times when I encountered people from your family's company, all of your staff hold a lot of respect for those in the secretarial department."

"Well, obviously. You watched me during the merger, right? I barely did have the work someone would usually be required to do in a day. Also, they are the first line of defence to get through for close to all kinds of approval. Regardless of whether it is a request to accounting, HR or security, it will go through the secretarial team. All the PAs are responsible for chasing up on paperwork, they have the power to start disciplinary action. Admin is not all up to them, but it is their job to make sure it is all up to date, clean and compliant."

If Henry had not finished grabbing everything, he needed at the very moment he had finished talking, the two young men would have spent their whole night chattering about the difference in each company's structure pre-merge, as well as what they like and disliked about how the merger was going structurally.

Thankfully, however, the younger man had done so, the conversation coming to an end.

Seeing Henry ready, Joshua stood up and straightened his clothes, slightly jealous of Henry who had taken the opportunity to change into a pair of grey joggers and a snugly fit white t-shirt; he did take notice in the loss of weight and muscle definition on the younger man. But that was all secondary to his desire to also wear comfortable clothes. Somehow, this was motivation enough for him to be ready to leave immediately.

Henry did not notice Joshua's increased eagerness to leave.

Within minutes, the two steal out of the Reyes' residence, no one even realising they had left until Haerin informed the Lore family that the driver had gone to take Joshua and Henry back to their residence and that Joshua had decided to stay at Henry's apartment for the weekend.

Of course, with Haerin's expert phrasing, which had been entirely intentional, the family were thrown into a shipping frenzy.

It did not take long until the two men found themselves in both sitting in the living area of Henry's apartment, the younger man picking up the slack he had left during the meeting while chewing ice, the other laying on the sofa, an easy-reading novel on his phone screen.

The whole place was silent, or at least it would have been if Henry was not furiously typing and chewing the ice in an almost aggressive manner. And the longer the sound continued, the more irritated Joshua would get.

The sound was grating on his brain, it was starting to sound like it was echoing within the apartment. And no matter how hard Joshua tried to focus on the words of the sappy high school romance he was reading, every few words he would find himself distracted. He would be part way through the sentence only to realise that he had not really been reading the first part. Or he would be so focused on trying to read the words, he would reach a point where he had no idea what was going on, having to backtrack.

And the sound of Henry just kept getting louder and louder.

So much so that eventually the he could no longer stay quiet.

"Could you stop that?"

"Stop what?" Henry asked, not even faltering in his inhumanly fast typing.

"That! Why are you typing so loudly? Why are you crunching ice with your mouth open? Just stop making sound, I can't read."

"What do you want me to do? I'm all fidgety."

"I don't know! Just stop!"

Joshua's didn't realise he had shouted until the silence that hit after his exclamation.

And suddenly the two men realised that perhaps it may not have been the best idea for two men going through nicotine withdrawal to be in close quarters with each other. If anything, it was a recipe for disaster.

Of course, Henry did not consider asking Joshua to leave, nor did the latter consider going back home or staying at a hotel for a few days. Instead, they found themselves surrendering to the fact that the rest of the night would be them bickering over nothing.

Because, you know, there was no option for them to be under the same roof but in different rooms or anything…

This was something neither would figure out any time soon.