“We’ve got things under control.” Antonio smiled, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded.
* * * *
JUSTIN WAS SUPPOSEDto have put tasks like writing code behind him years ago, but he'd brushed off his skills when he and Antonio started doing double shifts to get PP ready for launch. Diving into the project was usually a surefire way to square away his thoughts and have them all make sense.
“Still getting scripting errors on the preview pane.” Mercy's voice filtered through the speaker phone in Justin's office.
“Details?” Antonio had set his laptop up across from Justin.
Mercy read them the pertinent information. It was one of the things Justin liked about having her as an early adopter. She understood the back-end technology well enough to make troubleshooting easy. Or to at least take some of the more basic stress out of it.
“Were we wrong to push for deployment tonight?” Justin asked.
Antonio met his gaze. “They assured me we were set.”
And either he or Antonio would have done a double-check any other day, but with Emily disrupting their schedules and forcing secrecy, they didn't have a chance to. Which brought Justin's thoughts full circle to the one thought he hadn't been able to shake all evening.
He coded, as half his mind took off in Emily’s direction. He should have dialed back the conversation at dinner. Kept things polite, but professional. It was too easy to forget that when Emily started talking though. The same thing that drew him to her Saturday night shone through this evening. He was grateful she kept the details of their hookup to herself, though. Not that she seemed any more interested in spilling than Justin was.
And watching Emily was easier than admitting since Saturday night, he hadn’t been able to get the shared fantasy out of his head. Every time he looked at Antonio, he saw more than the attractive man he shared business decisions and bar hopping trips with. He kept picturing Antonio’s lips around his cock, or the two of them kissing. Fucking. Heat raced over Justin’s skin, flaring to scalding.
“Holy fuck. What did you do?” Mercy’s dismay dragged his attention back to the present.
“Nothing. Hang on.” With a few keystrokes, he brought up the error logs, then mentally smacked himself making a simple error. He corrected the syntax and re-deployed. “Try it now.”
Antonio raised his brows. “Are you here for this?” His voice was low enough Justin had to strain to hear the question.
“I’m fine.” Justin’s response came out sharper than he intended.
“Sure you are,” Mercy said. “Listen, it’s almost eleven here. Ian’s waiting for me. Not that I don’t miss the all-nighters, but... No, wait. I don’t miss them. How long to roll me back to the old code?”
Justin forced down his frustration, until it burned in his lungs. “Twenty minutes.”
“Awesome. Will you pick up?”
Justin exchanged frowns with Antonio but grabbed the receiver and took Mercy off speaker. “What’s up?”
“I hate to bring this up, because I know the two of you are pouring everything into this and we’re running a beta, but your quality is slipping. This isn’t pre-production code. It never should have made it past QA.”
“I’m aware.” He didn’t trust himself to say anything else. It would come out defensive or angry, and that was the wrong way to approach this. “Will you be set to try again over the weekend?”
“Will you?”
He snapped off a low growl. “One of us will send you an email when the old code’s back up. G’night.”
“She’s pissed?” Antonio asked as soon as Justin hung up.
“What do you think?” There had to be better ways to function. Mercy had a point; she didn’t put in late hours these days—one of the perks of being her own boss. Andrew, their other friend from their bumming-around-the-world days, probably never worked past five. What were Justin and Antonio doing?
Making it past this one hurdle. That was it. Justin needed to keep telling himself that.
Antonio settled deeper in his chair. “I’m here all night if that’s what it takes. Let’s wrap this up before we have eyes on us tomorrow.”
That was something to be grateful for—a reliable business partner and friend.
* * * *
AS EMILY APPROACHEDthe apartment she shared with Cynthia, her limbs begged for her to simply sit. In the middle of the floor would do fine. Her mind was overloaded.