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CHAPTER THREE AN UNWELCOME SURPRISE
We'd stayed up until two in the morning to talk about it that night.
Seeing him ridden with guilt for an opportunity such as this, when a small part of you was glad to see it that way—it was a horrible contortion of inner conflict. To love someone so much and entertain a prospect of failure in their pending successions. I'd imagine my feelings were mirrored by his frustrations with me. The patience he practiced when I knew he so badly wished I would sought deeper for the confidence I had once held in myself; diminished the day I left that island. The saddest aspect was that neither of us were to blame for how we felt. It was simply the footprint of these companies and their roles in our upbringings—preserved on a concrete bed in our hearts.
Several times, even when we'd woken up a mere hour ago, he'd intently asked for my blessing. If I was genuinely okay with this trip and whom it involved. Every time, I had answered yes. We'd kiss and eventually closed the door, unravelling ourselves until a inkling of sleep was needed for the day ahead.
There was so much smiling involved with such planning that my cheeks grew numb when I was around him. Swallowing down every sharp bout of panic at almost every sentence that left his mouth. For the first time in years, I'd been grateful to set a foot out the door for work, and dread the return home whilst rattling against strangers' shoulders on a subway cart. It didn't help in the slightest that such planning cruelly involved not being able to call ahead to let the three of them know that we were coming.
Lewis Dodgson had called him again to re-confirm all the details of his trip. We both knew I couldn't stay; there were things confidential to his job and I respected that as I knew he would me if I'd chosen to stay involved with a field of prehistoric affairs. Though, mindlessly trailing down the corner store aisles for groceries we didn't really need, a part of me wished I had. It shouldn't have come at a surprise that a man who's face was essentially plastered all over the world would take interest in my boyfriend. A billionaire with shares in groundbreaking frontiers tied to genetic science—as Masrani and Hammond and Lockwood had well before him—so casually calling upon him sitting at the island bench in our tiny apartment. It almost tapped into that innate fascination of idolisation for someone known by millions, before it was quickly washed away by the reminder that something about that man unsettled me in ways I couldn't describe. Then it would start to incite panic, of all I was warned about from Marisa Anderson. Alex had decided not to tell her. I couldn't say I agreed with him,
