Conditional Love

Chapter 17

**|Sang's POV|**

I'm just getting up from my desk to take my lunch break on Tuesday when Terry comes bouncing into the room. "Sang," he sings out, grinning wide at me with a grocery bag in his hand. He holds up as if I should understand what that means.

"Terry," I smile at him. "How are you?"

"Good, now that I get to talk to you today," he chuckles.

I glance at Arlene briefly and take notice of the huge smile on her face. She's mentioned a few times these last few weeks about how I should go on a date with Terry. He's clearly interested but I'm clearly not.

"Will you have lunch with me?" Terry asks, blinking his playful hazel eyes at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, Terry is a nice guy, maybe a little pushy, but really nice. And that's the problem. He's the dating type, the forever type. I'm not.

I stare at him, trying to come up with something as a response, but I don't have a proper excuse. He knows it's my lunch break and I don't have any meetings to run off to.

"Sorry, Terrell," Gabriel said, coming up behind Terry. "But she's ours for today."

I frown, not knowing what he's talking about. Do I have a meeting I forgot about? I look at the calendar but there isn't anything there.

"Yeah, we need to talk shop about some changes we want to make," Luke says, coming up to stand next to Gabriel. They stand in an intimidating manner as they watch Terry with suspicion written all over their faces, which Terry doesn't seem to notice.

His expression falls. "Oh, okay. Maybe next time?" He gives me his trademark puppy dog eyes and I can only nod as a reply.

He breaks out in a smile before slipping past the two men and heading to the stairs. Luke practically bounces over to me while Gabriel strolls behind him. "Now, ready to go eat?" they ask me.

I frown at them. "I don't remember setting up a lunch meeting with you."

"That's because you didn't, now let's fucking go," Gabriel said and then his cheeks go pink as he glances over at Arlene. "Sorry," he says to her.

She laughs and shakes her head. "Go have fun, Sang. Do something different for lunch instead of sitting at your desk to eat."

"See, even she says yes, let's go," Gabriel grabs my arm and gently tugs me out the glass doors and towards their temporary office space.

"So instead of eating in my office, we get to eat in yours?" I ask. I didn't even bring my lunch. I sometimes go to a cafe just down the road for something to eat.

"Yup," Luke says as he opens the door. A couple of desks have been wedged inside and they are now covered in electronics and monitors. A table sits in the middle of the room, half of it cleared of papers, the other half overflowing.

"Where is everyone?" I ask.

"Out and about, working. Vic has to go buy some more supplies and Kota went with him. Nathan is somewhere in the building, checking over what we've done and what we still need to do. Sean is going over a few more policies with risk management," Luke explains.

Gabriel nods his head in agreement. "Nate will be joining us at some point, but for now, we get you to ourselves."

I look between them, not sure how to feel about all of this. Luke pulls out a chair and nods his head at me. I make my way towards it and slowly lower myself down as Luke tucks the chair beneath me. Breath whispers across my ear as the air shifts. I inhale deeply, catching the vanilla scent that clings to Luke.