Kissed My Rival, Hear His Mind novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Tie
At the firm's rooftop party Declan insults Eli's work in front of everyone, Eli grabs his tie and kisses him, and a voice starts in his head: ten years, and he finally did it.
Declan Corcoran raised his champagne glass and called Eli Donnelly's work warm and forgettable.
"Like his handshake," he said.
Forty people on the roof of the mill laughed.
Godfrey Lippincott laughed loudest, because Godfrey had set the whole thing up.
He had just announced the Fairmount Library, the biggest job the firm had ever won an invitation to.
He had also announced that one partner seat would go to whoever led it best.
Two names were on the table, and everyone was looking at them.
Eli's was one.
Declan's was the other.
Declan stood by the heater in a charcoal suit that fit, and he didn't look at Eli once while he talked.
"Donnelly draws a lovely room," Declan said. "I'd live in it. I'd also never remember what it looked like."
The roof laughed again.
Eli had lost the Whitaker hotel to him in March, the Delancey school in June, and every office pool since the day they met.
He had never once told Declan what he thought of his face.
He put his beer down on the parapet.
He walked across the gravel through forty people holding paper cups.
Declan watched him come with eyes the color of wet slate.
"Eli," he said. "You're about to do something loud."
"Yes."
Eli took his tie in his fist and pulled him down.
He kissed him.
It was not a good kiss, to start.
It was an insult with a mouth on it.
Declan went rigid, all six feet two of him, and his glass tilted and spilled cold down Eli's wrist.
Then he made a sound against Eli's lips, low and wrecked, and his free hand closed in the back of Eli's shirt.
For about two seconds, Declan Corcoran kissed him back like he was starving.
Eli pulled away first.
The roof had gone dead silent.
Somebody's paper cup hit the gravel.
Declan stood there with his lips wet and his collar crooked, and his face went flat and cold as a closed door.
"Donnelly," he said. "If you ever do that again, you're fired."
He didn't have the authority to fire anyone.
Everybody knew it.
Eli opened his mouth to say something clever.
And a voice spoke inside his head.
It was Declan's voice, exactly, but it wasn't coming from Declan's mouth.
His mouth was shut in a hard line.
"Oh God."
Eli blinked.
"Oh God, oh God. He tastes like beer and pencil shavings. I'm going to die on this roof."
Eli looked at Declan's face.
It hadn't moved.
"Don't look at his mouth. Do not look at his mouth. He's looking at mine."
"Did you just say something?" Eli asked.
"Pardon?" said Declan Corcoran, in the voice of a man reading a parking ticket.
"No. Not you. Never mind."
Behind Declan, Craig Beckman had his phone up, filming, grinning with all his teeth.
Godfrey raised a glass from across the roof and mouthed a word Eli couldn't read.
Eli turned to go.
The voice followed him across the gravel.
"Don't let him leave. Say something. Say anything. He hates me, he's always hated me, he's going to walk off this roof and never speak to me again."
Eli stopped.
He turned around.
Declan stood alone by the heater with his hands in his pockets, tall, cold and perfect.
His face was a wall.
"Ten years," said the voice in Eli's head, so quietly it nearly broke. "Ten years, and he finally did it."
Eli stared at him.
Declan lifted one eyebrow.
"Is there something else, Donnelly?"
Eli had no idea what to say.
For eleven years he had known exactly who Declan Corcoran was.
He was the man who beat him, and who never even looked like he was trying.
"Say it," the voice begged. "Say you hated it. Please say you hated it so I can stop hoping."
"I came to tell you your tie's crooked," Eli said.
Declan's fingers went to his collar.
His face didn't change at all.
"Ten years," said the voice again, shaky and soft, "and he came over to fix my tie."
Godfrey was already walking toward them, smiling, with Craig two steps behind him and the phone still up.
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