Chapter 12
Jedidiah sat down on his bed, letting out a long sigh. Because of me, Mateo was hurt, he thought guiltily. “He may have been my bodyguard, but that didn’t mean- I didn’t want him to get hurt instead of me,” he whispered quietly to an empty room.
At least now, Mateo would be somewhat safer. Mateo was no longer Jedidiah’s bodyguard, and Jedidiah knew why. He was sure that that was what Mateo and his mother had been talking about in the hospital room, and he understood that Mateo would mostly likely quit.
He hadn’t expected Mateo to stay as his assistant, so he was glad for that at least.
What he wasn’t glad about, was how he now owed Mateo for saving his life twice. And Mateo still refused any kind of compensation, even if it was just a small favour. He insisted that he was only ‘doing his job’ and that really, he had ‘failed’ Jedidiah for ‘letting’ him get hurt in the fight.
This didn’t pacify the worry and guilt in Jedidiah at all, and he kept feeling shitty throughout the night and the subsequent week. He visited Mateo twice whilst he was in hospital, and then called him once he was discharged to see if he could visit him at home.
“I’m fine, I don’t know why you’re so worried. I’ll be back in another week and a bit, just wait until then,” Mateo told him over the phone. Jedidiah sighed, scrunching his eyebrows together and leaning against a wall.
“I just want to check that you’re alright. I won’t go to your house if you don’t want me to, obviously, but can I at least- can I at least post a get well soon card through your letterbox?”
Unbeknownst to Jedidiah, Mateo was actually smiling at the thought. Several of his friends had been by to check on him and wish him a quick recovery, but Mateo was actually slightly worried about Jedidiah and wanted to know how he was recovering as well.
“Fine, you can come visit me. Don’t expect me to be a good host though, you’ll literally just be offered some tea and a very quick chat because my family is all out working, after I finally convinced them that I could be left alone for more than five minutes at a time.”
Jedidiah beamed, thanking Mateo and instantly grabbing the card he already had for Mateo. He’d been trying to think of a suitable message to write in it for ages, but he either felt the words were too formal and professional or too colloquial and familiar.
Was Mateo his friend? Could he treat him like he was? Or did they have to keep their relationship strictly professional?
Jedidiah had been contemplating this for a while, and in the end, he wrote a very professional and rather dry-sounding message with no feeling in whatsoever, before signing it from Jedidiah rather than Mr Hargrave. It was better to be safe than sorry, right? He didn’t want to make Mateo uncomfortable in case the man didn’t view Jedidiah as a friend like how Jedidiah was beginning to view Mateo.
Jedidiah had always been familiar and fairly close with his members of staff, especially those working nearest to him, and almost every one of them had appreciated his relaxed and friendly nature, but Mateo was slightly different. No matter how casually Jedidiah acted with him, Mateo always kept things entirely professional. Calling each other by their first names was the only time Mateo had yielded and been casual with Jedidiah.
Still, it was a professional thing to do to check on an injured employee, right?
Jedidiah wasn’t sure, and he didn’t really care. He needed to make sure that Mateo was healing well.
—————
Mateo waited awkwardly for his boss to knock at his door, deliberately bundling up in as many layers as possible and putting the kettle on preemptively so that the tea would be ready when Jedidiah arrived.
And Mateo was sure that he would arrive at the exact time he said he would; Jedidiah was nothing if not punctual.
Telling himself that he only wanted his boss to visit him for professional reasons, Mateo sipped at his glass of water slowly. He’d only had one normal working week with Jedidiah before he’d had to take time off, so he was surprised that Jedidiah wanted to come visit him at all.
But then again, this was probably something which Jedidiah did for all his employees; he seemed to be friends with many of them, so this was probably just a normal procedure for the man. What Mateo was aware of was the fact that if this was any of his past bosses, he wouldn’t have wanted them to come visit him.
So why did Mateo not hate the idea of Jedidiah visiting him?
He couldn’t dwell on the thought for too long however, as the doorbell plinged at him, alerting Mateo to Jedidiah’s arrival. Standing up from his seat at the kitchen table, he made his way over to the front door, pulling it open to his boss looking surprisingly…nervous?
“Hello?” Jedidiah said with an awkward smile which Mateo returned, moving out of the doorway so that Jedidiah could enter the house. The man smiled gratefully, taking a seat at the kitchen table as Mateo made them both some tea.
“So, how are you?” Jedidiah asked after a moment, clutching his mug of tea. Mateo automatically shrugged before getting halfway through it and stopping abruptly when it made his injury hurt. “It’s healing well. Only another week or so and I can come back to work. I hope things weren’t too busy whilst I was away,” he said, glancing over at Jedidiah’s arm. “How is your arm?”
Jedidiah absentmindedly placed a hand on his left arm, over where a thin scab remained. “It’s healing very well, I doubt it will even scar properly, it will most likely fade easily. And things haven’t been hectic at all, but I- we will definitely appreciate your return to work,” he said, lying about the first bit.
In reality, things had been chaotic following the aftermath of the attack on the oldest Hargrave son which resulted in the hospitalisation of Jedidiah’s assistant….things had been very busy. So, Jedidiah would appreciate Mateo’s return to work because then he would have less to do, but also…he missed chatting with Mateo at random points during the day, and eating lunch together.
The only other person Jedidiah saw around the hotel was James, and the man had been extremely busy with trying to hire a new bodyguard and sorting out the Serenity Wilkins situation. James had worked for the Hargraves for a long time; his family and Jedidiah’s were close friends, and James’s family had left the underworld workplace at the same time as the Hargraves, deciding to follow them.
It was also James who had sort of come to the rescue during the last attack; he was the one who had taken Jedidiah and Mateo to the hospital, and he was the one dealing with wherever Serenity Wilkins had vanished to after the attack.
She had been hoping to kill Jedidiah, they suspected. He may not have been biologically related to Vincent Hargrave, but Jedidiah was still an integral part of the Hargrave family, and they suspected that Serenity Wilkins, on behalf of the Lincoln family, wanted to eradicate the Hargraves once and for all.
Unfortunately for them, Jedidiah had survived the attack with minimal harm, thanks to Mateo.
Comments (19)
See all