I knew where the report on this was leading. They expected me to take responsibility for all of it. And armed with that…they would push me out.
Ace was silent for a few seconds as I stood there. Nobody was freaking out or even looking at us at length; just a few glances as people walked by. No alarms. If security was coming, they weren’t in view yet.
Not knowing what else to do, I started walking again, heading toward my check-in, pulling my carry-on on its little wheels. I could feel a million unshed tears welling up behind my eyes, along with a screaming fit, and I had to hold them in until I got home.
Ace caught up with me after a second. “You okay? What are you doing?”
“Moving away before security shows up,” I said.
“Hey, it’s fine, I know half of them. There’s not going to be an issue here.” He almost sounded like he was trying to laugh it off.
I stopped dead again. Turned to him, the fist of my free hand on my hip. “There’s not going to be an issue here for you, you mean. Unless of course Ian sues you. But for me… I’ll have to resign over this, Ace. They’ll have me out before the end of the month.”
Sally in HR was going to cheer when she found out what I had done. She hated Ian and the board too. But she would still have to do her job, and that meant I would have a record of, if not violence itself, inciting it against my own COO.
His shoulders sank. “Shit.”
I walked on silently, seething.
He kept quiet for several steps, then said, “I was trying to defend you.”
“I know,” I said. “I know you meant well, Ace. I know you were pissed on my behalf, too. Because you care. That’s why I’m not tossing you out of my life right now.”
He licked his lower lip, frustration in his eyes. “You mean it. They can get away with this. Just…kicking you out like that.”
“That’s right. I mean…they won’t get away with it as far as long-term consequences, but they will in the short term. Because I can’t fight them anymore.”
I tried to walk on, but he grabbed my arm.
“Why?”
The big cowboy just didn’t get it. He might have made his way into management at his old job, but I was sure he had used work and talent, not any mastery of corporate politics. He clearly didn’t care about such things—something I envied a little.
“Because if I don’t take responsibility for what you just did with Ian and the board, they will press charges against you. Or they will sue you with everything they have, which even my legal team will have trouble fending off.
“You punched the guy in front of an array of security cameras, Ace. I know you did it to defend my honor, but corporate types don’t care about that. They care about whether they can profit off of things. Hitting Ian is actionable. They have me in a corner, and they know it. That’s why they walked away.” I stared him in the eyes and watched this sink in.
He sighed and ran a hand back over his hair. “And there’s nothing we can do?”
“No. I think you’ve done quite enough for one day anyway.”
The crestfallen look on his face made my heart ache. I wanted to remind him that I wasn’t giving up on him yet—but I was too pissed off over his misjudged act of chivalry, and its consequences, to let him off the hook just yet.
“I’ll call you once I reach home,” I said. “I need to go check in.”
It hurt to walk away from him, especially with this hanging between us. But I had just overdosed on public drama. I needed time alone, away from everyone who was driving me crazy right now.
Including Ace.
Chapter 13
Ace
Naomi did call me when she got home, but she sounded exhausted, and I didn’t keep her long. I wanted to, just like I had wanted to keep her in Aspen. But I definitely knew better than to push it with her on anything right then.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So that night, instead of prepping for work the next day, researching dad stuff or anything useful, I found myself back at the Silver Slopes, sharing a drink with an empty chair.
“Well, Miguel, looks like I really fucked it up this time,” I said and sighed.
Naomi had told me she wasn’t kicking me out of her life. She had reassured me of that when she had been at her most pissed off, so I’m sure she meant it to be true.
That didn’t absolve me of the mess I had made, though. Nothing could.
The bar was packed, as usual, with the warm, cheery vibe of people who are just drunk enough that life looked a bit better. They were dancing, laughing, talking animatedly, yelling over some hockey game I couldn’t bother following. I probably stuck out like a sore thumb with my lone, boozy moping, but I didn’t give a damn right now.
Naomi was being kind. She could have washed her hands of me and let me go to jail or end up sunk financially over that punch. As it was, I had fucked up her last chance to leave her company on her own terms, instead of with a gun to her head that I had helped to put there.
The sad thing was, few things ever in my life had felt more natural or right than punching that asshole Ian right in his smirking face. It was like following some deep, primal instinct to defend my woman from this creep who was trying to humiliate her in front of everyone—and treating our relationship, and the baby that had come from it, as something cheap and scandalous.
But this wasn’t the Wild West. Colorado was centuries beyond those days, and as much as I wanted to take pride in defending Naomi’s honor, I knew I had made a giant mess instead. And now, here I am drinking instead of figuring out how I’m going to fix it.
But I was out of ideas until I could talk to Naomi again. And I knew enough to give her some space after messing up like that.
“I fucking hate waiting,” I muttered under my breath.
It was worse that I had just learned that I was going to be a dad, that I had a shot at a family for the first time, and that this amazing woman wanted to talk options with me. That at a minimum, it meant I got to see her regularly and have her in my life.
Because I needed her in my life.
“He deserved that punch in the face,” I muttered, but it sounded more like I was trying to convince myself than anything else. If I wanted to be real about it, everyone on that board and every engineer who had dragged their feet on doing their job because of bigotry against Naomi—my Naomi—deserved to get pasted one for being pigs who acted like they had been teleported in from another century. But actually following through and doing it came at way too high a cost.
A cost that Naomi’s paying for me.
I had to make this right. The idea of never having Naomi’s trust or having her in my arms again made me crazy inside. I didn’t have to ask myself whether I was smitten with her. I already knew. If she walked away now…
Not happening. I’ll find a way to win her back. I have to.
It was two long days before we talked again. I had to force myself not to call her before then. To let her take the lead, something which ran against my instincts and my desires but which I needed to offer out of respect. She had made it very clear that she needed space and time to think this over. Pushing in before she was ready would have made it clear I didn’t care.
I spent a lot of time working those two days, mostly setting backfires and cutting brush. The drought continued, and with it, too many damn fires.
I had lost count of how many grass and brush fires I had put out this season already. It was as tedious as doing dishes: you finished handling one, and another two or three would pop up elsewhere. But wildlife, lives, and property were at stake, so all we could do was run out there again and again, take care of the problem, and grab what rest we could in between.
In my off time, I played with Benny a lot to avoid crawling back into the bottom of a beer stein. Hiking, the dog park, the big-box pet store where he could wander around picking out some new toys. He was a big, cute lovebug of a dog, almost like having a kid around at times.
I wonder how h
e’d react to having a baby around? For that matter, I wondered how having a baby around full-time would affect me. Or affect my relationship with Naomi, whom I already knew that I’d love to have around full-time.
If I got the chance.
You can’t take back a punch to the face, I thought as I threw the ball across the park lawn for Benny. You can’t take back yanking control of a lady’s important choices right out of her hands because you’re faced with an asshole who deserves a little physical comeuppance. That’s not how the business world works.
Benny came running back with the ball in his jaws; I wrestled it free gently and pitched it back over the lawn again.
Miguel would have called me an idiot for letting my emotions get the better of me in a situation where I should have let Naomi take the lead in the first place. This kind of shit was why I had left the business world. I hadn’t been able to stand it: day after day of meetings and paperwork, treating underlings like malfunctioning machines, and saying one thing to your colleagues while meaning something else entirely. It had stifled me, like I could see Archimedes Gears stifling Naomi.
There was something so emasculating about office culture too. I didn’t know if Naomi could see that. But I know she didn’t think much of men like Ian, and honestly—I didn’t know too many women who did. Who wanted someone who said one thing and did another, all the time, and hated women, in large part because he wasn’t much of a man?
But men like that run the goddamn world. Not men like me. We saved lives, and fought wars, and built things, and raised families, while snakes like Ian found their place at board tables all over the world.
Maybe I had been pushed to my limit by all that bullshit happening right in front of me. Maybe my subconscious had been screaming at me to give Naomi an out from that place that was beyond her responsibility or control. Maybe I had figured I would take the heat for it, instead of watching her be forced to do so for my sake. But that still hadn’t given me the right to go ahead and do it.
Two years from now, there could be three of us here watching Benny chase the ball. But if I made too much of an ass of myself, none of that will happen. She’ll walk, to protect herself from a guy who doesn’t trust her to make her own decisions.
Benny was whining and pawing at my leg. He bonked his muzzle against me, holding the ball in his jaws. “Sorry, buddy,” I said and gave him a scruffle before throwing the ball for him again.
Part of me still stubbornly hung on to the idea that I had done the right thing by ending all of this charade by pasting Ian in the face. They had been tormenting and humiliating her. I couldn’t allow that to continue. There was just no way.
The rest knew damn well that even if they had openly committed blackmail in the lobby of Aspen/Pitkin Airport, I had started things by openly committing assault in the same lobby. And no matter how many times I played back the memory of Ian falling on his ass in my head…that was still the kind of fuckup that broke new relationships.
I focused back on throwing the ball for the dog, then poured him out some water into his travel bowl. It was still too hot in Aspen. It felt like Arizona.
What if I went back to Denver to be closer to her and the kid? If I opened with that as an idea, if I made it easier to stay together, would she feel better about it? Would she at least hear me out?
I brooded about it all the way back home, while Benny snoozed in the back seat, completely worn out. It wasn’t going to be enough to just apologize. Remorse was just an opener. Even if she understood that I would never do violence to her or anyone innocent, no matter how pissed off I got, I had still punched a guy out in front of her, and done damage to her life and plans in the process.
How could I make up for that? How could I prove that it would never happen again?
I wasn’t really one for grand romantic gestures—at least, not ones that were impractical. Offering to move to Denver, so I would be within easy reach no matter what level of relationship she wanted, wasn’t impractical, or empty, or particularly grand. It was necessary and appropriate—but I would probably need more than that to make things good between us.
I heard honking and stopped short, realizing I had been about to run a red light.
Damn it. I need to get a handle on all of this, and fast.
I worked out furiously when I got home, glad my basement was cool and let me lift weights without getting dizzy from the heat. Benny napped in the coolest part of the basement as I worked up a sweat and struggled to clear my head.
The problem was, my head was never clear when Naomi came up. I got too horny, and too preoccupied with this amazing, classy, brilliant woman who, by pretty much a miracle, had my baby in her belly. If my kid was anywhere near as amazing as her mom, I was going to end up wrapped around her finger too.
If I got to.
I held out for two days and five hours exactly before I just had to give Naomi a call. I figured that was a respectful amount, without leaving her sitting too long if she was wondering about whether I was ghosting her or not. That afternoon, though, back home from a long shift that had seen me overnight at the fire station, I cracked open a single beer, drank half of it in a few long gulps, braced myself, and called her.
She picked up after two rings. “Hey.” She sounded tired. Not angry, not annoyed, not even sad, just…tired. “What’s up?”
“Hey, how are you?” I said. “I couldn’t keep from calling any longer. I figured you needed a break, but…this is driving me crazy. I’ve got to know where I stand with you.”
There was a pause, and then the faint creak of her settling into a chair. “Well. I guess I should start by saying I’m glad you gave me some time. Things have been grade-A crazy for two days, and believe me, I wouldn’t have been good to talk to.”
I pressed my lips together, then said wistfully, “I kinda wish I could have been there for you.”
“No, I…this, I had to do on my own. I didn’t want you involved in my writing up the paperwork or talking to HR about the incident at the airport, because you’re not involved. As far as everyone is concerned, I hit Ian.” Her flat tone only made the statement more ludicrous.
“That’s not what the security tapes will say.”
“But the statement I signed my name to yesterday does. Ace, you need to understand that this is blackmail. It doesn’t have to make sense. All it has to be is enforced by people with more power and influence than I have right now—and it is. If I don’t want them holding a legal gun to your head for the rest of forever because you punched out Ian, it’s my head that has to roll.”
“It should be Ian’s,” I growled, my frustration suddenly boiling over. “I’m sorry. If I knew they would play that dirty—hell, if I had any chance for a do-over, I wouldn’t touch the guy.”
“You’re right,” she surprised me. “It should be Ian’s. But the company isn’t interested in justice. They’re interested in keeping things exactly the way they were the year the business was founded, before I was even born. I messed with that just by being here.”
I heard the little shake in her voice. “Baby,” I started. “You don’t have to talk about this part right now.”
“No, it’s okay. We should talk about this.” She sniffed hard, and suddenly I felt like I shouldn’t have stopped at punching the one guy. “Look, I know why you hit him, and I know you have the best intentions—”
“You know it,” I confirmed, voice full of intensity.
“But first off, if anybody was going to hit Ian, you should have been in line behind me, because I’ve been holding back for years.”
I laughed in surprise, and she sniffed and laughed a little too—weakly, tiredly, but the humor was there. “Okay, duly noted, you had dibs.”
“Yeah.” I heard a swallow. “More orange soda?”
She snorted. “How’d you guess? I’m hitting this stuff like the board hits gin.”
Silence for a few beats. She sighed. “Ace…you should have let me handle it. They should never have d
ragged you into that situation in the first place, but once they did, it was up to you to ease back and let me do the talking.”
I rubbed the side of my face, my temple on that side throbbing. “I know. There’s a reason I got out of that scene. It was like watching a bunch of aging schoolyard bullies, who will sick lawyers on you instead of the school staff. I shouldn’t have dived in like that, and I sure as fuck won’t make a habit of it, but holy shit, Naomi. Those guys.”
“I know. That’s what I’ve been complaining about. You just got a taste of it.” She sounded breathless. “You know, aside from the Orloff brothers, you’re the first guy ever to really seem to see that. Or maybe you’re just one of the first to say something.”
“I hope that tells you something about me,” I ventured. Something good.
“It does. I know your heart’s in the right place, Ace. But holy cow did you get me neck-deep in trouble. I spent half a day with Human Resources yesterday.”
I nodded to myself. She was still playing by their rules, going through the motions they wanted. Confessing to what I had actually done, filling out paperwork, letting them push her out without a fight. I couldn’t understand why, but I wanted to respect her way of handling things.
“It seems like hitting that guy accomplished the opposite of what I wanted.”
“Did you even have a plan behind what you did?” she snapped, her exasperation with me suddenly bubbling to the surface.
I winced. I had expected it, but it still stung. “It didn’t go much further than ‘make him stop humiliating you in public.’ And I know it was way over the line. You’re tough enough to handle your own problems. I just…couldn’t stand seeing him do that to you.” I kept my voice as calm and gentle as I could, but the passion behind my words made it shake a little.
She laughed sadly. “Well, I’ll take it as intended, but if you ever pull anything like that again, we’re done. I can’t live with another guy who rolls over me like that, and I won’t raise my daughter with a man like that.”
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