“Fate, hear me out. Please.”
After Dean had practically burned rubber leaving, Fate had sat wounded in the stairwell until Trevor had coaxed her upstairs. He carried her bag into the apartment and stood with folded arms against the breakfast bar.
He looked out of place in her kitchen. He didn’t belong here, in her new life. She wanted him to leave, but the crushing encounter with Dean had left her weak and disoriented.
Trevor was still talking. Something about his family and the wedding, but she wasn’t really hearing him. She was only hearing Dean’s voice telling her that it wasn’t really going anywhere anyway.
It certainly felt like it had been going somewhere. She felt as if she’d been constantly gravitating toward him since the second she’d walked away from Trevor. The weekend together had seemed like finally arriving where she belonged.
“Fate. You with me? We need to figure this out.”
She glanced up at the man who was standing across from her and growing irate. “We have nothing to figure out. Whatever you’ve been going on about, I’m sure you can handle it yourself, Trevor. You’re a big boy. I have faith in you.” She didn’t really, be it seemed like a trivial detail at this point.
“No. I literally can’t. She put them in both our names, Fate. So unless you want to be forever invested in the family business of a family you’ve made it clear you have no desire to be a part of, we’re going to have to meet with the lawyer and get this handled.”
There was no point in pretending she knew what he was talking about. She sighed, wishing he’d leave so she could just go curl up in her bed and try to figure out a way to heal from the wounds Dean had inflicted upon exiting her life.
“I’ll sign whatever you want, Trevor. Just mail it or email it to me or something.”
He walked over to where she sat and dropped to the seat across from her. “I have no idea what’s going on with you, and frankly, I get that I have no right to know anymore. But you need to focus on what I’m telling you. I need you to meet me tomorrow at the offices of Greenburg and Leshkovitz at five thirty. I’ll text you the address. I tried to leave their business card, but your roommate tore it up and threw the confetti in my face on her way out.”
Fate let out a short laugh at the mental image. “Gwen’s a little on the dramatic side.”
“She’s a little on the psychotic side,” Trevor said dryly. “She made multiple threats involving my genitals. Anyway, all they need is your signature on the paperwork and we’re done.”
Done must’ve been the word of the day.
“I wasn’t exactly functioning on all cylinders when you explained—”
“Shares of my family’s company, Fate. My great-aunt handles those and I stood to gain a great deal of them when I got married. You did too. They were already in our name. My great-aunt took a leap of faith and had it handled already. She didn’t expect the wedding to get called off.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t expect to find you fucking my best friend in the wine cellar at our rehearsal dinner. Life is full of disappointments.” Her voice was devoid of emotion.
It made a lot more sense now, why he’d been so overeager about marriage. And his great-aunt Lindy had always liked her, so of course it had all been about what he’d stood to gain.
“Fate, I know how it seems. And I hate that you and I ended things the way that—”
“Stop. Seriously. The truth is… Well, the truth is I’m mostly over it.”
She did a quick physiological evaluation. No racing pulse or throbbing headache or white-hot flash of anger burning through her. Nope. She had nothing left for Trevor, not even any residual heartache over his betrayal.
Trevor opened his mouth to say something, but she stood up. “Actually, I’m completely over it. And I’ll meet you tomorrow after work and sign the papers.”
He sighed with obvious relief.
“But the next time you introduce yourself to anyone as my fiancé, I’m sic’ing my psychotic roommate on you. Got it?”
He nodded as he stood and followed her to the door. “So that guy was—”
“None of your business, Trevor.”
“For the record, not that it matters now, but it didn’t mean anything—what was going on with Melissa. It was just sex, Fate. Nothing more.”
If she’d still cared, his admission likely would’ve made it worse. “I think it was more than that to her.”
His eyes were hard when they met hers. “I wanted you. Only you. She was just persuasive and convenient.”
“Wanting and deserving are two different things. You may have wanted me, but you didn’t think I was worth waiting for. I think I deserve better than that, and honestly, I hope Melissa has realized that she does too. In fact, I’ll be happy to explain to your aunt Lindy that if she’s making marriage a condition of stock shares in the company, then she’s doing some poor woman a horrible disservice.”
Trevor’s eyes lightened. “Would you?”
God, he was serious. “I would be glad to. It almost feels like my civic duty.”
Fate opened the front door, expecting him to leave. He paused halfway out, stopping entirely too close to her.
“We could’ve had a good together life, Fate. I still believe that. I would’ve given you anything you wanted.”
Except your heart, your fidelity, and permission to be myself.
But Trevor Harris had never done well with abstract concepts such as those. He expected his future wife to be happy with fancy clothes, dinners, and jewelry and not much else.
“I’m sure you’ll make some materialistic woman very happy some day.” She patted him on the chest. “You just needed to find one who shares your avaricious nature. Best of luck to you. Buh-bye now.”
“That guy make you happy?”
Yes. Yes, she realized right then that Dean had made her very happy. Right up until his grand departure. But that was how it worked, wasn’t it? The men in her mom’s life had always made her light up until they left and took her light with them.
“I make myself happy, Trevor. More importantly, I chose to be happy regardless of anyone else’s behavior or shitty decision-making abilities.”
“Well, then, I’m happy for you, Fate. See you tomorrow.”
She nodded and closed the door.
Her life was really and truly the definition of a clusterfuck when the man she had actual feelings for said, “Let’s keeps our distance at work,” and “We’re done here,” and the one she never cared to see again left with, “See you tomorrow.”
“It’s true.”
His father’s voice was barely audible over the beeping machines linked to him by various tubes. Dean had been sitting in the chair beside him in the private hospital suite for several hours after the doctors had put a stint in. Apparently, his father had both a heart and several ninety-percent blockages.
“What’s true?” Dean stood, preparing to get his father some ice or water or whatever he requested.
“What they say about your life flashing before your eyes. Mine did.”
Explained why the man looked as if he’d seen something disturbing. “Can I get you something? Or a nurse?”
His dad turned to him with gleaming eyes. “Some of the nurses are pretty enticing, actually, but I’m hardly up for it at the moment.” He gestured to the tubes. “Hell of a setup I have here.”
“Nice, Dad. If you don’t need anything, I’m going to get back to my—”
“Dean.” It was just his name, but the weight of it stopped him where he stood. “Sit a minute. Please.”
Dean lowered himself back into the chair.
“Remember when your mother got sick the first time? When I made puppets out of the rubber gloves in the room and she and I put on a show for you while we were waiting for the results of her tests?”
Dean did hold a blurry memory of those days from his childhood. “Yes, sir. Are you saying you want me to make you a rubber-glove puppet?”
His dad ga
ve him a thin, watery smile. “No. I’m saying I’m sorry that we stopped remembering, stopped talking about her after she was gone. It was just…”
“Hard. I know.” Dean had no desire to discuss this, her, with this man. Not now and probably not ever. “Look, Dad, I talked to the doctor. You’ll be fine. Your assistant is going to hire you a home healthcare professional from one of our subsidiaries to stay with you for the next couple of weeks until you’re back on your feet.”
“How was your weekend?” Daniel Dean Maxwell Senior pressed the button beside his bed to elevate his back until he was sitting straight up. “With the girl from marketing?”
“It was fine. You’ll be happy to know that that’s over with. No need to worry about that anymore.”
His dad didn’t speak right away, but he did take a drink from a plastic cup on the tray table. He sighed loudly and frowned at Dean. “I’ll always worry about you, son. But I did some checking on Ms. Buchanan. Other than student loan debt and the mother whose medical care you’re already paying for, I don’t think you’re in much danger of her wanting much else from you.”
Wasn’t that the truth. “Believe me. She doesn’t want anything from me. At all.”
Black eyebrows peppered with a hint of gray dipped on his father’s forehead. “Do you want something from her?”
“Does it matter?”
The older man’s eyes took on a ferocity Dean wasn’t expecting. “If there’s anything lying on the floor of my apartment thinking I was as good as dead for nearly an hour has taught me, it’s that, yes, Dean—everything matters. What you want matters. What you take for granted matters. And believe me. The people who’ve made a difference in your life—even if they’re no longer a part of it—they matter. It all matters. Your mother mattered more than anything and I—” He cut himself off with a strange gurgle and a choking sound that made Dean worried he was having another heart attack.
Dean stood quickly, prepared to find the nurse’s call button, but his dad merely coughed and put a hand up while drinking more water from his plastic cup.
“I’m okay. I’m fine. I just… I want you to know that I didn’t forget her. I think about her every day.”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m sure you were thinking about her while she was wasting away and you were out screwing your assistant.”
His dad let out a sound that, had Dean not been so angry, might have been cause for concern. Several barking coughs rattled from within the man.
“I never,” his dad choked out. He paused, covering his mouth and finishing his cough. “I never cheated on your mother. Ever.”
“Bullshit.” Dean’s voice held every ounce of disbelief he felt.
“I didn’t. She was sick, son. She told me to move on. She couldn’t let go until I found a way to move forward. So I lied. I went to bars and drank alone. Then I poured cheap women’s cologne on my shirts before coming home. You remember how she was in the end. She couldn’t eat or drink. She couldn’t swallow for fuck’s sake. But she held on. She didn’t want to leave us behind if she believed we were going to spend the rest of our lives in mourning.”
Dean’s breathing became erratic. He focused on pulling the antiseptic-smelling hospital room air in and out of his lungs. “I don’t believe you.”
“Whether you believe me or not isn’t the point. I never cheated on your mother. She knew it, too. Her last words to me were, ‘You’re not as convincing as you think, Daniel. Move on. Please. For me.’ And then she went. And I tried. God, I tried.”
The man broke into shoulder-heaving sobs while Dean stood dumbstruck at the foot of the bed.
“I tried too,” Dean said quietly. “But I don’t think you can really move on from a woman like that.”
His mother had been the bridge that held their family together. She’d been the personification of love and patience and acceptance. She’d been the kind of woman he hoped he’d marry some day.
Until she died. And Dean had decided that he was never going to give his heart to a woman who could leave and take it with her. His mother had taken a piece of him when she’d died. Fate had taken a piece the day he’d met her. The battered slab of heart that was left in his chest didn’t need anyone else to try and make a grab for it.
“I need to go, Dad. I have meetings tomorrow. And I’m guessing we need to get a press release out about this.”
“Regina can handle it. Wait a second.” His dad reached a trembling hand out, suddenly looking a lot less like the pillar of strength he had always been and a lot more like a fifty-eight-year-old man in a hospital gown.
Dean waited. He was expecting his dad to give him a list of responsibilities for the office.
“Son.” His dad lowered his arm and his eyes. “I know you take the job seriously, and it’s our family’s company, so it is serious. But there is more to life. And when you’re dead and gone, the job won’t remember you. The people you have loved and who have loved you will. After your mother died, I took the low road. I don’t want to see you pass me on that road. Understood?”
Dean narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t anything like this man. He didn’t make women sign non-disclosure agreements before fucking them. But…once he was CFO, it might become necessary. It made him sick to think about. Though he certainly wouldn’t have pretended to be unfaithful to his wife in order to convince her to give up and die.
Would he?
An image of Fate weak and debilitated with illness flashed across his mind. His mother had suffered so much, more than any human being should have been capable of enduring, at the end. Was there anything he wouldn’t do to alleviate that kind of pain if Fate was in it?
“Understood,” was all he said to his father’s request. “Get some rest, Dad. I’ll send a nurse in to see what they can do to make you more comfortable.”
His father nodded. “If Regina’s still out there, send her in please.”
Dean gave a quick nod and walked out of the room. He leaned against the wall by the door for a few moments, forcing polite smiles at nurses and orderlies who passed.
He’d taken the low road for the past ten years at least. The realization left him feeling both disgusted with himself and exhausted at the thought of continuing his lifestyle as he had been. Long nights, meaningless sex, and an empty bed in the morning. That’s how he’d preferred it. It was the simplest way. No real connection meant no complications. But what a pathetic existence that had led to.
Fate had asked how long it would be until she was the woman on the other side of the door, the one he was finished with. Now Dean was wondering how long until he would be the man on the other side of the wall, lying alone in a hospital bed with no one caring to come see him. Sure his dad had two visitors. His son and his assistant—both of who were mostly there out of a sense of obligation more than actual concern for his well-being.
Once he’d regained his equilibrium, Dean made his way to the CICU waiting room in search of his father’s assistant. The only women in the room were a mother-and-daughter pair crying on each other’s shoulders and a raven-haired forty-something in an ankle-length, black linen skirt and an off the shoulder, practically threadbare Ramones T-shirt. Regina must’ve stepped out for coffee or gone home. He was about to head back to let his father know that he couldn’t find her when the woman in the vintage shirt and bohemian skirt stood.
“Dean?”
She stepped over to him when he nodded. She was petite and an interesting combination of edgy and adorable.
“I’m Regina,” she said, flashing a gorgeous, slightly crooked smile at him. “Your father’s assistant. I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times—he’s not twenty-five anymore. The man is going to have to start taking better care of himself and that’s all there is to it.”
Dean grinned. He liked her. More importantly, he liked that she was warm and genuine and not one of the surgically enhanced twenty-somethings his father tended to hire.
“Nice to meet you, Regina. Thank you for calling me.”
“The stubborn ass told me not to call anyone, but I never listen to him.”
Dean chuckled at her honestly. “Well, I bet that makes for an interesting working relationship.”
Regina shrugged, causing her shirt to slip lower on shoulder and reminding Dean of the way Fate’s had been bared to him in the moonlight beneath his shirt.
“It does. But, thankfully, I do what’s best for him regardless of how much he bitches and moans about it.”
Dean heard what she’d said, but he’d slipped away for a moment, back in time to a place where the ocean provided a constant sidetrack and Fate was his.
“You okay?”
She was looking at him with concern in light-blue eyes that contrasted with the rest of her features.
“I’m fine,” Dean said sharply. “Sorry. Just a little worse for wear at the moment. It’s been a long weekend.”
Regina briefly averted her eyes. “Yeah, um, I heard.”
He remembered his slip on the phone when he’d thought it was his dad calling.
“Yeah…about that. If we could maybe keep that between us, I’d appreciate it.”
Regina gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I was the one your father had look into her, Dean. I already knew you were seeing her before you announced it on the phone, so no need to worry. Plus, there was a very incriminating video from the security cameras in the parking garage that had to be wiped from the main server. I’m the only one your father trusts to handle those types of issues.” Her cheeks pinked while Dean opened and then closed his mouth. “I value my job and care about this company,” she rushed on. “I’m the last person you have to worry about propagating or substantiating office romance rumors.”
He exhaled in relief. “Well…thank you. For your discretion. Not for looking into the background of my weekend companion.”
Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Well, other than the shares she holds in Harris Pharmaceutical, I didn’t see any cause for alarm. I hope you enjoyed your weekend.”
Falling for Fate (Second Chance Book 2) Page 25
