“Busy,” he repeated. “What an interesting way to put it.”
“I knew what he was doing, and I hated it, but I was…comfortable. In our house, in our life. I didn’t think I could survive on my own. So the only thing I could do was escape.”
Compassion for her warred with bitterness. He knew what it was like to get locked into an existence you hated. The difference was he’d diverted himself with sex instead of booze. And that he’d never had children.
“You could’ve left him instead of drinking. You could’ve left and taken me with you.”
“I thought it would be better for you, if you at least had the structure of a family. And your father’s money to take care of you.”
“I would’ve preferred to have had parents.” He sounded childish, but he felt childish. Cassie may have left him, and so had Sofía, but his mother did it first.
His abandonment issues all stemmed from Mommy. Freud would’ve had a field day with him.
“I understand why you’re angry at me,” she said.
“Do you?”
His voice was cold. The ice they were skating over was too thin, the abyss beneath it too deep.
“Yes. And I’m not going to make up excuses. I…” Her hands shook. She clasped them together. “I couldn’t see a lot of things when you were growing up. And a lot since you’ve become a man. You have been quite cold, but I was wrapped up in my own problems. My own grief.”
“Your grief?” he spat, ignoring her comment about his behavior. He’d learned to be cold by watching her. “You mourned that fucker?”
Tears shone in her eyes. “When you were away, your father and I reunited. He came home one night after he found out he was sick and apologized for everything. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him and he loved me. We spent the last year he was alive happy, but when he died, I started drinking again. He worried that might happen, and that perhaps you wouldn’t be willing to help, so he put that clause in the will. To keep us together.”
He stared at her. Just fucking stared. “What?”
“I know it sounds awful, but he did it out of love. He linked your position to my dividends, binding us together through the publishing house. So it would stay in the family and I’d be taken care of.”
Patrick had no idea how to absorb this information. He’d thought Reid had done it because he hated him, because he wanted to exact revenge on Patrick for defying him. The idea that he’d done it out of any kind of benevolence toward his wife made Patrick’s brain hurt.
But it had still forced Patrick into a life he hadn’t chosen for himself.
“Why haven’t you told me this?”
“I was supposed to—your father asked me to—but I couldn’t find a way because our relationship has been so strained.” She swallowed and looked at the table, opened her hands and flattened them against it. “And because I’m selfish.”
“Selfish.” At least she was the one to have said it. But he didn’t know exactly what she meant.
“Yes, because…there’s a way for you to get out.”
Patrick didn’t understand. What out could there possibly be? “The will can’t be contested. The clause is clear. Jack found the only loophole. It can’t be changed.”
“No. But you can walk away.”
“And then you lose all monetary support.”
“No, I won’t.” Another uneasy beat of silence passed between them, but this one was unlike all the others. It was loaded. A gun cocked and ready to be fired. “There’s a trust set up to take care of me, if you did leave your position, or the company. It’s not the same as what I’ve been getting, but it’ll be enough to get by.”
“Are you kidding me?” he barked. “So I could’ve clicked my heels together years ago and been done with a job I hate, and it wouldn’t have affected you at all?” It was more than that. He’d never needed to be in it to begin with. “How the hell could you keep this from me?”
“Because I was terrified of losing you!”
That shut him up. He gaped at her.
“We have nothing,” she said. “Nothing but these weekly lunches which we barely talk through, and the business. For a while I pretended this was the only way. When I was drinking, I rationalized my way through it. If you weren’t forced to stay here, then you’d be gone from my life and I’d never see you again. But I had no idea how much you resented your life. No matter how things are between us, you’re my only son. You’re all I have left in the world, and I won’t keep you here if you’re miserable.”
Patrick’s legs twitched with the need to move and felt like lead at the same time. He understood her fear of loss, because fuck if that wasn’t his biggest fear too, but he was still furious.
“You should’ve told me,” he said.
“I know. I should’ve done a lot of things differently.” There was a carefulness to her expression he didn’t recognize. Something hesitant he vaguely labeled as concern. “Would you be less miserable if you left? Maybe go somewhere with the woman you’re dating?”
That pinched at him in a whole other way. “That’s over,” he said, irritated at her sudden interest in something so personal, even though he’d been waiting years for her to do that.
“I see.”
Patrick pushed his chair back. She was reaching out, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not ready at all.
“I’m sorry. I need to go.”
His could barely think straight the whole ride back to his building. He walked through the rotating glass doors and into the golden atrium, replying with muted nods to the calls of, “Afternoon, Mr. Dunham,” that came from the staff. He stared at the portrait of his father as he waited for the elevator. It was as if his entire world had flipped upside down.
Slamming his office door shut, he didn’t know what to do with himself, other than pace and be angry at the world. Looking for a distraction, he walked toward the window. The trees along the waterfront were bare, the harbor half frozen and capped with ice. Years of staring at this same landscape flashed before him, the seasons flipping by like pages on a calendar. How long had he gazed at this view, wishing for freedom, not knowing he could’ve had it all along?
He had the option now of being released from this prison, if he wanted to. For the first time in over two decades, he had the free will to do what he wanted.
What was he going to do with it?
Needing something to grasp on to, Patrick turned and faced the wall of books behind his desk. Slowly, he approached the shelves, reaching up until his fingers ran over the spine of the one he was looking for. Pulling down El Viejo y el Mar, he opened it and paged through to the point he’d stopped reading. Engaging himself in the melodic language, he sat and read, waiting to find the meaning Gustavo had told him one day he’d find.
He hadn’t found it yet an hour later when there was a knock at his door.
“This had better be important,” he bit off, because he didn’t want to deal with work now.
The door opened and Patrick regretted his tone. There were only a few people allowed past the lobby and his staff without asking first.
Brady was one of them.
“Now’s not a good time, kid.”
Brady hovered in the doorway, hulking shoulders filling the whole space. “Sorry. I needed to get away from the office and ended up here. I’ll go.”
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair rumpled like he’d been making fists in it. Fuck. Patrick couldn’t send him away now. “Forget it. I’ll make time.” Patrick waved him in. “Close the door.”
Brady shuffled in and thumped down in a chair. Patrick didn’t need to ask what was going on to know.
“Things still bad with Sam?”
“Yeah. That book idea I suggested for her was a total flop.”
Patrick could’ve predicted that one. “You guys fighting?”
“We’re not fighting, but we’re not…anything, anymore.”
Patrick stared at the ceiling. The feeling was familiar. �
��Wish I had some advice to offer you, but I’m fresh out of words of wisdom today.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick saw Brady eyeing him. “You look like shit,” the kid said.
“I feel like shit.”
“What’s up?”
“I thought you came here to talk about you.”
“I did, but it looks like we need to switch sides.” Brady crossed his colossal arms, looking surprisingly intimidating. “You gonna talk, or am I gonna have to call Jack and have him whip it out of you?”
Patrick snorted. “Dickhead. Don’t put that image in my head. I won’t sleep for days.”
What could he say? Tell Brady how pissed he was about things that had happened half a lifetime ago? That he’d been in purgatory for years while the person who could’ve let him out of it sat by and watched?
“It’s too much to get into. Let’s leave it at I found out someone’s kept something from me, and I’m pissed about it.”
“Someone I know?”
“No.” Brady’s interactions with his mother had been few and far between.
“Does this someone know you’re pissed?”
“She knows.”
“She?”
Patrick shook his head. “It’s not what you think.”
He didn’t want to talk about Cassie. She wasn’t the one Patrick was pissed at.
“What is it then?” Brady asked.
“It’s—”
He was mad. Really fucking mad at his mother. And he was still mad at Sofía. But up until now, he’d used them as the reason he’d been stuck in his life. He lived in the now, but he couldn’t forget what had happened. Always looking backward, his brain and capacity to remember things locking on to the past and keeping him there.
It was his blessing and his curse. Because while his observation skills were a handy thing in seduction, they also acted as a kind of hyper-vigilance—keeping his former hurts in his current frame of view to avoid getting hurt again. And he did it constantly. Using sex as an escape. Using his mother and his job and his heartbreak as his rationale for why he could never move forward. As a reason to stay disconnected and never get involved with anyone. To love anyone. To trust them.
“It’s me,” he finally said.
He’d been in a prison of his own making. Sure, the events of his life had put him there, but he’d decided to disconnect as a result, to separate himself from everything and everyone. And like his mother, he’d gotten comfortable. Complacent with his money, and a job he hated but didn’t have to try at.
He didn’t have to do that anymore. He could do anything he wanted.
“If you could do anything, what would it be?”
“I’d would’ve wanted to go into publishing, but not sales. I would’ve been involved in the actual books. Ideally the foreign ones.”
“Dude. What’s ‘you’? You’re not making sense.”
“Sorry, I’m thinking about something Cassie told me.”
He’d admitted his lost passion to her, back when it seemed unattainable, had trusted her with the desires he’d buried. And hadn’t trust been the real high when they were together? It hadn’t come from the outlet for the aggression that she’d given him, or the kinky acts themselves. It was her showing him who she was. Him doing the same to her.
“Cassie?” Brady asked. “Are you two a thing?”
Might as well come out with it. After all, he was going to see her again eventually. And better to let Brady know than have him point out the obvious tension between them later. “We were a thing. We’re not anymore.”
“Do not tell me you fucked her and left.”
“No, I asked her to marry me.”
Brady blinked. “Seriously?”
That was a little more than Patrick had planned on saying, but oh well. “Yeah. She said no.”
“Whoa.” Brady looked like a cartoon character who’d been hit on the head with an anvil. “That sucks, man. But marriage is no walk in the park. You had it right, the way you’ve been doing it—just sex, not getting involved. It’ll be easier to go back to that, right?”
No. It wouldn’t.
Brady’s cell phone rang. He looked at it and grimaced. “Sorry, it’s work. I’ve gotta take this.”
He walked to the rear of the office, head bowed as he rattled off things about servers and code. And in that moment of semi privacy, Patrick returned to the last few pages of his book. When he’d finished it, he sat back with a smile. He’d thought it was about a struggle. A battle between an unlucky man and the thing that was fighting him.
That wasn’t what it was about.
The true lesson was how a man could be destroyed but not defeated. That heartbreak was inevitable, but it wasn’t what defined him.
Patrick had been avoiding heartbreak, terrified of being abandoned by people he loved. He’d been acting the way he had to shield himself from rejection, but it happened again anyway with Cassie and he’d survived. He needed to accept the shit that had happened in his life, to stop being stuck in a pattern of escape and avoidance. And as he put the book back in its revered spot, he remembered what it was like to be fully immersed in something he loved. To be lost in the beautiful power of words strung together, in the meaning and magic that came from it.
Only one other thing in his life had made him feel so grounded, so connected, and that was when he was with Cassie. He wanted to find that feeling again, and chase it in whatever way possible. Not just in sex, but in life. And now that he was free from his obligation to his mother, he could.
He wasn’t going to keep looking for escape. He might’ve hated the role he’d had at Dunham and Strauss, but he’d learned a lot doing it. Learned what sold and what didn’t. And he could use that for the future.
He needed to stop looking backward, let go of the past and look forward for once.
Feeling almost giddy, he reached for his phone. Because, yeah, he’d figured out some shit about his life, and the first person he wanted to tell was Cassie. But calling her now would be a mistake. He’d like to tell her about it eventually, but she might not care either way, and he needed to fix things for himself first. To become a version of himself he liked, regardless of whether he got to be with her.
As Brady ended his call, Patrick cued up a different number, put the phone on speaker and set it down. “Sit tight, kid. Looks like I’m gonna need your brother over here after all.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s time for me to revisit some paperwork.”
30
Cassie heaved another bunch of files from her cabinet and dumped them into the open banker’s box on her desk. Lilly sat in a chair and pouted.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” she said.
“I’m leaving the firm, not the city. It’s not as if we’re not gonna see each other.”
“I know, but it won’t be the same.”
Cassie glanced up at Lilly and laughed. Her friend was still wearing a reindeer-eared headband left over from the firm’s holiday luncheon earlier that day, and it bounced at Lilly’s sigh.
Lilly crossed her arms, looking like a super fierce Rudolph. “You can’t laugh at me when you’re abandoning me!”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Cassie insisted. “I’m laughing at the headband.”
“Wearing this was the only way I could get through your last party here.”
“I thought my Cuban Rum Cake got you through it.”
She’d asked her mother for the recipe, and had gone to three different shops looking for the right banana liqueur. It had been a pain in the ass but worth it in the end, not only because it was delicious, but because it felt good to finally let her Cuban side shine. She’d let her hair grow out a bit as well, and she liked the comforting feeling of it brushing past her shoulders.
“That helped too.” Lilly rubbed her belly and groaned. “I feel like I gained ten pounds today. Please tell me we’ll still be going to the gym together.”
“Of course.�
�
Her phone buzzed with a call from reception. Cassie hit the speakerphone button.
“What’s up, Piper?”
“Mr. Grant is here for you.”
Without an appointment, of course. Why would she have expected otherwise? “Tell him I’m on a call. Make him wait ten minutes, then send him in.”
“I will.” Piper lowered her voice. “Glad it’s the last time I’ll be saying that, for me and for you.”
“Your new firm is lucky to have you.”
Lilly bent over and covered her face with her hands. “Why is everyone leaving me?”
The reindeer-ears bobbed, and Cassie stifled a laugh. “Maybe you could recruit Sam for Piper’s job. It’s part time. Might work for her.”
Lilly popped her head up. “You’re brilliant.”
“I know.” Cassie hauled more files to her desk. Some were staying at the firm and some she was taking across town, but the rest were going into storage. Her new office was significantly smaller than her current one. She looked around the space and breathed through the mix of sadness and excitement. Her name wasn’t going up on the wall here. But if she was lucky, it would be printed in other, far more worthy places.
Gabe popped his head into her office. “I caught the mailroom guy on his way down the hall. Grabbed yours as well as mine.”
He handed Cassie her pile, then pulled her in for a hug.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,” he cried dramatically. “Whose fabulous shoe collection will I live vicariously through?”
She kicked up one of the black, knee-high, fuck-you-world boots she’d put on that morning. “We’ll have to hit the gay bar scene more often. Get you and Nick dressed up in drag.”
Lilly bounced in her seat and clapped. “This needs to happen. As soon as possible.”
Gabe grinned and parked himself on the chair next to Lilly’s. Cassie flipped through her mail, tossing most of it until she came upon a small white envelope sealed with a red waxed stamp. Her breath caught when she turned it over and saw who it was from.
Her Claim: Legally Bound Book 2 Page 28
