by Lexi Cross
“Health reasons is all he told me,” I said.
“He didn’t specify what health reasons?” she asked.
“No, he didn’t. He keeps stuff like that from me, you know, the really personal stuff,” I told her.
“Well, we need to figure out what it was about. Certain health problems will completely invalidate stuff like these damn stipulations. I mean, this is unreal. He shouldn’t be making requirements like this, and you’re right. He should pay for asking you to give up your ownership of the company, either to a man or completely by forfeiting it and not getting married at all.”
I felt vindicated already just by having Hollie so gung-ho on my side the way she was in this situation. We hadn’t even started on anything yet, but knowing that we had an outside chance to just strip him of his authority was great.
“Where do we start?” I asked her.
“I will start by getting my staff to dig into his medical records and any official health statements he has made since then. If he made any statements to the board regarding his health when he retired, we can use that against him as well. Then, all I have to do is put together enough evidence from other cases to convince the board to disregard him entirely.”
“Wait, he’s already retired. What will this do?” I asked.
“That’s actually not a bad question,” Hollie said. “Basically, what I plan on doing is showing that he was already unfit to continue serving as the CEO of the company prior to his retirement. Once I convince them of that, anything he did before that can be thrown out. Next, of course, I’ll need to convince them that for the last ten years, you were the one running the company, even when he was still the active CEO. Once I do that, they’ll be left with no other real option other than to just file the transfer and hand you the position,” she said.
“You make it sound like a piece of cake,” I said.
“It is. But like with any cake, baking it is a bitch,” she added with a laugh. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Brooke. Let me handle it all from here. You go home, maybe crack open a bottle of wine to relax your nerves. Let Jake know the good news, that you guys can probably make all of this work without the prenup, without a divorce, all of that. Let him know that you guys don’t even have to fake it anymore. That’s good news, right?”
“That’s damn good news, Hollie. Thank you so much.”
I stood up from the chair in front of her desk and leaned across to give my old friend a hug.
“Now go,” she insisted. “I’ve got work to do, and you’ve got celebrating to do.”
“Thank you, Hollie,” I said with a smile as fresh tears started to run down my face. I hurried out of her office and back to the car. I couldn’t contain myself. I was laughing and crying at the same time because I was so relieved that everything was probably going to work out for me.
I pulled out my phone and called Jake. I listened as it rang and rang.
“Jake, baby, it’s Brooke. Give me a call. It’s very important. It’s good news. Damn good news,” I said on his voicemail.
I put the phone in the cup holder in front of my center console in case he called back while I was on my way to his house.
I made it to the house and wandered around inside trying to find him. He wasn’t there. The mansion was huge and so lonely without him there. There were rooms I hadn’t explored, and whole sections I was pretty sure I hadn’t been in. I plopped down on the couch and turned on the TV to try to distract myself, but there was nothing that would take my mind off of him.
I checked the time. As it got later, I got worried. I tried calling again.
“Jake, it’s me again. I’m at the house. I’m really sorry about this afternoon. I overreacted, but I think I have it all figured out now. Please give me a call or come home, baby.” I felt like there was more to say, but I didn’t want to run him off even more than I had tried to do earlier. I figured there would be plenty of time to say those other things once we talked later. It would be some time before it would be appropriate to say some of those extra things anyway.
I turned off the TV and made my way back up to his library. I hadn’t returned to Jane Austen since the first night. She was still sitting where I had left her with the book mark in the same place and everything, untouched.
I couldn’t even bring myself to sit in there, thinking about how I had ruined everything because I freaked over my father’s changing stipulations. We had been given the perfect chance to try again after all those years, and I had been so willing to throw it away over work. Work! I had focused on being independent and successful for so long that I had forgotten what was really, truly important in life, and I was about to lose it all because of that.
I pulled my phone back out. There were no calls, no texts, nothing. I sighed. I wouldn’t be discouraged, I decided.
I’m sorry. I have good news. Call me, baby. Let me know where you are and that you’re okay.
I turned my ringer on and went to his room. I climbed into the bed where I had slept with him just the night before. It was amazing and scary just how much things had changed in the last twenty-four hours. We had gone from making love in his bed and falling asleep cuddled up underneath his covers to not speaking to each other. I had no idea where he was. It wasn’t like him not to come home.
So far, he’d only stayed out once, and that was before he realized what it meant to have someone else staying at the house with him. Since that first night, he’d been home more often. He’d been so very attentive. I felt a pang of guilt to think that I had turned my back on him the way I did, just for my job. He’d made it pretty clear that what he felt for me went beyond just needing a girl on his arm to impress his boss or the press.
It was almost like he was trying to pick up where we’d left off back in high school. In the back of my mind, I had always wondered what it would have been like if we’d managed to stay together, and I was screwing up my chance to answer that question.
I curled up under his covers and snuggled with his pillow. It smelled like him. The sheets smelled like our sex-sweaty bodies from the night before. The memories should have turned me on, should have made me want him again, but they didn’t. If anything, they made me cry again. I closed my eyes and curled up tight around his pillow. I just let myself cry.
I checked my phone a handful of times, in case it didn’t ring when he called. There were no calls or texts. He was ignoring me.
I’m sorry. Call me. Come home. Something. We don’t have to do it like this.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say at that point. I put the phone back on the nightstand on my side of the bed and closed my eyes. A smile slowly spread across my lips as I thought about how he would come home and find me in his bed. I couldn’t decide if he would be more likely to snuggle me or wake me up with sex as soon as she climbed into the bed.
I really hoped for the latter. I wanted to fuck his brains out to celebrate our pending victory over my father. Once he was ousted from the company, we wouldn’t have to rush to get married. We wouldn’t have to have a huge wedding if we didn’t want to. And we wouldn’t have to get divorced to make sure I could retain my ownership of the company.
I wanted to share my news with him.
I just wanted him to come home. At the end of the day, I realized that I wanted Jake more than I wanted the company. If I had to give up one, I was willing to give up the company. If I had to walk away from one, I wasn’t going to let myself walk away from him. That made no damn sense to me at all.
I lay in bed alone, waiting on a call, waiting to hear him at the door, forever, but no one ever showed up, and there were no calls or texts on my phone. Eventually, the dark silence of the room got to me, and I started drifting off. I started dreaming a little here and there until the darkness took over and carried me off into the night.
The only comfort I had was in knowing that when I woke up in the morning, he would be next to me. There was no way he was going to be gone all night. He was too persis
tent to avoid me completely. One way or another, I was going to share my news with him.
We didn’t have to do things the way we had originally planned it, and I knew from his reaction that afternoon that he was going to appreciate not having to divorce me just because a piece of paper laid out the plan that way.
My father’s control over our relationship was about to get wiped out. Everyone on the board was going to see how irrelevant he was. I couldn’t wait.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jake
“Here’s to the life,” Lucky said, holding up his shot glass.
“The life,” Harley and I repeated. The three of us slammed our shots back and set the glasses back on the bar.
I didn’t know how much I’d had to drink at that point. All I knew was it felt good not to have to worry about going home at a specific time. It felt good to just be hanging out with the guys again, just to be part of the network once more.
“Man, I can’t believe you were thinking about getting married just to make Mr. Clark happy. That’s too much,” Lucky said, his voice starting to slur a little bit.
His mannerisms were hilarious at that point. I was definitely drunker than I had been in a long time, but I didn’t have to be at practice in the morning like the guys had to. I didn’t have to do shit if I didn’t want to. I could have stayed home and slept all day if I wanted to because Coach Hawkins didn’t want to see me while I was injured. He’d put up with me being in the office just because he knew he couldn’t keep me away from the headquarters completely.
Well, the guys were going to make sure I didn’t show up the next day. I was going to really feel all the drinks I had in the morning when I woke up hungover as hell. I realized I hadn’t said anything back to Lucky yet, but I decided it was time to get out of my head and start talking again.
“Man, the only reason I was agreeing to it was because I wanted to get a piece of that ass again. You don’t even know. Back in school, she was the best I had, man,” I said, my words slurring so badly even I could hear it. I knew I was just talking shit, but part of it was true. Brooke had been one of my fondest memories of high school and dating.
“Whatever, you know you were falling in love, punk.” Harley smacked me on my back.
“Yeah, that’s why you’re out drinking tonight, man. You’re not celebrating. You’re trying to drink her off your mind, and it doesn’t seem to be working,” Lucky added.
“Nope, she’s all in your eyes, Jake.”
“Cut me some slack, guys. I’ve been domesticated since before the season started. It’s going to take some time to get back into the swing of things,” I argued, barely able to hold my head up. I was in pretty bad shape.
I wanted to get into worse shape. I wanted to drink it all away, though I wasn’t really sure they had enough alcohol in the whole bar for me to do that.
“You sure do make a lot of excuses when you’re drinking,” Lucky said.
“Alright, fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to sit up straight. It was time to put my weak ass emotions behind me. It was time for me to show the guys I was still the same Jake Hall I was when this season started.
“Oh shit,” I heard Harley said.
I slapped my hand on the bar. “Bartender. Two rounds of whiskey,” I shouted out. A moment later, we had six shots in front of us, two shots each.
“Two rounds,” Lucky said, grabbing both of his shots at the same time.
I blinked away my double vision. I didn’t have time to be weak. I needed to be strong, for myself, for my team, for the network of guys depending on us to keep all of our numbers and money in order.
“I don’t want to hear it. You sorry asses have been giving me shit all night. No more. You want to talk trash to me, you have got to back it up.” I took my shots, one in each hand, and downed them back to back. They went down like water, telling me I had definitely reached my limit. I had an unspoken rule when it came to drinking. Once I couldn’t taste it, it was time to stop.
Besides, I wanted to find someone to take home with me, and I had to stop drinking so I could make it worth some lucky girl’s time to come home with the Jake Hall. I turned around to order a beer, to help settle my stomach. Those last two shots were starting to fight with me. Truthfully, I needed something to eat, something heavy to add weight to my stomach, but I figured a dark beer would have been just as good.
The bartender handed me the bottle, and I shook my head.
“What, is that not what you wanted?” he asked.
“It’s not that, man. I can’t believe she called off the wedding.”
“Oh, that sucks. Hey, those last shots and that beer are on me. That’s rough. If you want, I can make you a drink that will take your memory of her away,” he offered.
“I believe you,” I laughed, “but I don’t think it’s that serious tonight, man. I still have to make it home and function at some point tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Fair enough, but let me know if you change your mind.”
I sat with my beer in my hand, staring at my tired face in the mirror behind the bar. I was in pain. My injury was hurting, and it was hurting me through the alcohol. I told myself it was all just in my head and that I was imagining it because I didn’t want to admit how upset I really was over Brooke.
I laughed and shook my head, taking a long drink from my bottle. Brooke and I had broken up once before back in high school, right before we both left for college. We should have left it that way. We shouldn’t have tampered with fate by trying to get back together for any reason at all.
“So stupid,” I said to myself. “Hey, wait a minute.”
I turned around to see where Lucky and Harley had gone off to, remembering that I hadn’t actually come to the bar alone. I had met them there to drink away my sorrows and find a nice, sweet piece of ass to take home with me. My sorrows were starting to fade, but I didn’t think I was going to be much for a piece of ass by the time the night was over. I didn’t think I would be able to perform by the end of the night.
Harley wasn’t worried about it. He had two women on his arm, both of them beautiful blondes with big tits bulging out of their shirts. Lucky had a dark-haired woman laughing with him at the other end of the bar. I envied them. I took a drink from my beer. I could have had a beautiful woman at my side that night, but she had decided that despite the progress we had made in our relationship, it was all just a business transaction.
“Dammit, man,” I said to myself, drinking more.
I set my empty bottle down and watched the people in the bar pairing off all around me. It seemed like I was the only person sitting alone. I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t like being reminded that in the last twenty-four hours I had gone from having a plan to get married and have a backup for when I had to walk off the field, to not having shit except for my talent as an athlete and a couple of friends who liked to drink and chase women.
I reached back for my bottle, remembering it was empty. But when my fingers wrapped around it, it was full again. The bartender was a good man, keeping my drinks coming. I took a sip from the bottle and went back to watching everyone around me.
I sat at the bar alone. Lucky and his raven-haired beauty were playing darts. He was pretending to teach her how to throw the darts. It was amusing to watch him with his horrible aim, taking her hand in his while he stood behind her, getting a cheap thrill.
I didn’t see Harley. I figured he’d probably already left with his lady friends.
I decided it was probably time for me to leave, too. I was getting curious as to whether or not Brooke had decided to stay at the house or if she’d gone home to her place with all the things she’d brought over to my place. I pulled out my phone to check my messages, but I couldn’t focus to see the icons on the screen.
“Fuck it. I’ll check it in the morning,” I said aloud, putting my phone back in my pocket. I stood up from the barstool and chugged the rest of my beer. It was definitely time to quit dr
inking and call it a night. I was chugging thick, heavy, dark beer that was normally hard to just drink, but it was going down as smoothly as water, just like those last two shots had done.
I nodded at the bartender and started to walk away from the bar. I was impressed that I was walking fine on my own. I tried to count how many drinks I’d had in my head, and I just couldn’t do it.
I was too drunk to take anyone home with me. I figured I could have to find someone the next time I came out. I figured it would be a good idea just to go home and sleep it all off for the night. I needed to forget it had even happened, and I didn’t need to be seen with another woman on my arm just yet. I had just established the last chick. It wasn’t time to introduce another one to the paparazzi.
