by Nella Tyler
She came downstairs in one of my shirts and a clean pair of my boxers. It was a flagrant display of what we’d been up to the night before, and I felt affection rising in my throat at the way my underwear hugged her hips. She brushed past me to grab a mug; I’d gotten the hot water ready for her.
Before I could say anything to her, the front door came open; I knew I’d forgotten to lock it the night before.
“Dexter, my man!”
Briella rolled her eyes and looked up at me. “You know, you really ought to establish better boundaries with that guy.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not mad. Quite the opposite. I think you might have actually fucked my brains out,” she said, very matter-of-factly. She smiled at me and offered a wink so that I’d know she meant it, and I held on to that little gesture.
Tyler came barging into the kitchen. “Oh, shit, you have company.”
“If you cared, you’d have called beforehand. Or knocked,” I said.
“I did call.”
“Or knocked,” Briella chimed.
Tyler raised his hands. “Sorry. I ran out of toilet paper. Are you making breakfast?”
Without meaning to be, Tyler was the greatest wingman in the world. Next to him, anyone could look adult and put-together. I nodded and thought to send him on his way. As if she could sense that I was about to tell him to do so, Briella said, “You can stay for breakfast if you want.”
I frowned at the abrupt betrayal, but I couldn’t argue with her smile. I wanted to have every morning with her. I wanted this to be my life.
At the breakfast table, the conversation didn’t take long to turn to important subjects.
“I’m gonna meet your dad later,” Briella told Tyler.
Tyler cringed. “Why? You looking to set up an investment?”
“Nope, just trying to date his son,” she replied, spearing a piece of sausage with a fork.
Tyler shook his head. “I would advise against that. The man is pure evil.”
“Come on,” I tried. I didn’t like to think of him that way. Even though evidence overwhelmingly suggested that my dad was an asshole, I still remembered when times had been different.
“I’ll go ahead and apologize on his behalf. I’m very sorry,” Tyler continued.
Briella furrowed her eyebrows. “Is he really that bad?”
“No,” I cut in. The worst he could do was say something slightly off-color, and I’d be right there ready to correct him if he tried to be rude to Briella. I wouldn’t stand for her coming all the way to Florida just for him to be a dick. “He isn’t that bad.”
Tyler muttered something unintelligible into his cup of coffee.
“I’m going to go get dressed,” Briella said. She kissed my cheek, and Tyler’s eyes widened in a way that told me he was never going to let me live it down.
When she was up the stairs, Tyler leaned forward, suddenly alert and energetic.
“Dude. You absolutely cannot let her meet Dad.”
“I absolutely cannot believe you’re being so weird about this,” I returned. “Dad’s a little off, sure, but he’s not unreasonable. It’ll be fine.”
“It will most certainly not be fine. He’s going to get pissed that you’re not dating someone in the circle.”
“In the circle? What is this, the Illuminati?”
“You know what I mean. It’s going to go badly, Dexter, if not for you, then for her. Think about her feelings.”
“She wanted to meet him!” I countered. “She asked me to.”
“Was it her idea?” Tyler returned.
I quieted. “I have to introduce them, Tyler.”
“Why? What could be so important?”
“I’m in love with her.”
Silence. For a second, the loudest thing in the room was the coffee machine slowly pouring more coffee on the other side of the kitchen.
“I’m in love with her,” I repeated. “And that’s… that’s not going to change. If I don’t introduce her to Dad, then I’ll… I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try.”
Tyler shook his head at me. “Jesus Christ. If you’re really in that deep, maybe the only thing that will change your mind is a no from him.”
“Harsh.”
He shrugged.
I spent the rest of the day with Briella. She found the piano downstairs, and although both of us had received lessons in our childhood, neither of us could recall them very well now. We played some terrible piano, made lunch, and looked at some of her clients’ wedding plans. I had little to actually help her with, but I liked to think that I was being supportive in the small way that I could.
Finally, we got ready for dinner. We decided to have dinner at my house so that we would be in a neutral area. She could go up to her room if she needed to get away, or leave the house altogether. I could kick my father out of my house, but not a restaurant.
She got dressed and we met downstairs. We decided to have dinner in the austere, uppity dining room; it was more suited to my father’s tastes: foreboding and elegant. I made sure the good silverware was out and gave the wine glasses a final polish.
I thought about what I’d told my father. That I’d met a woman that I wanted him to meet. I’d been incredibly vague over the phone, mostly because I didn’t want him to opt out, and now I wondered if being vague might backfire. If he might be horrible in person because he hadn’t been given time to prepare himself.
But, prepare himself for what? A beautiful, intelligent woman whom his son was quite in love with? That was hardly something that he should be concerned about.
“You’re nervous,” Briella said. She set a hand on mine so that I would stop fidgeting with the table settings. “Do you think this will go poorly?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know how things are going to go, but I can promise that I’ll do everything in my power to make my father understand. I remember when he used to be understanding. He can…he can still be there for me.” It was a futile, futile hope, but I believed it, or at least some small part of me did.
I heard a knock at the door. My stomach knotted up, and I walked towards it, robotically, feeling oddly like I was in trouble. I should have explained the situation in greater detail.
I opened the door. My father stood in the doorway, holding a bottle of wine.
Chapter 38
Briella
In middle school, I’d done a little bit of theater, and then a little more in high school for the fine arts credits. I was allegedly not very bad at it, and knew a thing or two about pretending that everything was all right on the surface. Those skills had done me well in my relationship with Jason, and had kept me calm in my relationship with Dexter.
Nothing could have prepared me for the bone-chilling glare that I received the first time I saw Leonard Mason. He stared straight into my brain, and I got the feeling he might read every one of my thoughts forwards and backwards. I couldn’t keep a secret from this man. Where my father was warm, appreciative, and kind, this man was cold.
He even looked like a skeleton. Horrifyingly, he looked like Dexter, if Dexter aged 50 years and grew a permanent scowl. The table remained quiet as I pulled my knife across the piece of chicken on my place.
“Dexter tells me you own an investment company, the one he works for. Did you start it yourself, or is it a family business?” I asked.
Leonard said nothing to me. Dexter finished pouring the bottle of wine into three separate glasses and cleared his throat, casting a look that I couldn’t help but notice read sheer irritation.
I began to think of what my father told me when I got on the plane. These people weren’t like me. I could never fit in with them.
“Dad, Briella’s a wedding planner. She’s done 50, 55 weddings?” Dexter spoke up on my behalf, and I thought that I might die.
“It’s 56,” I corrected weakly.
He said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Leonard didn’t even ackn
owledge that I had said anything at all, but rather took a sip of wine as though he were waiting for someone to say something. He set the wine glass down, and I noticed the tightness in his knuckles. Fear rose in my gut; I couldn’t help the fear I associated with angry men.
And Dexter didn’t even know that much. I couldn’t explain it to him now. “Dexter told me about the deal in Houston, or at least a little of it. I’m sure there’s some information he can’t disclose. He seems to be a really important asset to the business.”
Leonard looked up at Dexter, turning that steely glare on his son. I wondered how Dexter had ever grown up with a smidge of compassion with a father like that.
“Is that why you went to Houston? For her?” Leonard jabbed his thumb at me like I wasn’t even there.
“I went to Houston to fix the account Tyler messed up,” Dexter said.
Tyler had tried to warn me. Why hadn’t I listened? It was like Jason all over again, when my father and Nina and everyone I knew told me that he was bad news. And instead of listening to them, I insisted that I knew better. Here I was, trapped in another cycle that I couldn’t get out of. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for whatever Leonard could say next.
“You’re a fool,” Leonard told Dexter. “If you think I’m going to support this, this, relationship you have with this woman, you’re an idiot, too.” He looked across the table at me, and I stared back, wide-eyed, horrified at what was happening.
“I won’t sit through another minute of this.” He stood up from the table, setting his napkin on his seat. Without another word, he stormed off.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Dexter said. I heard the front door open, close, open, close.
I sat in the chair. I was in a billionaire’s dining room in Florida. What the hell was I doing? The urge to cry bubbled up in my throat. This was a charade gone too far. I’d gotten too far in for my own good. All the time I’d spent insisting that it was harmless, I was avoiding the truth.
This wasn’t harmless. It was the most dangerous risk there was. It felt like I was back in my final night at Jason’s apartment when I went upstairs and started to put my things together. Everything felt ultimate, done for, dead. I left the dress that Dexter bought me hanging neatly in the closet and wrote him a note that I left on the dresser.
Suitcase in tow, I called a cab. Dexter’s car wasn’t in the driveway or garage, and I knew he’d probably gone off to fight his father. He would learn the risks that came with defying someone so powerful, without the intermediary force of his mother, and he would understand that I couldn’t exist in the same world as him. It wasn’t meant to be; it couldn’t last.
I got in the cab and drove to the airport, checking flights as the cab drove on. There was a red-eye available to Houston.
I hit ‘book now.’
Chapter 39
Dexter
My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard I thought I might rip the appendage off my car. I followed the bastard the entire way back to his house, driving as close to his tail as I could in an effort not to lose him. When he finally got out of his car, I was quick to get out of mine.
“Don’t you fucking walk away from me!” I shouted. I couldn’t stop the hot anger that spilled into my mouth. It tunneled from my ears, filled my brain, blurred my vision. I’d expected maybe a bit of awkwardness. I’d never expected this.
“You would take that tone with your father?” Leonard stopped in his tracks and glared at me. I remembered the years I’d spent under the scrutiny of that glare. Now, instead of piercing me, it bounced off like nothing.
“You’re no fucking father of mine.” My hands made fists at my sides. “You don’t give a shit about me. You never have. You think you’re the only one who hurt when she died?”
The silence in the lawn only lasted a few seconds before my anger kept on.
“We had no one. We thought you hated us! We still think you hate us! And now, after I’ve given blood, sweat, and fucking tears to this company, after I’ve given you everything I had, I finally have the chance to be happy! I tried to see the good in you. I tried so fucking hard to justify giving my life over to your goddamn enterprise. There’s no good left in you!”
My father stared at me. He didn’t say anything, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d killed him with my anger, and he’d died standing straight up.
“You’ll never have the company,” he said. He sounded scared.
“You can keep it,” I seethed. “I have no need for an enterprise built on racist shit from an asshole who couldn’t even care about his own kids. I quit, you bastard.”
I left, then, before I could do anything stupid. I got in my car, forced it in reverse, and drove it home. I expected to hit something. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to get in a fight. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel this genuinely angry in years, maybe ever, and all I could think of was how much worse Briella must feel.
It was all my fault, really. I’d insisted that she come down and meet him, hadn’t I? Even if I offered her a way out, the pressure had been mine from the start, and now she’d been insulted by a piece of shit that wasn’t worth my time.
I’d just quit my job. Perhaps I still needed to file a formal resignation with HR, but I’d essentially, finally, quit my job. I’d never expected to do that. I’d expected to work that very job until the day that I died, and everything else that happened in my life happened for that company. Mason Investment was the only thing that I cared about, the only thing I needed to see grow.
Briella was the only thing that I cared about now. When I got home, I threw the door open, eager to make amends with her and assure her that this was my fault and that I’d fixed it.
But she wasn’t there.
I called her name to no answer. I called her phone, and heard nothing. I ran upstairs to see if maybe she was tucked away in the bathroom or taking a shower. When I walked into her room, I saw a note sitting on the dresser. Dread filled my stomach as I read the note.
Dear Dexter,
I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t want to make this harder than it already was. I don’t belong here. I don’t know if I ever could. I’m going back to Houston—it’s where I belong. I shouldn’t have ever believed otherwise. I’m sorry for dragging you into this.
Love,
Briella.
I didn’t have time to process this emotionally. I turned off the entire conversation that I’d just had with my father, shoved it down into my stomach to deal with later, and got back in my car. If I lost Briella now, there was nothing I could do. I would be out of a job, out of a life, and without anything to keep me going. I would be like Tyler, wandering from place to place in search of some kind of belonging.
Tyler had been right about Dad. He wasn’t right about the life he had to lead. I knew that I could salvage this. I nearly wrecked my car parking it at the airport and shoved cash at the attendant who asked me to pay the fee.
I had no time for careful counting. I started jogging past the thick clog of people standing around in suitcases, pausing only to look at where the terminal was. I could still catch her.
I was stopped by security.
“You can’t go past here without going through security, and you’ll need a boarding pass,” the guard said.
I cursed under my breath and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her. Briella was setting her shoes down into a tub, getting ready to go through security.
“Briella!” I called her name across the airport. People were staring at me; I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.
Briella stared at me, too, eyes wide like she was frightened. I didn’t want to frighten her. I didn’t want to do her any more damage than I already had. But instead of rushing through security where I couldn’t reach her, she pulled out of line, walking up to me carefully.
“Briella, I’m sorry. This was all my fault. This entire thing, this trip to Florida, my father, it’s all my fault. I should have known. I should have k
nown better. I can’t... I’m in love with you.” The apologies, the confession, it poured out of my mouth too fast for me to put back in.
She stared at me, eyes wide, lips parted like she might say something but didn’t know what. “You have the business,” she said finally, like she was reminding herself why she left.
“Fuck the business.” I shook my head urgently. “I quit. I quit, Briella. I can’t work another day in that office with that bastard. I won’t. I have enough money to get by. I don’t need him or that fucking enterprise. I don’t want to work another day for him, Briella. I want to be with you. That’s all I could ever want.”
Briella ran forward, wrapping her arms around my waist. I held her close to me, afraid that if I let go, she’d be gone forever. I loved her, and I’d never loved anyone before. I couldn’t lose her now, when everything was falling apart. Everything could fall apart so long as she was there. She was the only thing that mattered.
“What do we do?” she asked me, voice muffled against my chest.
My arms were shaking from how emotionally drained I was. “We go home.”
Epilogue
“Could you have my assistant close up the office building? Thank you.” I finished up with the secretary on my way into my house. Things were certainly much more hectic after two years of dating Dexter, but I’d gotten myself an office for my business, a few employees, and an assistant to boot—although the assistant was much because of my father’s concern that I would work myself to death with Bri’s Wedding Services.
My house, too, was a personal spot of pride for me. It wasn’t easy to find something that I could afford, but thankfully, I had Dexter with me. It was a step down from what he was used to and a step up from what I was used to—granted, he stayed in his own house a good amount of the time, but he stayed at mine, too, more often than my father would probably like.
I could smell something in the kitchen, and I knew Dexter must be cooking. I walked in and saw him chopping something up at the counter. “Hey, honey!”
