The Consequence of Falling: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  “I haven’t even finished my first.” Victor rolled his eyes.

  Nathaniel chuckled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nicole.”

  “Got my wallet, got the tickets, finished the call I was on, so I’m ready to go. Is everyone here?” Dad came back into the kitchen, smiling when he saw Nicole. “Nic, so great to see you.”

  “Likewise. I love your place. It suits you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Speaking of, where are you living, Pres?” She looked at me.

  “Downstairs.” I laughed at the confusion on her face. “Like seriously, the floor beneath this one.”

  “Fancy,” Nathaniel said.

  “I would love to see your place, Mr. Hot Shot.”

  His expression darkened. “You’re always invited.”

  My heart did a little flip. I looked away, because what the hell? We were in front of people. He shouldn’t have said that. I walked toward the door and mentally slapped myself as a reminder that I hated him. He shouldn’t be making my heart flip like this.

  * * *

  We were sitting in the second row, behind home plate, which wasn’t my dad’s preference, but it was the only thing I could pull together for this many people on such short notice. It wasn’t the ideal situation for me either, with Nathaniel on one side of me and my father on the other. Victor and Nicole, unfortunately, were sitting on the other side of Dad, so I couldn’t really avoid conversation with Nathaniel.

  “So, Dad mentioned you have plans for the company,” I said, hoping he’d take over the conversation.

  “I do, but I need to run some things by you.”

  “You’re going to run things by me?” I placed a hand on my chest. “Well, damn. Color me surprised.”

  “You’re impossible, princess,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. He looked at the game again.

  “When are you going to stop calling me that?”

  “When you stop acting like the world owes you something.”

  I glared at him. He gave me a passive stare, but I swear I felt that look all the way to my bones.

  “Oh, come on, ump!”

  I jumped at Dad’s shout and focused on the game again.

  “So how has this ballpark chasing adventure you’ve been going on been?” Nathaniel asked taking a sip of his beer. I picked mine up from the cupholder and took a sip.

  “Well, we’ve only been to a couple of games so far and you’re sitting in one of them, so I’m not sure.”

  “I would apologize for coming along, but I’m not sorry.” His eyes twinkled when he said those words. I forced myself to look away. “So, you scouting parks we can sell our beer to?”

  Our beer. I took a deep breath and let it go. “Do you think I should? I think White Oak is in most parks now.”

  “Not most.” He tilted his head. “It’s in fifteen of the baseball stadiums. We need to get the other half.”

  It was hard to believe it wasn’t everywhere already. I reminded myself that even though my grandfather started the company, it was practically brand new in comparison to others out there. As far as beers go, White Oak was a baby, and up until recently there was a monopoly with the larger beer breweries that made it difficult for Dad to get his foot in, even though he did it anyway.

  “Okay, so how do we do it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “We speak to the person in charge of sponsorships and try to get in through them,” he said, shooting me a sly smile. “Don’t worry, I have someone on it. You can just sit back and enjoy the game.”

  “But . . .” That made me frown. I turned my attention toward my dad. “If it’s that easy wouldn’t you have tried, Dad?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think I needed to give them money for them to sell my beer. I’m already giving them a cut of my product, so why should I have to pay?”

  “Because we have to play their game,” Nathaniel said.

  “You weren’t playing the tobacco industries’ game when you came up with your vape thing,” Dad countered.

  “Those were different circumstances. We had a product that people wanted and got bought-out fairly early into the game.” He shrugged. “I know people are quick to give me all the credit for it, but the truth is, I got lucky.”

  “You call making a billion-dollar product getting lucky?” I laughed. “You worked like hell all through college to get it right. I hardly call that luck.”

  “Surprised you noticed,” he said.

  The way he was looking at me when he said it made me think that he was noticing whether or not I noticed what he was doing. I licked my lips. His eyes clocked that. We were sitting too close for this conversation, for the way he made me feel, like I was missing air, when he looked at me. I cleared my throat, lifting my beer to my lips, needing something to quench the sudden dryness in my mouth.

  “I guess I was good at pretending not to notice.”

  He smiled with his eyes, the way he often did, the lines around them pleating into smiles of their own. I told myself the beer was the reason for the warmth I felt spread through me, but I knew I was lying. I knew it was him.

  Fourteen

  We’d invested in a space that wouldn’t need too much work. Dad sent eight containers of beer to brew here and the process had started long before anything else was in place, so in essence I was trying to turn a brewery into a family friendly bar. It really wasn’t that difficult, or it wouldn’t have been that difficult if the contractors working on it wouldn’t have been so unreliable. My phone vibrated on the table and I swiped to take the call from my dad.

  “Hey.”

  “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound like a good hey.”

  “It’s not.” I sighed, feeling like I was on the verge of tears. “Nothing is going right. The wood they installed isn’t the right one, the tealights they were supposed to cross throughout the yard are colorful instead of white, the beer taps haven’t been installed, the heater won’t turn on, and I just . . . I’m overwhelmed, and I can’t seem to do anything right.”

  I’d tried to stay calm throughout my recount, but the tears streamed down my face nonetheless. Maybe I was due for a good cry anyway. Everything in my life was falling apart. Everything. I’d tried to meticulously hide it for so long—my failed marriage, my father’s ailing health, my inability to run a business the way it was supposed to run because I had zero experience in this setting, yet here I was, faking it until I made it work. The issue with real life was that you could fake it until money was involved. Once you were playing Monopoly with actual currency, all bets were off. I needed to get this right and I needed to do it fast.

  “Presley,” Dad said, his voice fighting with the static of the phone line. “Take a deep br . . . Every . . .”

  “Dad, you’re cutting off.”

  “I called because . . .”

  I slapped the table and stood up, wiping my face as I walked toward the door. The reception in this place was shit. That was another thing we needed to work on. I unlocked the door and opened it, gasping when I saw Nathaniel standing on the other side. He glanced up from the phone in his hand, took one look at my face, and frowned. My heart thumped loudly in my ears, and then I remembered I’d been crying and probably looked like a mess.

  “Dad, I have to go.” I hung up and slid it into my back pocket, keeping my eyes on Nathaniel. “What are you doing here?”

  “What’s wrong?” He was still frowning.

  “Nothing is wrong. Why would anything be wrong?”

  “Is it Adam?” His jaw ticked as he asked the question.

  “What?” I crossed my arms. It was a defensive stance, but in this moment it felt more like comfort. I stepped back, allowing him to come inside. “No.”

  He was quiet as I turned around and faced the mess in front of me. “I came by to see the progress,” he said. “Will we still be ready to open in a few weeks?”

  I felt the mixture of panic and defeat rise inside me once more, and again I couldn’t stop the tears f
rom falling. I never once cried in front of Adam, not when he’d shouted at me in frustration of a poor reception after one of his fundraising events, not when I’d found an exchange of dirty text messages between him and his assistant, or got proof from the private investigator I’d hired to confirm his affair with his campaign manager. I hadn’t cried when I’d made the motion to file for divorce, or when I’d moved my things out of our shared apartment in SoHo. I refused to let him see my tears, refused to let him see any weakness from me. Nathaniel had seen me on my worst days though, so I allowed my weakness to be visible, ignoring that he might use it against me, because I knew he wouldn’t.

  “Everything is wrong,” I managed to whisper.

  I still hadn’t faced him. I’d allowed him to know I was crying and I was okay with that, but actually looking at him was another story all together. I heard his heavy exhale behind me, and his footsteps as he came around to stand in front of me. He brought both his hands up and cupped my face, pressing his thumbs to wipe my cheeks as he brought my gaze to his. He was blurry through my tears, but somehow I saw his empathy. He should hate me as much as I hated him. He should laugh at my tears and at my obvious failure. Instead, he held my head high before dropping his hands.

  “You’re not going to make fun of me?” I blinked, trying to stop fresh tears from coming, and failing at that as well.

  “Why would I?”

  “Because it’s what you do.” I swallowed, pushing past the painful knot in my throat. “It’s what you always do.”

  “I don’t poke fun of you out of spite, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

  His lip twitched. “Why don’t you wash your face and then we can talk about what’s going on?”

  I nodded, swallowing as I pulled away from him. He was standing too close and I was feeling too vulnerable and as much as I wanted to push myself onto him, I didn’t want to make past mistakes and be pushed away . . . again. Something flickered in his eyes, something that made me think maybe he wouldn’t push me away this time, but then I remembered this was Nathaniel. He didn’t like me. Not like that. I took a deep breath and walked past him. I went into the bathroom and did as I was told, washing my face and drying it. When I looked in the mirror, I could barely recognize myself, but I walked out of there and headed toward the mini fridge I’d installed, and pulled out two bottles of water. He was sitting in one of the long picnic-style tables when I got to the main room. I handed him a water as I took the seat across from him.

  “I can get you a beer if you want,” I offered.

  “I’m fine with this.” He opened the bottle and took a sip. “Now, tell me what’s going on here.”

  For the next ten minutes, I went through everything I’d told my father over the phone. The entire time, as I ticked off points, Nathaniel looked around the brewery, mentally clocking each thing. When I finished, he stared at me for a long, silent moment. I didn’t dare speak up. He wasn’t staring at me because he was waiting for me to talk, but because he was thinking. He did that often—focused on one thing in front of him as his mind ran off into his thoughts.

  “The lights outside is an easy fix,” he said, finally. “I can do it myself.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I can.” He shrugged. “Because it’ll help you and we wouldn’t have to waste time hiring people who may get it wrong again.”

  “What about the floors?”

  He glanced at the hardwoods they’d installed. “It looks fine to me.”

  “It was supposed to be rustic.”

  “Give it time. When people start coming in here and dropping their keys on it and denting it, it’ll look rustic enough.” He chuckled at my expression. “Personally, I would’ve chosen different flooring, but it’ll do.”

  “The beer taps are a mess right now.” I looked over my shoulder to where they were on the bar.

  “I can install those.”

  My head whipped around again. “You can’t be in here fixing everything. Don’t you have things do to?”

  “I do actually.” He looked around again. “But this is important. I need this to open on time and you’re in over your head.”

  “I can get it done.”

  He shot me a look. “You were crying when I got here. You’re obviously overwhelmed.”

  “I’m not . . . that’s not . . .” I stopped talking and tore my attention from him to look around the brewery. I couldn’t exactly lie to him after he’d seen the state I was in when he got here. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “So let me help. I have to be in here anyway.”

  My gaze shot to his. “What do you mean?”

  “I want to try to fuse alcohol with one of our beers, but in order to do that, I have to be here during fermentation.”

  I felt my brows pull together. “Why don’t you just let the head brewer handle that?”

  “I will, eventually,” he continued, not fazed by my weighted stare. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

  “You can’t possibly do everything yourself,” I scoffed. He continued to look at me wordlessly and I knew my statement was wrong. “How do you find the time?”

  “I make time.” He watched me closely. “When you want something bad enough, you make time for it.”

  The words pierced my chest. It was a foreign concept to me. When I was young, my parents were too focused on their own dreams to make time to teach me to cultivate mine. When I was married, my husband was too caught up in his political career to glance my way for too long. I’d never even really noticed it until this moment, with Nathaniel sitting across from me, watching me like he was waiting for my reaction to what he’d said. I wasn’t even sure what reaction to give him. Which one did he want? Did he want me to agree with him or tell him I understood? I didn’t and couldn’t. It was something I still needed to learn. But how? For so long, I’ve only made time for what everyone else wanted. Or so I’d thought. But Nathaniel thinks I’m selfish and conceited, that I never look past my own issues.

  The silence between us seemed to stretch longer than I normally allowed, because normally I would’ve thought of a snappy comment to say to him, but not anymore. I was tired of snapping and if I was being completely honest with myself, I was sad, and when I felt like this the only thing I wanted to do was crawl under a blanket and sleep. Let the time pass me by and ignore my worries. Of course, I didn’t have that luxury anymore. I’d promised my dad and myself that I’d have this space ready by the end of the month, and I’d make good on that promise even if it meant accepting Nathaniel’s help. I put my elbows on the table and rested my chin on my hand. I was also tired of fighting.

  “I’d really appreciate your help.”

  “Damn, princess.” He raised an eyebrow. “Who knew you had it in you to be nice?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You always fucking ruin it.”

  His chuckle echoed in the empty space, and inside of me somehow. A reminder that I wasn’t as hollow as I sometimes felt.

  Fifteen

  “I heard Nathaniel’s helping out in the brewery.”

  I coughed around the kernels of popcorn I’d just shoved in my mouth. It wasn’t an accusation, but a matter of fact statement, and I think that bothered me more than if it had been an accusation. It meant he’d expected I’d need help. It meant he didn’t trust I’d do it alone to begin with, and he was glad a man had stepped up to take on the challenge. I grabbed the water bottle and took a large gulp of it, hoping to get rid of the poor taste left in my mouth. It didn’t work. I glanced at Dad, who was watching the baseball game intently. We were in Safeco Field today, and the Mariners were taking on the Marlins.

  “I don’t know what he told you, but he’s not helping because I can’t get it done. He simply wanted to be a part of it.”

  “He didn’t tell me much.” He met my gaze. “I’m glad he’s helping you out.”

  I took a de
ep breath and tried to let it go, but I couldn’t. I was tired of feeling inept, and worse, letting people make me feel that way. I turned my attention to the game in hopes that if nothing else, butt watching would keep me entertained, but all I could do was replay his words and focus on the tone he’d said them in. I did this until the words felt more like shouts than I was sure he’d intended. Until the only thing I wanted to do was scream just as loud. That was the thing about my relationship with my father though. Any response felt like backtalking, and that was something I was raised not to do. Growing up, I never wanted to be rude or seem ungrateful, but sometimes it was inevitable. One thing I did learn throughout my life was that the weight of unspoken words always felt heavier than the burden of the consequences they carried. And so, I spoke.

  “You’ve never had faith in me.” I glanced at him. He met my gaze. “You’ve always thought little of me because I’m a woman. You’d rather sell your company to Nathaniel Bradley than leave it for me to be in charge of it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Enlighten me then.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “It never is. It never will be.” I shook my head and looked forward. “It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’re always going to choose him or any other man over me.” It stings. It’s yet another punch adding to the doubt-sized bruises on my heart.

  He was quiet for so long, I thought he wasn’t going to acknowledge what I’d said. He did that often, ignoring me or shrugging my emotions away. When I was young, I hated it. Now I was older, I took it for what it was—he was a man who had grown up in a time where parents ignored their children, where children were expected to know how to solve their own issues, the way they had as kids themselves. My grandparents were loving toward me, but even they admitted they’d been bad parents by today’s standards. We were a needy generation; we wanted to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. Dad’s generation wasn’t like that. They let their actions speak for them. It occurred to me, as I sat there making excuses for his aloofness toward me, that maybe he liked Nathaniel because he reminded him of himself. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that yet.