Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
I did an excellent job with that for many years, but now the ice around my heart has melted and I’m drowning in a flood of emotion. I’ve been knocked off my feet by regret and I’m choking on my own misery, but no one’s interested in administering CPR.
And who can blame them?
I’m the first to reach for the check after a business dinner or to offer my home in The Hamptons to a friend for free, but my generosity doesn’t extend to anything beyond material things. When it comes to vulnerability and intimacy, I’ve been a miser, a Scrooge who’s only realized how desperately he wants to love and be loved now that it’s too late.
It is too late. I don’t want to be with anyone else. Sully is the only one for me. Imagining loving someone else the way I love her makes me physically ill. And I only had a little over a week with her. Eight fucking days. It’s not nearly enough. I want a hundred more, a thousand. I want the rest of my life. I want to start watching what I eat and exercising even more than I do already so I can stay alive as long as possible and never leave my girl alone.
I suck in a breath, fighting the tears still burning the edges of my eyes.
I won’t cry. I don’t deserve to, not when this is all my fault. I should have been honest with Sully from the beginning. I should have confessed my sins so she couldn’t find them out from anyone else. Though, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Half the gossip she’d heard wasn’t even true, but she was still ready to believe it, because it came from a family member.
No matter how hard I loved her, or how long we were together, that might have always been the case. Even if we’d been together for years, she still would have known them years longer. They might have always had their claws in her, able to come between us with a few words.
Or not.
I suppose now, I’ll never know.
Willing myself to keep it together, I call my boss, Anthony, back in New York. I wouldn’t normally call a colleague on a Sunday, but Anthony and I are friends as well. And he’ll want to know that I’m going to be back in the office on Tuesday, sooner than later. We have a big meeting I was planning to attend via Zoom, but being there in person will spare the tech team the trouble of setting up a monitor.
He answers on the second ring, a smile in his voice as he asks, “Small-town life driven you to drink yet?”
“No, it’s driven me away,” I say, my tone flat, but even. “I’m flying back tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be in the office for the meeting on Tuesday.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Glad to hear it. But if you need to go back afterward, I get it. I know estates as large as your brother’s can be complicated to manage.”
“I’ll manage it from the city. I can’t come back here.”
He makes a considering sound. “Why not? What happened? Your family melting down from the stress?”
“Something like that.”
He grunts. “You know you can share personal details of your life with me, Weaver. I may be your boss, but I consider us friends. And losing a relative is big deal. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
And even though I’ve brushed off similar offers from Anthony half a dozen times, I suddenly find myself spilling everything. From the fight with my family over the will, to the tragedy of my brother’s wasted life, to the drama with the illegal seafood empire, to the amazing woman I met and how I fucked it all up before I even met her, by being an angry young man who didn’t know how to manage the rage inside him.
When I’m done, I’m not crying, but my voice is wobbling enough that I have to pause and take a breath as I fight to regain control.
I’m a little worried about what Anthony’s going to say, to think about his most stoic employee having an emotional outburst over the phone.
But I should have known better. Anthony is a former child math prodigy—one of the reason’s he’s leading a giant financial firm at the tender age of thirty-nine—but he’s also amazing at reading people.
He probably guessed I had this in me all along, a hunch that proves correct when he says, “Well, I figured you had family issues or you wouldn’t be buttoned up so tight. But fuck… That’s rough, Weaver. And the woman, she sounds great, but maybe she’s just too young. An older woman might understand that we all make mistakes in our youth, but people really do grow and change in amazing ways. You’re not that person anymore. I can attest to that. I’ve never seen you lose your cool, not even with Cranston, and he’d try the patience of a saint.”