AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If there’s a way to request a certain Uber driver, I don’t know it, but I sort of wish it was Earl who was driving us to our hotel in Waikiki. Just so I could tell him he was right about everything.
My new job title is Vice President of Creative Direction. Which sounds…kind of cool.
Like he promised, Ace and I sat down with Noah and we talked through my ideas about what I thought my strengths were for the company, what my vision was for the future of my career, and a lot of other stuff that proved to me that both of them really know their shit when it comes to building and running a business. I told them I’d love to learn how to do that too.
So we wrote out a job description that covers all the things I know how to do and all the things I aspire to learn, and they created a job for me. It’s not just my dream job, it’s my fantasy job. Everything is so exciting, I can’t wait to get to work each morning just to get started.
Since I moved in with Ace the night he gave me the ruby promise ring, my commute is now with him in the back of his Maybach, driven by one of his team of round-the-clock drivers.
Ace also insisted I get my own office on his floor. It’s not huge and in fact used to be one of the smaller meeting rooms on the executive floor, but it has a corner window with a view of the Empire State Building and it’s all my own. I absolutely love it.
It’s also handy that it’s right down the hall from Ace’s office (and has a lock on the door and also a desk that’s sturdy enough to hold our weight), because he tells me he can’t go without seeing me for more than an hour.
After the meeting where Ace told everyone that we were together, Evan asked Emma if she wanted to have a drink with him after work. I can’t imagine two people having more different personalities, but the two of them have really hit it off.
She’s the bubbly sunshine to his reserved coding geek, so it’s definitely a case of opposites attract. I can’t imagine what the two of them talk about, but they’re planning a fourth date this week so it must be going well. Last time I talked to Emma, she told me he was “surprisingly well-endowed for a nerd.” I told her that was way too much information but she only squealed with jubilation at her new discovery. I’m just happy she’s happy.
Rylee Winters disappeared uneventfully—partly because Ace’s lawyers made sure of it—and the insider trading fiasco faded out almost immediately. IE’s clients and subscribers appreciated that the management had been honest and forthcoming about the incident instead of trying to hide it. If anything, the discussion around the whole thing has boosted IE’s profile.
Business has never been better.
Lacey was true to her word. I was suspicious that Ace quietly offered her a bonus to talk me up because everyone in the office has been only encouraging to me about my new role. Or maybe I’ve just finally laid my paranoia to rest. It never helped anyway. Either way, despite the fact that I jumped from a junior to a vice president in the course of under a week, everyone I work with seems to be fine with it. Especially my boss.
Lacey and I often meet for a drink in the Sky Bar after work. She told me there’s a rumor circulating that Rylee’s starting her own fund and already has a lot of interest. According to Lacey, she’s dating a Bitcoin billionaire. I wish her only the best. I was never the type to carry grudges, but Ace is thorough about making sure Rylee’s a part of our past and has nothing to do with our present or future.
With Ace’s encouragement, I did end up going to see a therapist about my “abandonment issues.” I don’t think I’ll really need to continue with it for long. It seems very straightforward to me. I told the therapist the story, we talked about it, I told her the issue had made it hard for me to trust men, but then I’d met Cash Maddox, who changed my mind. The therapist’s opinion was that I’ve been through the worst of it and I agreed.
With his love, a lot of hot sex and his relentless devotion, Ace cured me, so it would seem.
I was paid the reward of twenty thousand dollars for cracking the mystery behind Rylee’s emails. I told them they didn’t need to pay me for doing the right thing, but they insisted it was company policy.
So I gave the money to my mom. Sky doesn’t need it anymore. Her recording contract is more than enough to pay for her new loft in downtown Nashville and her new, glitzy lifestyle. She’ll be spending most of her time over the next few months on tour as the opening act for one of the biggest new bands in country-rock music, called the Hay Seeds.
Last time I talked to her she was dating the bass player, whose name is Luke. Unlike her past boyfriends, he sounds like a nice guy, with a close family and the kind of integrity you tend to hope for in a partner. He calls when he says he’s going to call. He buys her flowers. He even wrote a song about her, that’s now climbing the charts. I’ve never seen my sister happier.
Now that my mom’s house is paid off and she has money in the bank, she was able to quit both her cleaning jobs.
For the first time since my mom got pregnant with Sky when she was seventeen, she’s started painting again, something she used to dream about being able to do. She even sold a watercolor to a local gallery.
At my insistence, my mom decided to (finally) have a dishwasher installed, which meant she needed to do some minor renovations to her kitchen. The contractor who did the work for her, whose name is Jim, asked her out. He invited her to his old house by the river that he’s done up and he cooked her the best meal she’s ever had. Last time I talked to her, he’d just asked her to come again next weekend. My mom even mentioned that Jim doesn’t smoke. She didn’t need to say it for both of us to be thinking it: he’ll never need to go out for a pack of cigarettes.
This week is “creative” week at my job.
It’s company policy to work from anywhere we choose for one week out of each month. I spent the first creative week in Ace’s apartment, where we barely surfaced. I told him that some of the stuff he got creative with—in bed—might actually be illegal in some states, but he didn’t seem to mind.
That week, Ace took me to dinner at his favorite restaurant. Then his limo took us to Tiffany’s, after hours, where the staff brought out all the engagement rings they had. He told me to pick any one I wanted.
I chose two rose gold bands that were held together by a row of pink diamonds. As it turns out, it’s the ring that matches the bracelet Ace bought for me, which I now wear all the time.
Ace said I can’t have the ring just yet. He kissed me and told me he loved me, and I said it right back. But he didn’t propose to me that night. He said he had something special in mind and that it has something to do with my second creative week.
For that, I chose, of course, Waikiki. Ace said he was coming with me and he’d booked us the penthouse suite, the one where we spent our very first night together. He said he couldn’t handle a week without me, especially if I was on the beach in my leopard print bikini.
So now, as we check in to my favorite hotel in the world, it’s crazy to think that it was only four months ago that I was here the first time.
In every possible way, my life has transformed into something that needed to be conquered or overcome or endured, to something I can only be grateful for. Somehow, Earl was right. And so was Lucas.
Ace holds my hand as we walk along the beach and we find a spot for our towels. “This is where I first saw you,” he says, looking devilishly handsome in his sunglasses, swim shorts and nothing else. The man is a specimen of male perfection that I can never quite get used to. Every day, I’m amazed by him.
