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“Fuck.” He dropped his chin and gave a sigh. “You’re something else, you know that? Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
A knowing smile moved across his lips. “Nothing.”
“If we aren’t going to fuck, I need to get back to work.” I opened the laptop again.
“If you were over him, you wouldn’t be so averse to a relationship.”
My eyes lifted back to his. “Then why don’t you help me get over him?”
He didn’t smile this time. “I’m serious.”
“Theo, why do you care?” We’d met each other barely two weeks ago, had no foundation for anything more meaningful than physical attraction. He was the Skull King, for fuck’s sake. Why did he care about my emotional availability?
He looked away again to stare at the rain. His heavy body leaned to one side in the chair, and it was so quiet in the house that the rain was audible against all the windows. Headlights appeared for a brief moment as someone else pulled onto the grounds, probably my father since he’d had a meeting at the Four Seasons for lunch. But Theo continued to stare, the silence trickling by. “I just do.”
I had to check the numbers several times, because the total had to be incorrect. But I pulled the numbers again from all the books and entered them into a brand-new spreadsheet just to have a fresh start.
But the numbers were the same.
My father walked into the office, dressed in his gym clothes with sweat stains around his neck and underneath his arms. He seemed to have gotten a late start that morning and hit the gym later than he normally did. I wasn’t sure what had kept him up so late last night, but I didn’t ask in case I intruded on something private.
“Dad, I checked these numbers like fifty times, and I think they’re right.”
“Good or bad?”
“Good…definitely good.” I printed out the sheet and handed it to him.
He dropped into the armchair and looked through the columns.
“We’re making ten times what we were before.”
When he lifted his head to look at me, he wore a wide grin. “I told you Theo was better.” He tapped his fingers against the paper before he returned it to the desk. “The man gets it done. No one dares oppose him because they’re scared he’ll snap their neck.”
I didn’t get that impression from Theo. He wouldn’t even hook up with me because he thought I was still hung up on Axel…when I wasn’t. Why would I still have feelings for someone who’d treated me like that? I had far too much self-respect. “He seems harmless to me.”
“Because he’s a gentleman,” Dad said. “And that’s why I like him.” He rose from the chair and headed to the doorway. “I’m going to shower. We should have dinner to celebrate.”
“Sure, Dad.”
“You can pick the place.”
“How are things going with Theo?” my father asked, eating a salad as usual.
“Um, I don’t know. It’s not really going…”
“Why not?” he asked, pausing his meal to focus on me.
I couldn’t tell my father all the details. That would just be awkward. “He’s very reserved.”
“He’s just a quiet guy, sweetheart. Men like that don’t talk much.”
“And he’s really stiff.”
“Again, that just comes with the territory.”
Axel came from the same world, and he’d never been stiff. He was always forward and direct, easy to talk to, serious at the right time, and unserious at the right time. With Theo, it felt as if I was on a date with a stone statue.
“Give him a chance.”
“Why do you like him so much?”
He immediately looked down at his food as his fork pushed things around. “He’s an admirable man. Has accomplished more than I have, and he’s at least a decade younger. He’s good-looking.”
He was definitely good-looking…
“If you don’t like him, it’s fine. But I think you’re missing an opportunity here.”
Maybe I was being too callous toward Theo. Instead of having things my way, maybe I needed to take things slow like Theo suggested. I already viewed the situation as a pit stop, and maybe that was offensive to him. “I’ll give him another shot.”
My dad immediately perked up. “I think that’s a great idea, sweetheart.”
I was on the couch in front of the TV, the rain still tapping endlessly against the windows. Sometimes there was a gust of wind, and that made the sound so intense I couldn’t hear the TV for a few seconds. I missed the summer season, the longer hours of daylight, the warmth that stretched late into the evenings. But I knew I wouldn’t mind winter if I could share it with a man who kept me warm, who made the evenings cozy rather than lonely. When those thoughts hit me, I thought of Axel…and I didn’t know why.
Maybe it was because I didn’t get any closure. I never actually confronted him about what happened. I took the high road instead and ignored him, but when he didn’t even notice that I’d ghosted him, that seemed to hurt more.
