I had no excuse. Not anymore. Over the last week, I’d sat by that river every day that the weather allowed. Sometimes at the pump site and sometimes by our swimming hole.Ourswimming hole?Oh boy.I’d even glimpsed Boris gliding in the depths.
It was a peace I’d never encountered before. Until the cottage, I’d rarely been alone with my thoughts. I tended to fill quiet times with gaming or work or Judd. My world consisted of computers, software, and my company. Judd was the man who filled any time spent away from a screen. Hardly romantic when I thought about it. Even less, the basis for long-term happiness, and the realisation didn’t sit comfortably.
Had I used Judd to avoid facing my own loneliness? Even with Judd around, I’d still felt alone. That wasn’t love, I didn’t think. And it definitely wasn’t fair to him.
Emotionally unavailable,he’d called me, and I almost laughed, because shit, maybe I had been. I’d been emotionally unavailable to myself, after all. I’d been unwilling to admit a lot of shit in case I had to do something about it. It didn’t excuse what Judd had done, but it revealed some uncomfortable truths. Truths I needed to address.
In three weeks, I’d come to love the cottage and the land it was built on. To love the way Ryder’s eyes lit up when he walked in his garden. To love the ruru, that damn ghost dog, the blackbirds, the chickens, and even fucking Boris—as long as he kept his distance. I loved all of it. I hadn’t been lonely or empty. I’d felt alive in ways I hadn’t ever felt. And I felt truly responsible for my life for maybe the first time.
So, no. The decision I faced hadn’t been about Ryder for a long time. It was about me. It had only ever been about me. And I’d been running away from it... again.
I threw the tea towels in the laundry hamper and stared at the calendar fixed to Ryder’s fridge. He’d circled in red the date the stones needed to be moved; the date of the open council meeting in three weeks, when public submissions would be heard regarding the data storage development; and the January date when a hearing would decide the fate of Ryder’s lease. I stared at that last one for a long, long time. The thought of Ryder losing Heligan Cottage was almost too painful to consider.
I took a deep breath, fetched my laptop from the chair in our—Ryder’sbedroom, and opened the bifold doors so I could hear the rain hammering on the iron roof over the deck. Then I sat sideways on the sofa with the laptop open on my stomach, and Ziggy curled at my feet.
It was time to put up or shut up. And with that in mind, the first thing I did was ignore the urge to call my mother, or anyone for that matter. This had to be my decision.
The second thing I did was call my lawyer. I instructed him to send Phillip a contract by the end of the day with the amount required to buy me out of the company. At that, the phone went silent. Eventually, Hank’s strangled voice asked me to please explain, which I did, trying not to sound like I’d had some hippie-like epiphany, even if my reasoning still sounded weak and a little nuts.
Understandably, Hank wasn’t impressed. He gave the kind of frustrated sigh that he saved for his most vexing clients and said, “Am I to understand that you’re giving Phillip the opportunity to buy you out of the company you started from nothing, and of which you’ve been extremely proud, at a price well below its worth? Thesameextraordinarily successfulcompany that’s been earning you a substantial amount of money. And you want me to offer this plum opportunity to the man with whom your boyfriend cheated on you? Is that the gist of it?”
I smiled, thankful that Hank couldn’t see me and that I couldn’t see how close he was to losing his shit. “Since you put it that way, the answer is yes.”
The long silence that followed almost made me reconsider if I was doing the right thing. Almost. But I wasn’t the same man who’d gone to sleep in a chicken shed almost three weeks before. I’d faced down a bulldozer, fronted up to a truck driver itching for a fight, and fallen for an extraordinary man whose opinion of me truly mattered. I no longer cared what Phillip thought or did. And even less about Judd. As long as they were out of my life, I didn’t give a flying fuck.
“Look, Hank.” I tried to put him out of his misery. “I know you think this is crazy, but I’ve done a lot of thinking these past weeks, and I came to the conclusion that I don’t want thecompany to keep moving in the same direction. I want to do something different, radically different?—”
“You mean risky, slightly woo-hoo, eco-sustainable, carbon-neutral renewable shit, right? Those are the buzz words of the moment, after all.”
My head fell back and I counted to ten. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“Notbad,” he said more softly. “Just not... economically reliable.”
Nothing like having your own fears and concerns thrown right back at you. “I do know that,” I tried to reassure both of us. “And I don’t know exactly what my next move will be, but yes, maybe something to do with alternative fuel or food security or crop management... I don’t know... just so long as it doesn’t fuck the world up more than I found it.”
He sighed and said somewhat defeatedly, “So what you’re really saying is that you want to be part of the solution, not the problem.”
“Exactly!” I agreed excitedly. “And as you alluded to, I have enough of a financial cushion to take some time deciding how that will look. But whatever it turns out to be, it will be a huge turnaround from what the company is doing now. That’s confusing for clients, and so it’s simpler to let Phillip take control of T.G. Inc., and I’ll start a new company if I need to. I did it once. I can do it again. The industry knows me, and I have to believe my name means something there.”
After another excruciating silence, Hank sighed. “Okay. Fine. I’ll have the contract on Phillip’s desk by this afternoon. What will you do if he doesn’t accept?”
I’d thought about that. “I’ll sell my share to someone else, or we’ll close the company altogether. I won’t be buying him out,” I said firmly. “The thought of that makes me feel sick. I’d ratherhave the proceeds from a sale to move on with, but I’ll cope without. It won’t change my mind.”
Hank grumbled his reluctant agreement, and we threw around some figures before deciding on a number Hank could live with. That done, I hung up and left him to it. Next on my mental list was to call my mother and tell her I’d be back Monday. She bit back, angrily, telling me she didn’t care what I did since I clearly didn’t care about her feelings.
Oh boy.
She accused me of lying to her about where I was, simply to fob her off. I could hardly disagree since she was right, by omission, at least. She was clearly spoiling for a fight, and I couldn’t really blame her. I was acting well out of character, and I’d sidelined her during a crisis point in my life. No surprise that she didn’t like it. The conversation we needed to have wasn’t going to be easy.
My offer to come visit as soon as I could helped take the wind out of her sails, and the call ended almost cordially. It was an amicable state I knew wouldn’t last long once I told her of my plans to sell the company. Just the thought sent a cold shiver up my spine, and I wondered if Ryder would consider coming with me for that—if he was still talking to me, that was.
Which brought me to my next dilemma. How to confess everything to Ryder without losing him altogether? About the company, the software proposal, and the changes I was making because of what I’d learned about myself. But most of all, about how much I really,reallyliked him. And about how I wanted to see where this thing between us might go.
I slid my laptop to the side and scooped Ziggy into my arms, cradling him like a baby. “Got any advice for me, oh great one?”
Ziggy blinked and kicked his back legs until I started scratching his belly. A few seconds later, he was asleep. I snortedand pressed a kiss to his tiny nose. “Good talk. Thanks for nothing.”
Knowing that my confession needed to happen as soon as Ryder got home—before I chickened out and before this thing between us went any further—I spent the remainder of the day distracting myself with chores. I did three loads of laundry, vacuumed, dusted, changed the bed linen, cleaned the bathrooms, fed the chickens while keeping Myrtle and Ziggy in their respective corners, and checked the ventilation system in the glasshouse. My mother would be proud.
