“Definitely not, but I’m more interested in hearing about this plan of yours. You’re really thinking about escaping?”
“I have a job lined up in New York and everything. Honestly, I don’t care about what’s right, or what’s done, or what my family says, I’m doing this.”
“Good for you,” I said, and I meant it completely. “If you want, I’m happy for us to fake that we’re dating while you do whatever else still needs to be done before you can execute this plan of yours.”
“Thanks. Can I let you know if it comes to that? My boyfriend is a teacher at a public school in Brooklyn. The job I’ve got lined up is there too, but it turns out that uprooting an entire life lived in one city and moving it to another is a little more complicated than I thought.”
“Brooklyn, huh?” I nodded. “I admire the fact that you’re packing up your life and moving all the way there without anyone’s knowledge or permission.”
She shrugged. “What can I say? I love him. You and I might not need each other, but I do need him. Fuck my inheritance and anything else that my family tries using to control me. If everyone else can make their own way in this world when they have to start from the bottom, then so can I.”
“That’s…” I trailed off. Everything she’d been saying hit home so directly that I felt a little off kilter. “Fuck. You might’ve just inspired me.”
“Happy to be of service.” She took another sip of her wine and then cocked her head. “What about you, Theo Westwood, last eligible bachelor of the Westwood tribe? Who’s the unsuitable, but undoubtedly lucky lady, who’s stolen your heart?”
“Raquel.” I said her name out loud for the first time in a month, and it fucking hurt so bad that I almost flinched. “She’s from a small town in Arizona. I took a trip on my bike recently and ended up stuck there for a while, but you know how it goes. One minute, I was happy, living my life with the woman of my dreams, and the next, I was harshly reminded that duty was calling.”
She widened her eyes. “Boy, do I know how that goes. You love her?”
“More than I ever thought it was possible to love another person.”
“Then you should take a risk too,” she said as if it really was that simple. “We’re not getting any younger.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’d be detonating decades of family tradition. Hell, I think it might even be more like centuries.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “If you love her, you should go get her. I know the Thurstons aren’t the Westwoods, but I’m detonating at least two generations of family tradition myself.I’m supposed to take over our company next year. You don’t see that stopping me.”
I stared at her, struck completely dumb for a long moment. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s because it doesn’t matter, Theo. You’ll regret it forever if you let her go. Westwood and Sons will survive without you. You know that. Just like I know Thurston Security Solutions will survive without me. Companies come and go. As enduring as yours and ours have been, they’re not meant to be prisons. So get back out there to your small town and start your own.”
“I really wish it was as easy as just hopping on a plane back to Arizona and opening up shop.”
“Itisthat easy, whether you want to see it that way or not,” she said. “What are you waiting for? Permission to be yourself? Consent to love who you want to love?”
I groaned. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“When you’re eighty years old looking back on your life, will you think back to this moment and regret not just grabbing your balls and going for it, or will you think back on it and realize that you’re damn glad you came to dinner tonight?”
As I stared back at her, I realized that this was the slap in the face I’d needed to wake up and remember who I was. The often-forgotten youngest brother who was an adventurer, a dreamer, and the idiot who’d bought a motorcycle because he’d always been restless.
Maybe it was time to stop following in the footsteps of a family who wasn’t quite like me. Maybe I hadn’t ever known where I belonged in W&S because I didn’t belong in that tower at all.
Maybe it was my time to shine for exactly who I was, in exactly the unexpected place where I’d found that sense of belonging I’d been missing all along.
CHAPTER 40
RAQUEL
Iwasn’t surprised by the blacked-out SUV pulling into my driveway. I’d seen enough movies to know men like Colin probably hadn’t ever seen the interior of a Ford or Chevy truck. At least, those of them who weren’t pretending to be middle class like Theo.
The SUV rolled to a stop beside my half-disassembled work van, the driver’s door opening a moment later. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it sure as hell wasn’t the man who climbed out, looking like he belonged on the cover of a finance magazine.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen someone so well dressed in real life. Just his sunglasses probably cost more than my annual grocery bill and his shoes didn’t look like they’d ever seen a grain of dust before today. The suit he had on fit his tall, swimmer’s frame like it’d been sewed directly onto his body and somehow even his tie seemed fancy.
I mean, he’s wearing a tie on an old horse farm outside of Quartz Pass, and he didn’t come here for a funeral. That, by itself, makes it fancy.
As he emerged from behind the door of the SUV, he looked around for a beat, probably taking in the old barn, the Airstream,and stack of lumber stacked underneath a faded green tarp, but then he spotted me and perked up immediately.
