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“It’s ok to admit we made a mistake. I’ll see you at one of our reunions and we can laugh about this. I haven’t told anyone. No one would ever know. They don’t need to. A secret between old friends.”
“You think I want out?”
“Don’t you? You said yourself you aren’t husband material. I get it. Sasha is waiting for you. Real life is more important than what we concocted together in the wine cellar. We were beyond drunk.”
I shook my head. “What does this have to do with Sasha?”
“Why else would a beautiful woman keep calling you? I can’t be mad that you weren’t completely honest with me last night. I refuse to turn this into more than what it was. Ok? I can handle it, Jer. You’re in a relationship with her. I’m not angry.”
“Sasha isn’t waiting for me like that.” I exhaled, crossing my arms.
“I saw her picture every time she called. I looked down from brushing my teeth and there she was. She looks like a Russian supermodel. I’m not as naïve as you think I am. I’ve traveled enough to understand what happens with—with men and sex. I haven’t been out of Newton Hills in three years, but still. I’m not an idiot. Last night I was the answer to your crisis. Today, you can find a better solution. Something that makes sense. I don’t. I probably never did.”
I had to stop the train from going off the tracks. Evie was my answer in every way. She made sense to me.
As usual, I had figured out a way to fuck up everything. Even a fake marriage.
“Sit.” I pointed to the café chair in front of the balcony. It’s probably where we should have eaten breakfast instead of on the bedroom floor.
Evie clasped the fluffy spa robe labeled Mrs. to her chest. I could smell her citrus lotion.
“I’m serious.” She looked at me. “I don’t want anything from you. Let’s call this what it is. An amazing night.” She smiled sweetly. “Very. Good. Sex.”
“I want you to listen to what I have to say.”
“Fine, but I know I’m right about this.”
“You said something in the shower that pissed me off.”
“I wasn’t thinking about what you had just gone through. It was really insensitive.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” I reached for the room service cart and poured us two fresh cups of coffee. We needed them. This wasn’t going to be a short conversation.
“It pissed me off because it’s true.” I shrugged. “Because my father was never willing to face his own mortality. Because he thought he could control my life and force me into something I didn’t want. And for what? Money? Power?” I shook my head. “Where the Hartwells are concerned, those two are the same thing. You can’t have one without the other. And he proved that time and again. Yesterday it fucking punched me in the face. Money means more than family. Wasn’t that the message in his will? Money is the reward for breeding?”
“Then don’t fall into that trap. You don’t need the money to be happy. Don’t go through with it.”
I chuckled. She was naïve and sweet, even though she thought she had earned herself some street smarts on her trip to L.A.
“My father worked every day of his life. He never took vacations unless it could be rolled into a business trip. He constantly bargained and bartered. He made deals and brokered acquisitions. His empire grew. The money grew. And I never saw him.
“Do you know how many of my baseball games he came to?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“This many.” I held up two fingers. “One in high school when the scholarship recruit attended, and the first night I pitched in the majors. Those were both out of necessity because he was told the media would want to interview him. You know, get the story from the proud parents.”
“Jer, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
I hung my head. “Well, that was my old man. A selfish asshole. So do you kind of see why I’m not the best candidate to be a father?”
“But you don’t have to do what he did. You can change all of that. I don’t believe our paths are pre-determined. You can do something completely different than your father.”
“And I’m going to.”
She cocked her head to the side. The sunlight caught the tips of her eyelashes. “How?”
“By letting someone who is loving and kind raise my child the way I wasn’t raised. By giving him an actual chance to grow up and not be screwed from the beginning.”
