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“This isn’t about Jake, Troy,” Scott said, his voice hard. “Not everything is. In fact, these days, nothing is about him anymore. You have to let that shit go.”
I was so angry, I saw red.
“If you want to let Jake go, that’s on you. I’m not going to let him slip away as if he never existed. He was ourbrother, Scott.”
“And we lost him when we were kids. At some point, Troy, you have to stop holding onto the dead and start living.”
I hung up in Scott’s ear, not letting him say anything else. I hated what he was saying, hated that he suggested I forget my brother ever existed. I couldn’t do that to Jake, and I couldn’t do that to myself.
I stood and walked to the bar in my office, pouring myself a whiskey. I threw it back, gulping all the contents without coming up for air. I poured another and did the same. By the third, I slowed down and took the glass in a couple of sips, but barely.
My head started to spin, and the alcohol burned in my veins. Good, that was what I wanted. I needed to numb the pain before I went in there and presented the project to Johnson. Or gave the contract to Mackenzie, forfeiting from the get-go.
It didn’t matter which way I went with that; I was going to lose something. Mackenzie, or the contract.
One way I could fix what was going on with Rachel, and Mackenzie needed the contract, was if I paid for that operation. They didn’t need to know where the money came from, I could do it anonymously. I just had to eliminate that part of the reason she had to get the contract.
You can’t buy your way out of a tough spot, thinking that throwing money at it will make it any less immoral.
I squashed the voice in my head.
Damn it, I wished it was different. I wished I’d never gunned for the project in the first place.
Or never met Mackenzie.
Or… something.
I wished a lot of things, but wishes didn’t have a habit of coming true in my life, so why bother wishing at all?
22
MACKENZIE
Iflushedthetoiletand wiped my mouth, pushing up from the cubicle floor. I blew my nose with toilet paper, wiped my mouth another time, and stepped out.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was pasty. I felt sick to my stomach, and I’d thrown up at least four times this morning. I’d thought it was something I’d eaten at some point, but no one else who’d eaten with me was sick.
Just me.
Maybe it was nerves about this stupid project, the presentation that had come out of nowhere in the worst week of my life.
Maybe it was because none of us could put together enough cash to get Rachel that operation she needed, and without it, she was getting worse, not better. I was terrified that, in the end, we were going to lose her altogether.
Tom and Lydia were in the house with the kids this week, looking after them so that I could focus on my job. I wished I could be there with them, spending time with my family in this time of need, but I had to focus on my career if I didn’t want that to fall apart completely, too. I’d already missed a lot of days at work and if I lost my sister, I was going to need the safety net of my career to catch me, to bury myself in when I didn’t cope with her death.
When I was a kid, I hadn’t had anything to throw myself into this way. I’d had Rachel to look out for me, to comfort me.
If I lost her… well, at least I had healthy—or unhealthy—coping mechanisms in place.
I splashed water on my face to try to calm down the feverish feeling and reapplied my makeup that I’d wiped off after my eyes had teared up while I’d heaved over the toilet.
“This is going to be fine,” I said. “I’m going to be fine.”
My phone rang.
“Hails,” I said when I saw who it was. “God, it’s good to hear a friendly voice.”
“Are you okay?” she asked right away.
