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I hesitated before I responded. She was right on some level, but even after all this time, I still felt as though my father was looking over my shoulder, watching my every move. And I wasn’t sure if he would have approved of me trying to turn this business into something it wasn’t, something it had never been. I could almost hear his voice telling me not to try and change what he had worked toward for so long, not to bother shifting my approach when he had already proven success.
But maybe she had a point. Maybe there was something to be said for changing things up. When I sat opposite her, I could almost feel something moving inside of me, something shifting into place. I had never imagined it before, never even thought about it, but she made me want to change. She made me want to try a different life, a life I could never have come close to imagining.
"I don’t know," I said again.
I didn’t know what else to say to her. I didn’t want to commit to anything I wasn’t sure I’d be able to follow through on, and I was sure she would see through it even if I tried.
She sighed again. Maybe she’d hoped I would turn it all in right then and there, give it up on the spot, but surely she must have known it wasn’t that easy. No matter how much I liked her, how much of a draw I felt to her, I was still my father’s son—I had still been born into a legacy I couldn’t just walk away from, no matter how tempting the idea might have been when she pitched it to me.
We spent the rest of the evening drinking, talking, and soon, she began to relax. I steered the conversation away from our families, away from everything we had been through. I didn’t want to spend too long hung up on it, even if there was still so much to be said between us. She had clearly had a hard time, and she eventually admitted she had tried to talk to Mark, who hadn’t taken it very well.
Which was fine by me. Because, as long as it wasn’t enough to drive her away from me, I could handle anything he attempted to drop on us. When I was with her, all of that just fell away. None of it mattered. The conversation flowed with ease, and I knew I wouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else tonight.
Eventually, though, she began yawning, and I could tell she was exhausted. I almost wanted to invite her back to my place, but honestly, it looked more like she could have used a good night’s sleep, and she wouldn’t have gotten that if I had been around.
"Let me call you a cab," I told her, and I called up my car company and got them to bring a town car to the entrance of the bar. She tried to protest, telling me she didn’t need me to do that for her, but I just lifted a hand to quiet her.
"I want to make sure you get home okay, and my company is the only one I trust," I replied. She smiled at me.
"Thank you," she murmured, and we headed outside, where it had just begun to rain. It had been muggy the last few days, the intensity of it crackling in the air, but the cool rain seemed to have broken it.
I slipped an arm around her waist. Really, I wanted to take her home, but more than that, I wanted her to be well-rested. It was strange to want to put her well-being in front of my desires, but I was going with it. I didn’t want to let anything get in the way of this, the way I felt about her right now.
She turned to me, and before I could say another word, she slipped her soft hand to my face and kissed me. As soon as our lips touched, I felt the warmth spreading through me. Not just arousal, though that was a part of it, but something else. Something deeper. Something that told me that, whatever we had, it ran deeper than just sex.
She pulled back and skimmed her thumb over my cheek.
"You should think about what I said," she murmured. "About getting out of the business. I know you haven’t really given it much thought, but if you ever wanted another life...you could have it, okay?”
I parted my lips in surprise, but before I could say anything in return, the car pulled up, and she climbed inside. She smiled at me from behind the darkened glass, and then vanished off into the night.
I stood outside the bar for a long time, trying to wrap my head around her advice. I didn’t know what to make of it. Should I have been annoyed that she seemed to be acting like she knew me better than I did? Or was she offering me a lifeline, a way out when I had never really considered one before?
I never really allowed myself to consider one, if I was being honest.
I didn’t know what to do now. I was a little tipsy, and the alcohol seemed to have opened up doors inside my head that I would have otherwise kept shut. Doors that looked out onto a life I might have had if I hadn’t been caught up in my father’s business, doors I did my best to pretend didn’t exist.
I wasn’t sure what would happen if I allowed myself to look through them, to see into the other side. It seemed too dangerous even to allow myself to consider, even though maybe I should have—even though perhaps it would have been smart for me to think about what else was out there, what else I could have done with my life.
I wasn’t just a lapdog, going along with everything people wanted from me. I knew I was more than that. But meeting Thea had drawn out that side of me. She made me feel ways nobody else had before, and I knew if I wanted to keep feeling those things, I was going to have to take a step back from this business.
I needed to get home and think about what the hell we had just talked about this evening. There was a whole hell of a lot going through my head, and I wasn’t even sure where to start with unpacking it all.
I called myself a car and leaned outside the door, staring into space. I didn’t know how to navigate this. But there was one thing I did know, for damn sure—I wanted to see more of her.
And if that meant making some major changes to do it? Maybe it was the right call.
Chapter Fifteen Thea
I paced back and forth; shooting looks at the paper bag sitting on my bed. I could do this—I could. I just needed to get it done, and over with, and soon, this would all just be a paranoid memory.
It had hit me this morning when I had woken with a wooziness in my belly and sprang out of bed just in time to throw up. I never usually got sick, but the nausea was kicking my ass, and I had no idea why. At first, I thought it was food poisoning, but I had been eating at the hotel, and nobody else seemed to have come down with anything.
And then it clicked in my mind. My period was late. About two weeks late, actually. But with all that had been going on, it could have just been the stress. That’s what I told myself, anyway, as I tried to shove down the thought of it being anything else.
But I needed to find out, one way or another, even if it wasn’t the news I was hoping for. No matter how scary the possibility was, it was scarier for me not to know, and I wasn’t going to sit around and torture myself with the thought of it. Better to just take a pregnancy test and find out.
It had been about a week since I had last seen Scott. I had decided he could contact me if he wanted to talk again, but he hadn’t bothered yet. I hoped it was because he was pondering what we had discussed, not because he was totally done with me.
