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Zoey wasn’t just my father’s old lady, she was also the company’s interior designer. The woman knew style and sophistication.
Maybe she’ll sprinkle that fairy dust over my dad one day.
“Remind me again why we’re having an opening party for that place?” I huffed, fighting a shudder I could feel building at the base of my spine. It had been our last big project, and while it turned out amazing, the process had its bumps I’d rather forget. “I’ll be happy to fucking move on and say goodbye to that project.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she replied, rolling her eyes dramatically as she stepped up beside my dad, subtly tucking her finger into his pocket. “We sold all the apartmentsbeforethe completion date, they look damn beautiful, and we already have a waiting list full of people who want to be notified if you start making plans to build another. What’s not to celebrate?”
Dad turned to look at her with a dark frown. “The part where you almost fucking died?”
She glared back at him—probably the only person in this clubhouse who could do it without getting a crack around the head. “You make it sound so dramatic,” she protested, shaking her head.
“Oh cool, apparently getting shot and bleeding out on the concrete slab really wasn’t as bad as we thought it was,” Rip joked, snapping a salute. “Got ya.”
“Didn’t you die, like twice?” I added, raising my eyebrow.
Rip pointed over at me while holding Zoey’s narrowed stare. “That’s a good point. Should we really be celebrating our death?”
Dad said nothing, though a smile was catching at the corner of his mouth. It disappeared the second Zoey turned her attention back to him, though. “Suits and ties will be worn. Friday night. Eight-thirty.” She kissed my dad and turned on her six-inch heels, heading back toward the clubhouse. “I’ll expect you all there!”
Rip groaned. “Do we really have to wear a suit and tie?”
“I’ll expect nothing less for the celebration of my death,” she called back over her shoulder, just as I took a drink, which I then spat every-fucking-where, including on my ride which I’d just spent an hour cleaning.
“You’re marrying that woman,” I pointed out to my dad. He watched her until she was out of sight before he turned back to us. “Are you prepared for that?”
“Prepared? No,” he admitted without falter. “But when the universe knows, you just fucking go with it.”
I loved Zoey.
She had given my dad something I wasn’t sure even he knew he needed. It was like seeing a new life in his eyes. Like before, he’d simply been content with going through the motions, and now he was proof that when you wait and are patient, good fucking things come.
He had this beautiful woman who kept the old man on his toes, and also Zoey’s daughter, Blair, who asked my dad to adopt her because of how he had watched over and protected her through a hellish few months.
Not to mention, a couple of years ago, my half-sister, Meyah, showed up, and now she was about to give him his first grandchild.
I had turned our small construction business into a billion-dollar company and was barely here.
And then there was Ripley. Who I was going to make sure became my dad’s new VP in a month or so when the current one stepped down.
The club was in my blood, but it was Ripley’s life. It was what he lived and breathed. It always had been since we were kids. It was the reason why he was so hurt by what our mom did, by how she felt this absolute disconnection from the club and everything it stood for. He didn’t understand that and didn’t know how someone could feel that way when he saw this amazing brotherhood he’d die for before he walked away.
Which is why I was pretty sure the conversation we were going to have when it happened was going to seriously hurt. It meant admitting to him, my dad, and myself that maybe I was more like her than any of us would’ve ever imagined.
“Don’t you have a plane to catch?” Rip announced, grabbing my spray bottle and scrubbing brush off the ground. “I guess I can finish cleaning this for you. Or you’re gonna be late.”
I stepped back, grinning at my baby brother. “That’s the great thing about owning the plane… it doesn’t leave without you.” I backed away with a grin. “But thanks, man. Make sure she sparkles.”
Rip cursed me under his breath, and my dad grabbed my arm before I could escape completely. “Good luck with the meeting tomorrow,” he said, squeezing my arm before adding, “There’s still a conversation we need to have, though, and it’s going to happen when you get back.”
I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat but nodded. “Yeah.”
There was no avoiding it.
I’d been fighting to balance two sides of my life for almost a year.
And there was one side that had started to pull my attention a lot harder than the other, which, if I continued to try and keep up this balancing act would, in the end, send everything crashing to the ground.
So soon I’d have to decide.
