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“No, but I’m always your friend. Business aside, you look wrecked.” He leans back, his tie wrapped up in one fist that lays on his chest. His brow’s pinched as he speaks with concern. “Like, is it a chick, is it your parents? What’s going on with you?”
“A chick,” I utter before I can stop myself and then I hate it. I hate the description. “She’s not just some woman.”
“Oh shit.” Wyatt elongates the words, pushing the contract out of the way to make room for the sushi.
“I’m not hungry,” I tell him and he only pauses to tell me, “Look, I need to eat. You pour your heart out, I’ll stuff my face. Whatever’s left you can have later.” The plastic bag crinkles as he digs out his carton of choice. “So, what’d she do?”
“Nothing that I shouldn’t have known was coming.” It was written on the walls. Before I even stepped foot in this building, without even looking at the security footage to detail employees, I knew Suzette Parks was going to fight me. It was written on the fucking walls.
“You’re going to have to elaborate,” he states, opening up a small container of soy sauce. “She cheat on you?”
“No. No. She wouldn’t do that.”
“Do we hate her? Want to date her? You haven’t given me anything at all, so I’m going to need you to fill me in.”
I stare across the desk at Wyatt. He’s young, a player, never held on to a woman for more than a few weeks. There isn’t shit he could tell me that would help in the least.
“You can vent to me,” he assures me, separating a pair of disposable chopsticks and giving me an exasperated look. “Whoever she is, she’s gotten to you. You were distracted last time I was here; you’re obsessed to—”
“I have feelings for her,” I admit to him rather than listen to him continue. “I like her … a lot and because of that, I compromised a business.”
The California roll stops midair. “What business?”
Tapping my two fingers on the desk, I point to the door. “This one.”
“What do you mean? You okay moneywise? You need help or something? You know my father—”
“I don’t—No. No. It’s fine moneywise. It’s just …”
“Oh thank God,” he mutters, far more relaxed as he leans back with the container in one hand and the chopsticks in the other.
“It’s just, I’m taking a risk I wouldn’t, if it weren’t for her.”
“It’s not so bad,” he says after an exaggerated swallow. “You’ve done it before,” he reminds me.
“And I nearly lost it all before.”
“Passion outweighs statistics.” He tells me something I’ve told him years ago. Pointing the chopsticks at me he adds, “You know that.”
I can only nod, feeling the anxiousness of this morning come back to me. “She knows what she’s doing and I think this would be best for her,” I tell him.
“But not for you?” he guesses.
“… It would be much easier to merge, which means she could lose her job, her entire department even. It would mean uncertainty for her.”
“So what, you’re keeping her out of it?”
“I’m forming a business for her and her department alone. Allowing her to keep the clients while the remainder of the business is merged with another company.”
He arches a brow, surprised. “One of your other companies?”
I shake my head. “I’ll profit quickly and be done as far as the merger goes. The investment goes into her business, though.”
“Does she know that it’s her business?”
“She’ll find out soon enough.”
“Is she ready for that? That’s kind of,” he says and repositions himself, more serious now. “It’s kind of a lot.”
