Chapter 3
Chase
After seeing Maryellen with that tool bag of a guy touching her, I wished it wasn’t a weeknight.
Well, at least not so early in the week.
Because maybe I would have been drunk otherwise.
I only had two drinks in me when I ran into them, not nearly enough to handle what I saw.
And the chick I was with became such a bitch afterward.
She was full of questions. Who was that? Was she an ex?
I literally just picked her up in the bar we were at and hoped to have a good time with her. But after the inquisition, I knew she’d be the clingy type, so I took her home instead.
Plus, I promised Gage I’d be in early today to discuss a few details about my new office. It likely wouldn’t have happened if I had gone home with Corinne. Or was it Cora? I don’t even know what her name was.
I was excited to be getting a new, palatial office. There were some concerns, though. Being so close to him would eventually make my skin crawl, I knew that.
And I would be right down the hall from her.
Gage decided he wanted the two of us to be on the main floor as the co-CEOs of the company. Whatever. I didn’t care much about that at the moment. I just didn’t want to see Maryellen, because if I did, I wasn’t sure I could keep my mouth shut.
The other side of the floor from Gage’s office was now fully under construction and more than halfway done to becoming mine.
It was not what I’d expected him to do for me.
The space seemed to mirror my brother’s in size and layout.
There was still plastic hanging along the windows.
Ladders and paint cans littered the floor.
It was early enough that work had not resumed for the day.
“Morning,” Gage said from the doorway. “What do you think? I know it looks like there is still a ton of work to do, but they assure me it will be done by month’s end.”
As I surveyed the room, observing the view from the windows, my mind tossed around so many ways to answer him. My first instinct was to say I didn’t want to be anywhere near Maryellen.
That was a lie.
Or I could tell him I was content in the position I currently held.
That was also a lie.
Bottom line, I was a twenty-four-year-old heir to a company who really had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Did I want to head up a sales team and travel the world to do it? Maybe.
But I had this itch. An itch that kept gnawing at me…
“Chase?” Gage interrupted my thoughts.
“Oh, yeah, it’s looking great, man. I really appreciate it.”
Last night, at the bar, it was amazing up on that stage, singing and forgetting about all of this shit. I hid behind the microphone and made it seem as though it was something we did for fun when we went out and drank. But no one knew what it actually did for me.
It was my escape.
My friends got tired of going there all the time. I seemed to need it more and more.
“…would go over here,” Gage said. “Hey, you’re really not listening, man. What’s going on?”
“You remember when Mom used to play her guitar for us on the back porch, on that swing chair, and sing to us all the time? She had such an amazing voice.”
A gentle smile took over Gage’s face when he shifted his head in my direction. “I hadn’t thought of that in a long time.” The smile was short-lived. “There aren’t many good memories when it comes to her, are there?”
“I don’t know.” My opinion was vastly different from my brother’s, but it might be because I was so young when she left.
I remembered bedtime stories and making cookies.
She always kept us up late in the summer to catch fireflies, even when our father would be yelling to put us to bed.
Plus, the house was always filled with music.
Whether it was hers or on the radio, there was always music.
“My only bad memory is of her leaving us. Before she did, everything was fine. More than fine, I thought it was great with Mom, why didn’t you? ”
“She left us, Chase. She abandoned her children. We were eight and ten years old. What mother does that?”
I didn’t want to rehash the argument we’ve always had. He and our father had a similar view about it. But they were more alike. I think I was more like my mom.
Could be why my father favored Gage.
And I could never let the argument die without the last word.
“Exactly, we were kids. We have no idea what was going on between them. We know Dad can be a dick. How do we know he wasn’t a dick to her?”
“Whatever, man, I don’t feel like doing this right now,” Gage said. He kicked at a half-empty paint can on the floor between us. “Do you like the office space or not?”
Before I could try to bring our conversation back to our mom, there was a light tap on the open door.
“Excuse me,” a familiar voice said. A voice that could bring me to my knees. “I need to speak with you. Both of you, actually.”
Maryellen’s tone had us exchanging a glance as we followed her back to his office on the other side of the building. As we sat, I noticed Maryellen made sure not to look my way. She sat upright, with her legs bent under her chair and her skirt pulled below her knees, hands folded neatly in her lap.
No one in this place knew what those hands of hers were capable of.
How firm her grip could get around my dick. Or how well they slid up and down my shaft. She knew exactly how to use them to bring me to the edge, and keep me there, not letting me come, as she squeezed my balls and the head almost to the point of pain.
“I’ve got some bad news,” she said.
That broke me out of my horny trance.
Both our heads snapped in her direction as we waited for her to continue.
She looked directly at me when she did.
“Simon quit.”
OK, that did suck. But there were worse things in life than losing an assistant. Her tone made it seem like someone died.
“Fuck,” Gage said. He jumped from his chair and paced the room as his hands went through his perfectly coiffed hair.
Maybe I wasn’t truly understanding the gravity of the situation.
“Can’t we just find someone else?” I asked.
They both turned and looked at me. Gage ignored my question while continuing to talk to Maryellen. I mean, I know she’s his assistant, but I’m co-CEO and his brother.
“Why? What happened? Can we make him a better offer?” Gage asked.
She shook her head.
“He and his boyfriend are moving out of New York. He got another job in Chicago already.”
A frustrated sigh came from Gage as he stared out his window.
I turned to Maryellen, and all I could see in my mind was that other guy’s hand on her cheek last night as I rounded the corner.
It took my breath away when I saw him tucking her hair inside her hood, such an intimate gesture.
The caveman in me wanted to bum-rush the guy to the ground and claim her as mine right there in the middle of the street.
But she wasn’t mine. Not anymore. She made that very clear a few months ago.
When I thought about it, I didn’t think we were ever really together. We hooked up a couple times, went out a couple other times. We connected on a deep level. She knew things about me even my own brother didn’t. And now I had the urge to pull her up and push her against the wall.
I knew the news about Simon should concern me more, and it was problematic that it didn’t. However, she was all I could think about.
“Chase,” she said. “Simon was important to you, to us. He helped make everything…work.”
I knew what she was trying to say. And it pissed me off.
“I have an idea,” Gage said. “While we’re looking and interviewing, and since our offices will be on the same floor by next week, Maryellen, you can help us both until we hire someone.”
“What?” she cried out. “Gage, that’s not feasible.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said in agreement. That got me a sharp look from her, which I didn’t quite understand.
“I’ll make it worth your while, trust me,” Gage said. “I’ll be taking time off with Harper over the next few weeks to get her shop set up, you knew about that, so you’ll be able to focus more time on Chase and getting used to his schedule.”
“Well, that’s true, but there’s still plenty I need to do for you while you’re gone.”
My eyes bounced back and forth between them both, trying to keep up with what they were talking about. But I checked out. This was on them. To be honest, I didn’t care enough.
As I roamed around Gage’s office, thinking about the upcoming changes in my life, it didn’t give me the joyous feeling inside it should.
Instead, a tight knot crept back into my gut and my chest. The one that showed its hand when my heart and brain battled over what I should be doing with my life.
I slowly wandered from the room, and neither of them saw me leave.
At least I didn’t think they had.
“Chase!”
Her voice pierced my heart. I was almost to the elevator by the time she caught me.
“Chase,” she repeated when I didn’t look up at her. She touched the sleeve of my suit jacket.
I knew she only wanted to talk shop and touch base about what she and Gage had discussed.
Yet hearing her say my name, the lilt of her voice with a tinge of concern, had my insides melting as she stood next to me.
I could stay and go to her desk. We could sit and discuss what we needed to, like normal professionals should.
But I wasn’t normal.
And I wasn’t a professional.
Instead, I pressed the down button.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out.”
She stepped back, knowing from the tone I used she’d get nothing more out of me. I hated doing that. If she was going to keep me out of her life, I couldn’t keep doing this in any way with her. Now it was my turn to walk away.
Once I got in the elevator, I called Mitch, my buddy on my floor.
“Hey, wanna get a drink?”
He was silent on the line.
“Ya there?” I asked.
“Dude, it’s ten in the morning.”
Fuck.