Chapter 27
The only thingmore devastating than losing the woman you love?
Losing her and realizing you don’t have a soul in the world to turn to for comfort, because you’ve cut every soft thing from your life in your quest never to feel again.
I did an excellent job with that for many years, but now the ice around my heart has melted and I’m drowning in a flood of emotion. I’ve been knocked off my feet by regret and I’m choking on my own misery, but no one’s interested in administering CPR.
And who can blame them?
I’m the first to reach for the check after a business dinner or to offer my home in The Hamptons to a friend for free, but my generosity doesn’t extend to anything beyond material things. When it comes to vulnerability and intimacy, I’ve been a miser, a Scrooge who’s only realized how desperately he wants to love and be loved now that it’s too late.
It is too late. I don’t want to be with anyone else. Sully is the only one for me. Imagining loving someone else the way I love her makes me physically ill. And I only had a little over a week with her. Eight fucking days. It’s not nearly enough. I want a hundred more, a thousand. I want the rest of my life. I want to start watching what I eat and exercising even more than I do already so I can stay alive as long as possible and never leave my girl alone.
I suck in a breath, fighting the tears still burning the edges of my eyes.
I won’t cry. I don’t deserve to, not when this is all my fault. I should have been honest with Sully from the beginning. I should have confessed my sins so she couldn’t find them out from anyone else. Though, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Half the gossip she’d heard wasn’t even true, but she was still ready to believe it, because it came from a family member.
No matter how hard I loved her, or how long we were together, that might have always been the case. Even if we’d been together for years, she still would have known them years longer. They might have always had their claws in her, able to come between us with a few words.
Or not.
I suppose now, I’ll never know.
Willing myself to keep it together, I call my boss, Anthony, back in New York. I wouldn’t normally call a colleague on a Sunday, but Anthony and I are friends as well. And he’ll want to know that I’m going to be back in the office on Tuesday, sooner than later. We have a big meeting I was planning to attend via Zoom, but being there in person will spare the tech team the trouble of setting up a monitor.
He answers on the second ring, a smile in his voice as he asks, “Small-town life driven you to drink yet?”
“No, it’s driven me away,” I say, my tone flat, but even. “I’m flying back tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be in the office for the meeting on Tuesday.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Glad to hear it. But if you need to go back afterward, I get it. I know estates as large as your brother’s can be complicated to manage.”
“I’ll manage it from the city. I can’t come back here.”
He makes a considering sound. “Why not? What happened? Your family melting down from the stress?”
“Something like that.”
He grunts. “You know you can share personal details of your life with me, Weaver. I may be your boss, but I consider us friends. And losing a relative is big deal. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
And even though I’ve brushed off similar offers from Anthony half a dozen times, I suddenly find myself spilling everything. From the fight with my family over the will, to the tragedy of my brother’s wasted life, to the drama with the illegal seafood empire, to the amazing woman I met and how I fucked it all up before I even met her, by being an angry young man who didn’t know how to manage the rage inside him.
When I’m done, I’m not crying, but my voice is wobbling enough that I have to pause and take a breath as I fight to regain control.
I’m a little worried about what Anthony’s going to say, to think about his most stoic employee having an emotional outburst over the phone.
But I should have known better. Anthony is a former child math prodigy—one of the reason’s he’s leading a giant financial firm at the tender age of thirty-nine—but he’s also amazing at reading people.
He probably guessed I had this in me all along, a hunch that proves correct when he says, “Well, I figured you had family issues or you wouldn’t be buttoned up so tight. But fuck… That’s rough, Weaver. And the woman, she sounds great, but maybe she’s just too young. An older woman might understand that we all make mistakes in our youth, but people really do grow and change in amazing ways. You’re not that person anymore. I can attest to that. I’ve never seen you lose your cool, not even with Cranston, and he’d try the patience of a saint.”
“Thank you.” I sigh. “But what I did was more serious than most young adult mistakes.”
“It was,” he agrees. “But you realized you had a problem and took the necessary steps to fix it and become a better man. I, for one, find that admirable. Maybe she will, too, if you give her some time.”
“I doubt it. Her family will encourage her to think the worst of me. And once I sell off the Tripp fleet and throw the entire town into chaos, I’ll be even less popular around here than I am now.”
“Corporate intrigue in small-town New England,” Anthony says, his tone eager. “Damn, that sounds like fun. And who cares about being popular? You have to make the decisions that are best for you and your family, even if they don’t understand they’re for the best, at first. Your instincts are always spot-on, Weaver. You have to trust them.”
“I agree. I just wish the rest of the Tripp clan trusted me half as much as you do.”
He hums beneath his breath. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen. You’re too close to this, and they’ve cast you as the bad guy for the sin of being the one your brother chose to steer the ship. But maybe if you had a high-powered private equity firm interested in the sale of the company… And they advised your family how much they stand to lose if they don’t restructure before they’re faced with legal consequences…”
I snort, and a smile twitches at my lips for the first time since I left Sully. “Except you don’t work for a private equity firm anymore.”
“No, but I have a very good friend who does. And he’s champing at the bit to get out of the city to avoid some relationship drama of his own. I bet he’d love to spend a week in a charming New England town, scaring your family onto the straight and narrow.”
“In exchange for what?” I ask. “He won’t actually want to acquire Tripp Seafood. As we’ve discussed, the business structure is inherently flawed. And even if he were comfortable with taking that risk, I’m not. I want to leave my family better off than they were before I took over. Even if that just means protecting them from prosecution and an ugly legal battle down the road.”
“Of course,” Anthony says. “Honestly, I’m pretty sure he’ll do it just for the fun of it and a change of scenery. But I’ll ask him. See if he needs anything to sweeten the deal. I’m sure a place to stay would be appreciated.”
“He can have the yacht,” I say. “It’s docked in town.” I’ll find somewhere else to stay. That would be better anyway. There are too many memories of Sully on that boat. She haunts every inch of it for me now.
“Perfect. He’ll love that.”
“But if he’s up for it, I’ll have to stay a little longer,” I caution, “to facilitate his understanding of the situation and introduction to my family. I’ll have to Zoom into the meeting on Tuesday, after all.”
“How about I shift the meeting to later in the month and you take off next week?” he asks. “You have twenty-five vacation days to use before the end of the year, Weaver. I checked. And it sounds like you have enough on your plate up there without working remotely right now.”
I grunt. “You’re probably right.”
“I almost always am,” Anthony says. “It’s a blessing and a curse. Anyway, let me call Hunter and get back to you.”
We say our goodbyes, end the call, and I start looking for a rental for the next week. No one says “no” to Anthony. Hunter’s compliance is all but assured.
As expected, in just a few minutes, I get a text from Anthony confirming that Hunter Mendelssohn will be flying in this evening on his private plane. He sends another text, introducing the two of us, and Hunter and I exchange pleasantries for a while before getting down to business.
Turns out we both have homes in The Hamptons, but have somehow managed to miss each other the past three summers since he moved to the city from San Francisco. We make plans for me to pick him up at the small airport outside of town at six and grab dinner to discuss the situation before getting him settled on the yacht.
When we’re done texting, I set about tidying the few things I’ve disturbed on the yacht. Since the cleaners were here this morning, there are already fresh sheets on both the beds, so he can have his choice of rooms. I suppose I could stay here in the guest room, but I want him to have his own space.
And I’m not going to be good company.
I’m grateful to have something to do to keep the heartbreak at bay, but it’s still there, roiling beneath the surface, ready to emerge as soon as I run out of distractions. With that in mind, I book an isolated cottage on the bluff for the next week, where I can be a pathetic, grieving human being without any hotel or bed and breakfast guests overhearing.
Then I pack my things, move them to my new place, and head out to the airfield, doing my best not to look at the café on my way through town.
She’s still there. Somehow, I just know it.
I can feel her, like a phantom limb my mind refuses to accept is gone for good.
Maybe she’s not. Maybe you can try to explain yourself again. Maybe if she knew why you were such a broken kid back then in the first place…
The thought makes my skin go cold and acid rise in my throat.
I can’t do that; I can’t share that part of my past.
There has to be another way.
But as I collect Hunter from the airport, talk business over dinner at a local bistro, and thankfully discover he’s the perfect mixture of clever and charming to win over my family, I can’t think of anything else that might help Sully understand.
That’s what I want most—for her to understand. Yes, forgiveness and a second chance would be a miracle I’d never take for granted, but if I can just make her understand, maybe she won’t hate me.
Or hate herself for falling for a bad man.
That’s what tore me apart the most, seeing the depth of her disappointment and knowing at least part of it was for herself. I was her first love, and in her eyes, I was a monster. It’s the kind of experience that makes it hard to trust yourself and even harder to fall in love again.
And I don’t want that for her. If she won’t let me love her, I want her to find happiness with someone else…as long as I never have to see them together.
Just thinking about it makes me want to jab out my own eyes.
Instead, once I’ve settled Hunter on the yacht, I return to my tiny cottage on the bluff and sit outside in the bitter wind, writing a letter I hope I’ll have the courage to send.