Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
SIMON
E xhausted when I got home, I walked in my door, the lights coming on as I moved into the foyer and through it. Everything in my house was automated. In the past, I’d thought it was awesome. Right then though, it just served as a reminder that the house was empty.
Automation had been necessary because there was never anyone here to leave a light on for me.
As I walked through the house and the motion sensors picked up my movement, the path to my bedroom was illuminated, but my footsteps rang out dully in the wide expanse of my hallway. It had never bothered me before. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever noticed it before, but the entire place suddenly felt cold and impersonal. Even the air felt stale.
My housekeeper kept the place clean, but it was like I could suddenly feel the absence of movement in here over the last few days. Nothing in here reminded me of home and nothing I saw on my way to my bedroom even gave me the tiniest spark of comfort.
The art on my walls had been chosen by an interior decorator I’d never even met in person. She’d sent me a list of questions to answer and I’d emailed it back to her.
And boom . When I’d gotten home from a business trip that next week, my penthouse had been furnished and I’d been living with all the stuff she’d chosen ever since. I hadn’t even seen before it’d been moved in here.
I bet Abigail’s house isn’t like this.
As I walked into my bedroom and suddenly hated the slate gray bedding that I never would’ve selected for myself, I realized that my house wasn’t really the problem. It was Abi. She was the problem. All of a sudden, everything kept coming back to her.
All the stuff had been weighing on me even more heavily than I’d realized. I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head at all since I’d noticed her in that race. It kind of felt like I had an itch I couldn’t scratch. I could always have the house redecorated, but I could never have another shot with her.
Walking directly into my bathroom, I grabbed a shower. That hookup on the beach followed by her leaving me naked in the ocean were the only things I could think about. I chuckled into the spray, my head shaking as I wondered what had happened to my sweet girl that had made her do something like that.
What a savage.
I planned on getting her back for that, even if I was pretty sure that I had been what had happened to her. Senior year had been the worst twelve months of my life by a long shot. Abigail had been the only source of light for me back then.
A place of comfort. Of warmth, safety, and understanding—and in return, I’d dumped her in a note after dating her all through junior high and high school.
An action which was still my greatest regret. The only real remorse I’d ever felt was for what I’d done to her back then. For a decade, I’d been trying to shut out that year. That girl. That letter.
Now that it was all coming back to me, it was a brutal onslaught of emotion I wasn’t ready for. It had me questioning who I had been and, more importantly, who I had become.
Even when I lay down to sleep that night, I was oddly aware of how empty and cold my house was. Of how alone I’d really been ever since the day after my high school graduation.
All these years, I’d been going from girl to girl, completely ignoring the fact that I was almost thirty and completely and utterly alone. In fact, I’d ignored it to the extent that it felt like I was only becoming aware of it now.
As I lay in my bed with sleep eluding me, I thought back to being eighteen and insanely in love with Abigail. I remembered feeling like I was going to lose my mind because of her, so very into her that I didn’t even know what to do with myself.
She’d made me feel real protectiveness for the first time. Possessiveness. A sense of belonging. Love. I’d never been that crazy for a girl before her and I hadn’t felt that way since.
And then, the unthinkable had happened. Brooks had died. We’d lost him and everything had changed.
My dad had put so much fucking pressure on me to perform, to go to Harvard, and to leave her behind. He’d been relentless. Ruthless.
My twin brother was gone and Dad hadn’t given a shit that I was grieving and lost in a world without the guy I’d even shared my mother’s womb with. He’d kept pushing and pushing and I’d wanted my family to be okay. I’d wanted my parents to be okay.
After losing Brooks, it felt like the only way I could do that was to leave, just like my dad had told me to. So I’d done it.
For the second time in a year, I’d lost a part of my soul, but I did it. I’d fucking left. I’d gone to Harvard and I’d worked around the clock to become everything my dad had wanted me to be.
In the process, I’d walked out on the only girl I’d ever loved and I’d spent every day since wondering what my life would’ve looked like if I hadn’t left her behind. If I had never left that letter on her doorstep and walked away. It wasn’t something I would ever admit, but I had been searching for Abigail under the skirt of every other woman I’d ever been with.
It’d always only been her for me.
In the dark of night when my dreams had taken me to an alternate universe where I’d followed my heart instead of my dad’s demands, it’d been her I dreamed of coming home to. Our children occupying all the empty bedrooms in a big old family home.
Whenever I drove past a new model of SUV, I still wondered if Abi might’ve liked to drive that when she collected our kids from school. I’d researched which one I would’ve purchased for myself to drop them off and to take them to ballgames in.
These were my guilty, impossible pleasures, and sure, it’d been a few years since I’d last indulged all the way, but in my dreams? There had never been any avoiding her.
When I finally fell into a fitful sleep, my mind spent the rest of the night torturing me with memories of being with her that turned into fantasies of what we might’ve been. I woke up in a cold sweat at dawn and rolled out of bed, intent on using this restless energy for good.
After taking an ice cold shower and making sure that I didn’t look like I’d spent all night dreaming about an ex, I headed into the office. It was time to get to work on the Fit Gal pitch and I had a few meetings through the morning to start planning it.
Next week, I would be delivering a mock pitch to the company in the presence of the other representatives—who were going to be the losers of this little contest. I had only won Silver in the Fit Gal Olympics but I would get Gold in this competition.
I strode into my first meeting with the espresso my assistant had pushed into my hand and nothing else. “Alright, everybody. Let’s get to work.”
I didn’t even look at the team members gathered around the table, intently focused on the presentation they had lined up to show me.
I nixed at least half a dozen ideas before I finally nodded at one. “That’s what we’re going to build on. This company is renowned and celebrated for being all-natural, but we don’t only want to appeal to the hippie, granola types. I want every man, woman, and older child in the country to feel the intense need to run out to buy a Fit Gal as soon as they see this campaign.”
After giving them a few guidelines, I moved onto my next meeting. Afterward, I was feeling confident. We’d come up with some great ideas, and by the time I met David for a quick lunch, I was all pumped up again.
“How’re you doing, man?” he asked, the expression on his face sincere and nonjudgmental. “I’ve known you for a long time, Si. I know you weren’t okay in LA and I know you weren’t okay when we got back here either, so level with me. How are you really doing?”
The question threatened to be the pinprick that popped the balloon that was my good mood, but I refused to let every single mention of what had happened in LA get to me. I had worked damn hard to leave behind the miserable bastard I’d been in freshman year of college.
I wasn’t going back. Not ever.
Somewhere around halfway through my first year at Harvard, I’d realized that the only thing to do was to look forward. I’d grabbed my balls and focused on doing just that, and I’d been doing it ever since. It had worked so far.
There was no reason to stop utilizing my tried and tested methods now, so I shrugged and sent him a carefree smirk. “Seeing Abigail messed with me, but I’m back on my game.”
He arched both of his eyebrows at me. “You are? Already?”
I dropped my chin in a curt nod. “Look, man. She made it clear that I’m nobody to her. It wasn’t fun to hear it, but it is what it is. She doesn’t give a shit about me and, worse, she tried to humiliate me. I’m ready to play her game right back at her.”
David started laughing. “Well, which is it, bro?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it can’t be both. You can’t say you’re back on your game if you’re playing games with her.”
“I just said I’m ready to play her game if she wants to keep messing with me.” I shrugged. “I’ve got my head on straight. Don’t worry.”
“Keep telling yourself that, man. She always did have a way of getting under your skin, that girl. God, I didn’t think I’d ever see you this way again, but okay. Here we go.”
I rolled my eyes and smirked again. “She’s feisty, bro. What can I say? She got to me, and sure, she did get under my skin, but I won’t let that distract me. Abigail Walker is back and I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere and I don’t expect her to either, so we’re both just going to have to learn to live with it.”
“It’s going to be a steep learning curve,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up for it? You really didn’t look so good the other day. Someone else can handle the Fit Gal account. No one will think less of you.”
“Screw that. It was just a shock, is all.” I wasn’t even trying to play it off. It was really how I felt. “The biggest shock I’ve had in a long time, to be honest, but we’re in the same industry in the same city. We were bound to run into each other eventually.”
“It’s a city of over eight million people,” he reasoned. “You could’ve both lived out the rest of your lives here without ever crossing paths again.”
“Maybe, but it didn’t happen that way.” I inhaled a deep breath and grinned. “Our paths did cross again though, so now it’s time to let the games begin.”
“May the odds be ever in our favor?” he joked.
I laughed and shook my head. “We don’t need luck, Dave. We’ve got plans. A pitch. We’re going to come out on top with this Fit Gal thing.”
He looked back at me with the humor fading from his eyes. “Is that all you really want now that you’ve seen her again?”
“No, but that’s where we’re at right now. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, and they ain’t changing until we’ve played this hand.”