Chapter 30 Other Assholes
Other Assholes
WINONA
The next morning, I woke up the way you sometimes do with an absence of memory, when you think this will be a normal day like any other.
Then it hit me. I didn’t talk much about home with anyone—it was too painful. And I never talked about Adam. I didn’t want his existence known, not only because it was hard, but because I didn’t want to expend another ounce of my thoughts on him. He didn’t deserve that.
Mitchell seemed to have understood. He didn’t try to shush me, he didn’t try to get me to move on. He didn’t even try to get me to stay after that, even though we hadn’t even addressed his needs.
I told Mitchell everything. Everything, right down to the blame I hadn’t admitted I still felt for the way Mama passed.
He held me tight, and as he was falling asleep, promised he’d cook me breakfast in the morning, and attempt a coffee on that elaborate machine.
I’d laughed and fallen asleep nestled in his arms.
But talking about Adam had riled me. It had shifted what had been a terrifying experience from start to finish into a furious memory. How had he made me spend all those years running scared?
That morning, I left Mitchell sleeping, slipping out of his house in the wee hours, calling for a cab as I walked down the drive. It was only when I got in that I texted Mitchell. Told him I had to go and I’d see him later.
He’d hearted the text. But that was all. I knew it was unfair of me to leave like that, but maybe we needed to start pulling off the bandage and preparing for goodbye.
It was with a confusing swirl of emotions that I arrived at the Rolling Hills job site that morning. And it wasn’t until I was accosted by Cher and Sarah the moment I walked into Sarah’s office that I began to actually relax.
“Well, well, well,” Cher said. “Look who decided to leave Horndog Island.”
“I’m not sharing details,” I said after both of them stopped squealing with laughter. I’d told them all week I wasn’t going to talk. But I guess there was a limit to Cher’s restraint. “I thought you were being a little too good at respecting my boundaries,” I said.
“We were just saving up our questions for this meeting,” Sarah said. “Sorry, did I tell you we took all the work stuff off the agenda? This is all about you and Mitchell Harrington, Winona.”
Cher had taken Sarah over to the dark side.
Cher put up her hands. “I don’t want any details. I’m just proud of you for doing it. My friend Winona—torrid affair-haver.”
“I want details though?” Sarah said, her chin in her hands.
I couldn’t help smiling as I thought of all the details they’d never get.
I just called it ‘the best sex of my life.’ Which was a woefully inadequate way to describe what Mitchell and I had been through together.
I did tell Sarah about the house. But the moment my words ‘library’ left my lips, my stomach twisted as the strange mix of feelings came back with a wallop.
I suddenly didn’t feel as buoyant as a moment before.
A happily-ever-after wasn’t what I was getting with Mitchell, I knew that going in.
Still, I’d poured my soul into him. The sudden reminder of my continued inability to separate church and state sat like a lump on my chest. Right next to the brick I’d set there when I’d left him with an empty space next to him this morning.
“How much longer do you have?” Sarah asked, as if reading my mind, her voice softer now.
“Tomorrow night’s his last night here,” I said.
He told me he’d come back. The weekend after he left, if he could manage it. “Every time I can,” he’d said, but I’d seen the truth in his eyes. He couldn’t guarantee any of that. He didn’t know what his life looked like. “But I want you in it,” he’d told me. “I need you in it, Winona.”
Sarah gave me a look of sympathy, but Cher clapped her hands. “It’s perfect. Right? No complications.”
If only she knew how different this was.
I’d tell her, after Mitchell left. But until then, I was keeping what we had pressed in my chest, for me alone.
Yet even as I sat there, green eyes flashed before me.
Rough hands, so gentle on mine. My skin tingled with the memory of his touch, my ears filling with a low, rough voice.
You’re so fucking beautiful, Winona. And I won’t let you blame yourself.
It was the cruelest trick life ever played, giving me my Prince Charming, only to make him temporary. And I’d been played by life before.
“I once dated this person I knew was shit for me,” Cher was saying. “And when we ended it, I kept going back. It was so unhealthy. I—”
“He’s not shit for me,” I said.
I realized I’d spoken out loud. Both women stared at me, but it was Cher who said, with the softest, most empathetic voice I’d ever heard from her, “Oh, Winona. You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”
Luckily, just then the door behind us swung open with a bang. Sarah looked over our shoulders, her demeanor swiftly shifting. I turned to see Jamie Reilly, her boss, filling the doorframe.
Good. This was a good distraction. We could be here for Sarah, all attention off me.
“I didn’t realize you were in a meeting,” Jamie grumbled.
“It’s our standing meeting,” Cher said, without an ounce of generosity.
I switched gears. I used to like Jamie. Now though, after giving Sarah so much grief? I had no joy for him.
Especially not today.
“Hello, Jamie,” I said curtly.
“Winona. Cher.” His tone was one of irritation. Someone had pissed in his Cheerios this morning, clearly.
But his eyes were on Sarah. “Ms. Cooper—could I have a word, please?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Sarah was in trouble.
I looked back at her, sussing out if she needed help. It was my turn to look out for her. But she clasped her hands on the desk, setting her shoulders back. She had this.
“What can I do for you, Jamie?”
“I need to speak to you about your email this morning.”
When Sarah had said things were difficult between her and her boss, I’d wondered at first if she just wasn’t used to Jamie’s quiet demeanor. But from what she reported—and what I was seeing now—if this was how he was all the time with her, she had every right to be upset.
“Can it wait?” she asked crisply. “I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
Cher gave me a raised eyebrow and a smirk, clearly as proud as I was that Sarah was standing up to him. Her only tell was the white of her knuckles as she held onto herself.
“No, it can’t wait,” Jamie said. “And actually, it involves you, Winona.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Me?”
Sarah’s cheeks went pink. “Perhaps we could chat alone first?”
“That’s all right, Sarah.” I said. Unlike Sarah, I didn’t report to Jamie. And I was in a fighting mood. “I’m dying to know what’s got your knickers in a twist, Jamie.”
Jamie’s temple clenched under his salt and pepper hair. He was in his fifties, and was one of those men, Cher said, who was aging like a fine wine. But all I could see was his bad attitude.
“It’s about this collective business,” he said.
“I… I floated the idea of me joining your collective,” Sarah explained to me quickly.
“Well, it’s out of the question,” Jamie said.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“It’s going to distract Ms. Cooper from this job, and she doesn’t need any more distractions.”
What the hell had gotten into him?
“Now hang on a minute,” I said, standing up.
“Joining the board of Heartbreaker Trades, when it starts up, is only going to look good for you, Jamie. Anyway, you’re being awfully paternalistic, aren’t you?
” I was pissed, but more than that, I was confused .
I’d known Jamie professionally for a long time, and I’d never known him to talk to a woman—hell, anybody—like this.
“She’s my employee,” he said. “It’s my call.”
Maybe I should have shut my mouth, given Jamie technically had the power to recommend Cassandra let me go off this sub-contract.
But she’d never do that. And besides, Heartbreaker Plumbing was Reilly Contracting’s go-to plumbing subcontractor.
I’d done every job the company had hired us for faster, better, and with far more satisfied customers than any other outfit in town.
“Jamie,” I said, anger winning out now at his rudeness.
He was being a dick to Sarah, and he was trying to undermine Heartbreaker Trades.
And what I’d told Mitchell last night about Heartbreaker being the dream of my life was dead true.
I wouldn’t have counted Jamie as one of the men I was creating the collective to protect women from—not by a long shot.
“The last time we talked,” I said, “you were all for Heartbreaker Trades. You said yourself you’d been wanting more women in trades for years. It’s why you hired Sarah, wasn’t it?”
“Seamus hired Sarah,” Jamie snapped.
For a moment, the room was silent. Even Jamie, grimaced.
I was just opening my mouth to tell him off completely when Sarah spoke first. “Jamie. I’m joining the collective. I believe in what Winona’s doing, and I believe in the importance of women on job sites. If you don’t, then I’m not sure we’re a good fit anymore.”
Jamie’s face drained of color. “That’s not what I’m trying to do here.”
“Then what exactly are you trying to do?” I asked.
Cher cleared her throat. She’d been carefully staying out of it until now, but her nostrils flared, which was always a sign she was going to hand someone their ass.
Fuck yes, Cher.
“Would it help if I reminded you about what Sarah’s involvement will be at Heartbreaker?
” Cher asked. She looked somehow more commanding sitting down than we did standing up, with her ankle resting on her knee and hands steepled under her chin.
“This innovative partnership will rely on the combined efforts…”
Bless her. As Jamie looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, Cher rattled off all the ways Heartbreaker was going to revolutionize trades, and how board members would be directly involved in changing the future.
“This is your one opportunity, as a dick-haver, to get in on this on the ground floor.”
I laughed out loud at that. Jamie glowered, his jaw popping. But I’d never felt more validated in where this dream was going. I was so very proud of both my friends.
But I was also suddenly desperate to see Mitchell.
It hadn’t been brave leaving him the way I did this morning.
It had been a cheap attempt at trying to make things hurt less.
But it was going to hurt no matter what, and seeing Jamie so tied up in his dysfunctional feelings made me miss Mitchell as if he was already gone.