Ryder
It’s Emily’s birthday, and I’m waiting at the asshole’s door. For him to get gone. I heard him come in late last night. I’m a light sleeper; my brain clicks on with the softest noise.
He’s moving around the room. But I have heard no voices.
The door clicks open. Thayer stares up at me. He’s never told me to move back or get out of his way. Like every other morning, he grunts at me and shuffles away. Moreover, what is he doing back from London when he told Oliver he wouldn’t be here?
“Good to see you too.” I close the door behind him, expecting to see Emily leaning against the headboard or at least pretending to be asleep.
The blinds are closed along with the birthday princess’s eyes.
Normally, I would jump on the bed and wake her up.
But everyone deserves to sleep in on their birthday if they want.
My childhood was anything but normal. But my birthday?
On my birthday, my parents did their best to make me a normal kid.
As normal as a prepubescent enrolled in an MBA at Harvard can be.
I scroll on my phone for a minute before I’m bored.
And spend the rest of my time running analyses of different plans that can get us out of this stupid conundrum we’re in.
I’m not giving up. There is a better solution.
Maybe it’s a good thing I’m no longer running my company anymore.
I’m slipping. My company’s in good hands.
Many sets of good hands. Trusting one person?
No checks and balances? That’s how you end up with a business that goes down the drain like Rockwell-Harding.
The number of times I tied the lines of Rocky’s yacht and he said “good job, son” to me?
Hundreds. The number of times my company beat him to the pot of gold at the end of the market rainbow?
Thousands. Wonder where he’d be if he’d had the sense to retire at twenty-nine?
Emily stirs. She’s in that stage of light sleep where you’re awake but don’t realize it yet. I move next to the bed and toe my shoes off. The mattress sinks under my weight, and I ease over to her side. My head presses into Thayer’s pillow.
Her eyes snap open wide. “You’re not Thayer.”
“I’m not. Happy Birthday, Em.” I lean in and kiss her cheek.
Her face softens from shock to a content smile. “I was having a nice dream.”
“Oh, yeah? Of what?”
There’s an instant flush to her neck. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Oh, that kind of dream. Now I definitely want to hear about it.” My former CFO used to hate my morning chats with my assistant, Carter.
We had a ritual: he’d fill me in on his dreams before running down my schedule for the day.
The CFO hated it. “Such a fucking waste of time, Dempsey,” he’d say as he closed the door on Carter.
“Dream of fish and you’ll get married. Dream of falling and you’ll lose money.
Eat in a dream and you’re going to die.”
“Well, I’m keeping this one to myself,” Emily says.
“Okay, well. You’re the birthday girl. You get what you want today.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Well, you get what’s mostly reasonable.” I wiggle my eyebrows.
“Okay.” She reaches for me.
But I put my hand on her chest. “First.” I pull my present for her out of my back pocket.
I had it overnighted. Well, sort of. I had an artist in New York make it.
It was supposed to be ready last week, but instead I had to fly a courier to London yesterday.
I’m normally frugal to a fault. But having billions in the bank means I can buy a business class seat for a courier to have things when I want them.
And with my charitable giving, there’s no guilt when I do spend my money the way I want to.
I’ve made numerous anonymous donations to Emily’s foundation.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.” She presses it against her pink nightgown, pushing up her breasts.
“I know. But I wanted to.”
She sits up, and I do too. She’s leaning against the headboard. “Can I open it?”
“Please.” I move around, facing her. My crisscrossed knee presses on her leg.
She pulls back the newspaper I wrapped it in this morning. “I love the recycled gift paper.”
“I knew you would.”
The small black box with no logo doesn’t tell her it’s from Flore, one of the most sought-after jewelry designers in the world right now. They made a pop star’s engagement ring and instantly became the go-to designers. They use recycled parts from broken antique pieces to create new designs.
“Oh, Ryder.” She holds the box up. “This isn’t from . . .” The lid isn’t even cracked yet. “Ryder, it’s too much! You shouldn’t have.”
“Open the box.” Of course she knows who they are and how much they cost. I didn’t think that part through. She clouds my judgement.
“It’s too much. I can’t.” She tries to hand me the box back without opening it.
“I have a friend who works there. I got a ‘friends and family’ discount. Please, it’s a gift. It doesn’t matter how much or little it costs. I’m giving it freely.” It’s almost not a lie—it’s a partial ownership discount. Carter said to get a rush job we had to buy into the business.
“Okay. I mean thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Open it already.” My leg shakes the bed.
I don’t have nerves. I haven’t in a long time.
When you’re a twelve-year-old college freshman, you have to bottle up your nerves.
And when you’re the youngest person in the room running a half-billion-dollar company, there’s no time for nerves.
You have to vanquish them, or you’ll be taken down.
But right now, my insides are shaking as if I’m dehydrated from a four-hour snowmobile ride through the backcountry close to the Canadian border at home.
I woke up nights ago after our time at the pub and had a vision of a dragonfly.
That’s what Em is to me: iridescent and free-floating on the wind.
A symbol of hope and the future. Fuck, I hope it’s my future.
I’ve heard “no” a lot in my life. It’s led to my not listening to it—another habit caused by being the youngest person in the room.
If you don’t listen to the word no and just do whatever you want, most people are too tired to contradict you.
Rules are there to be guidelines, not cages.
Forget the rules. Testing rules is how change happens. It works sometimes—sometimes you get a clusterfuck. But the rules are set by rich old men. Like the ones who built Havenwood Hall. This place has been owned for hundreds of years by people who set the rules, only to break them themselves.
If this is the only way I get her? I’m here to take an axe to societal laws.
Because there are three guys who all want Emily.
There are rules against it, cultural norms. But I don’t care.
So when I woke up from a hard sleep with a vision of a dragonfly landing on my finger, I knew that dragonfly was meant for me.
Years of school have taught me to be practical.
It’s wired my brain to patterns. And that twelve-year-old, he broke the social norms already.
I can break them again. Just like I did when I walked away from the day-to-day operations of my company.
I’d had no desire to end up like my sixty-year-old exhausted peers.
They split their days—on the golf course, winning over their fourth wife with luxury trips and handbags that could feed an entire town for a month, and twisting the rules to their benefit.
I decided if that was the norm, I didn’t want it.
I’ve never been normal, so why start now?
And staring at the dragonfly on my finger, I could feel it hovering there as I woke up, the lightest touch.
I got on the phone, shocking the heck out of my assistant.
I haven’t spoken to him in a month. Short, distinct emails are the way we get things done.
He funnels all the information from people who think they have to talk to me to the people who actually need to talk to me.
His voice shook with confusion. He started off by asking if anyone had died.
I explained exactly what I wanted. And for a minute, I thought he’d tell me no. He never tells me no.
Damn, what’s in the box is perfect. I nudge the package in Emily’s hand. I have patience for a lot of things, but right now I am going to explode if she doesn’t open it soon.
A wiry smile lifts the corner of her lips.
And she slowly tugs at the corner of the bow.
It’s not as perfect as it was before I opened the box to get a look at it.
Good enough. She’s torturing me with how slowly she pulls on the blue satin ribbon.
“This is really painful for you, isn’t it? ” she asks, pulling even slower.
I reach around her, trying to grab it to open it with speed. But she shifts her shoulders away from me, cuddling the box on her lap. “No take-backs.” She laughs.
I hold my finger up next to her rib cage, pretending to tickle her.
“Oh, you’re looking for a battle, Mr. Dempsey?” The box slides from her lap to the duvet, and her fingers grip her knees, her blue eyes glowing with mischief.
“Okay, okay. Do it at your own pace.” I throw my hands in the air. “As slow as you like.”
Her smile softens, and she wiggles her eyebrows at me. “I’m excited.”
“Me too.”