Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chandler
Tick tock.
I watched the clock like it was a bomb strapped to the boardroom wall. Ten minutes until the event that would change my future.
My attention slipped to my phone, opening my message to Frankie for the hundredth time that morning.
I love you.
It was the first text I sent her every morning since I’d returned to the city earlier this week, and every night, I typed out a book on how the day went. I didn’t want to leave things like this. I wanted her to know it would be okay if I had to be here—okay if I had to focus on this for a little.
Or maybe I was only trying to prove to myself that it would be okay when every minute that passed was evidence stacked that it wouldn’t .
I swiped back and opened up my chat with Tom, catching him just as he was typing out an answer to the message I sent him every morning.
How is she?
His response appeared.
Good today. She says you’re being a stubborn fool.
My jaw locked.
She knows why I have to do this.
No, she doesn’t. You’ve always been a better man than your father.
“Fuck.” With a groan, I reached for the knot in my tie and loosened its strangle around my neck. Even with that, I couldn’t inhale deep.
I’d been after this company for almost three years now, carefully moving the chess pieces on the board. Closing in and cornering GC Holdings until I’d finally forced them here. Checkmate.
Now, all that was left was to deliver the final blow. Watch as they were forced to take my offer, signing over everything that was left of my father. Watch as they gave me the power to absorb it. Destroy it.To wipe him from its history and legacy and prove that I was the better man. Prove to a dead man that he never should’ve left me.
But instead of feeling energized—instead of the buzz I normally felt in the moments before I closed a huge deal—I felt a pit. A hollowness inside my chest that was eating me alive, its teeth sinking through my heart and soul .
Everything about this felt wrong. I felt nothing like the better man, instead, the thought of going through with this deal seemed more and more like a sign of our similarities. It wouldn’t prove that I was better; it would prove that I was exactly like him, a man with no time for the woman who’d loved him and his unborn child.
A soft knock jolted my attention to the door. “Mr. Collins. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Mark Collins are downstairs. Should I send them up?” My secretary, Judy, asked; she knew something was wrong with me. She never would’ve needed to ask this before.
“Yes,” I clipped.
As soon as she closed the door,I reached for my glass of water, only to realize I’d already drunk all of it. Empty. Just like me. Just like I was—would be without her.
I couldn’t do this.
I didn’t want to do this.
The door opened, Judy introducing the four grim-faced suits who followed her in. “Mr. Collins, Mr. Thomas, and…Mr. Collins and their lawyer, Mr. Masters.”
I stood, watching the two majority shareholders of the GC Holdings and their lawyer approach me. My heart beat too hard against my chest, and I swore buttons were going to start flying from my shirt.
You can’t be all business and be here, Chandler. I’m sorry.
It hit me. I wasn’t all business. I was bitter and broken. I wanted to prove I was enough to someone who wasn’t even around to see it—who didn’t deserve to see it. And I wanted to prove I didn’t need anyone, just like my father hadn’t needed me.
And I was wrong about it all.
I thought I admired Frankie’s independence and her strength. Her ingenuity and her determination. And I did. But I fell in love with her confidence. Her self-worth. She never needed to prove who she was or what she deserved—never questioned it, even when it made her break her own heart.
Mom was right. I was a fucking fool.
“Mr. Collins…”
I blinked and realized I was still standing and staring vacantly at the words swimming on the paper in front of me. The deal. The death of my father’s company.
Mr. Thomas glanced at my half-brother and their lawyer and then looked back at me.“Is everything okay?”
“No.” I shook my head slowly. “Everything’s not okay.”
Their eyes went round. “Mr. Collins, we’ve reviewed the deal?—”
“The deal is off.” I picked up the packet of papers and tore it in half.
“Chandler, please.” Mark rose, addressing me out of desperation, his knuckles white at his sides, and I froze. His body trembled. “So, you’ll ruin us because of our father?”
That was the corner I’d backed them into—the choice either bankruptcy or being bought. And I no longer recognized the man who’d done that. I didn’t want to recognize him. And I didn’t want this to be part of the legacy my child would inherit.
“No.” I shook my head.“I have to go, but someone will reach out in the next day or two with the details and the deeds to the five properties I outbid you on. I’m signing them over to you, no strings attached.”
“What—”
“They’re yours. They should be enough to turn the company around.” I yanked my tie loose, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the door.
“Chandler—”
I turned at Mark’s voice and met his gaze. “Let’s do better,” I said, and as soon as I recognized the unspoken agreement in his eyes, I walked out of the room, shouting to Judy to call for my car as I jogged for the elevator.
I didn’t even take a second glance at my office—the room where I’d practically lived for a decade. I wasn’t coming back, and for the first time in days, I took a full breath.
“Chandler, what happened to the deal?” Tom answered on the first ring; I wasn’t surprised he already knew. I had a feeling he would be Judy’s second call after the valet.
“Fuck the deal,” I said, a crazed smile spreading over my face. “I don’t want his business, Tom, and I don’t want to ruin it either.”
“Chandler…”
“All this time, I thought to be better than him meant I had to be better at business. That I had to do more. Own more. Be worth more.” It sounded so stupid now. “But it’s none of that. None of that matters. I told Mark I was transferring over the deeds for the last five properties we took over; it should get them above water again.”
The tires squealed as I pulled out onto the street, heading straight for the highway.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry. I’m just…”
“Proud?”
“I’ve always been proud of you, Chandler. I wouldn’t have worked with you otherwise,” he said, his voice worn soft. “I’ve always been proud of you, but today…today, I get to be happy for you.”
My pulse galloped. For the first time in days, I felt alive. Hopeful. Filled with purpose .
“Tom…” I took a deep breath, one last knot still remaining in my chest. “Why do you think my father willed me the inn?”
I always saw the inn as a burden. A random, decrepit piece of real estate that he’d willed to me like a slap in the face—a reminder in death of how little I’d meant to him in life. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe he saw what I was willing to sacrifice to the grim shadows of success. Maybe he saw what I was becoming—that I was becoming like him. And maybe the inn was meant to make me reconsider.
“I think Geoff had a lot of regrets at the end, not unlike many of us do, but was smart enough to know what happened…what he’d done…it went beyond an apology,” Tom said, carefully parsing every word. “He knew what the inn meant to your mother. I think he hoped it could mean something more for you.”
Sometimes a light isn’t the only way out of the darkness, and sometimes words aren’t the only way of an apology.
“Thanks, Tom,” I said over the lump in my throat.
“Don’t thank me. Just go get your girl.”
My foot settled harder on the gas pedal. “That’s my plan.”
I hung up with Tom as I pulled onto the highway north, the invisible string tugging stronger toward Frankie. Toward home. I went to set my phone in the cupholder, and something crunched underneath it. Muttering a curse, I fished out what was jammed in there, and my heart stumbled when I realized what it was.
The label.
I’d shoved it in there the night I’d left Frankie’s mom’s house five days ago, too upset and frustrated to care about a stupid jam label that was supposed to dictate my future—a future it seemed to be indicating would be free of Frankie.
But this time, when I looked at the scrawled word, I read it differently. Freedom wasn’t freedom from Frankie or a relationship, it was freedom from the weight I’d been carrying all these years. The burden to prove I was better. The expectation that I didn’t just have to be the best, but I had to destroy what was left of my father in the process.
And that was all because of Frankie.
She wasn’t just my heart or my soul or the mother of my child or my future, she was my freedom. She made me free to feel. Free to live. Free to love. And I’d almost fucked it all up. Again.
I reached for my phone once more, my thumb hoveringover her name, itching to call her now and beg. For forgiveness. For her future. For mine.
But it wasn’t enough.
I scrolled down and tapped on another contact instead, my jaw locked tight until the line picked up.
“Hello?”
“Lou, it’s Chandler. I need your help,” I said and didn’t want her to agree before telling her exactly what I was thinking. “I need to borrow the inn.”
“Is this another one of Frankie’s schemes? Because I don’t want to be involved in any more plans. And I don’t want my inn involved?—”
“No, it’s not.” I cut her off. “This is all me. Frankie has no idea. And it’s not a plan. It’s a proposal.”