Chapter 11
JESSE
It had been a while since I’d been this hungover, and that was really saying something.
Sunlight itself seemed violent today, out to get me in the worst possible way.
It came in through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of my condo like it had been sent to earth to destroy my brain, slicing straight through my skull and setting up camp behind my eyes.
“Holy fuck,” I groaned, slinking through the space like I was actively being hunted.
Every step hurt, my head, my back, and my dignity. I squinted at the kitchen and kept moving, even though it felt about three miles away. One slow, miserable step at a time, I finally made it to the counter and braced myself against it like I’d just completed a marathon.
Coffee. I need coffee. Except I already had coffee. When I looked down at my hand, there was a full mug in it. Well, that’s a definite win.
I took a cautious sip, immediately regretting it when my stomach rebelled, but I took another anyway because I wasn’t a quitter. My real goal in making my way back to the kitchen, however, had been a bottle of painkillers.
It was possible that I had one here somewhere. Unfortunately, the boxes littering my living room, hallway, and even the kitchen were a testament to the fact that I still hadn’t unpacked since I’d moved back here from Miami.
Being COO of a mega-billion-dollar company required a fair amount of travel, and honestly, I wasn’t a materialistic guy. I had plenty of flaws, but that wasn’t one of them.
Nice watches? Sure. Suits? Only at the office. Art and home decor? Nah.
I nudged a box open with my foot and peered into it, but the painkillers didn’t jump out at me. Well, that’s just fantastic.
My phone started ringing. The shrill sound pierced my eardrums from somewhere across the condo.
I froze, closing my eyes briefly like maybe it would stop if I ignored it.
Naturally, it did not. It just kept ringing relentlessly until I’d dragged my ass back across the room, lifting my hands to cover my ears in the hopes that it might help.
Pressure, however, was the enemy, so I dropped them again almost immediately.
Eventually, I realized the ringing was coming from my bedroom, so I headed over that way, stepping over the jeans I’d left in a pile on the floor when I’d come home.
I’d stripped out of them, feeling like I was being suffocated by denim.
Finally, I fished my phone out of the pocket, regretting it the second I bent over, but I smiled when I saw Will’s name on my screen. Sometimes, I swore my twin could sense when I was in distress. Like he had some kind of sixth sense when it came to my suffering.
I pressed the phone to my ear and collapsed onto the edge of the bed, exhausted after that trek across the condo. “What?”
“Are you sick or hungover?” he asked, sounding way too amused. “Because you sound terrible.”
“If you think I sound bad, you don’t want to see what I look like right now.”
He laughed. “What did you do?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to piece together the flashes I remembered of last night. “I was with Jacqueline. It turns out she moved over here for work. I think we might’ve been planning a heist at some point.”
“A heist?” Another burst of laughter shot out of him. “What were you going to steal, another bottle of whiskey?”
“No.” I scoffed, groaning when even that hurt. “We were going to France to steal a dog from an archaeologist.”
Will didn’t say anything for a second. “I think you’d better start from the beginning.”
“The beginning is a little hazy,” I admitted. “I remember drinks, laughing, talking about her ex, and something about him being an academic. I’m not sure why, but it felt like good news at the time.”
“Good news for what?”
“For me,” I said. “I think I might’ve been planning to fight him.”
Will choked—probably on a cup of tea—and I pulled the phone away from my ear, wincing.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “That sounds right.”
I pushed myself up, grabbed my laptop off the dresser, and flipped it open, pulling up my messages with one eye half closed. Just like I’d expected, I found a string of texts to my pilot, Adam. They were mostly incoherent, though. “Shit, I tried messaging Adam.”
“Oh, great. What did Adam have to say about that?” Will asked, sounding like he already knew the answer.
I scrolled to the last message in the thread, sent from the pilot to me early this morning. “He reminded me to drink a Liquid IV.”
“That’s solid advice.” He paused for a beat. “What made you get this shitfaced? You’ve been pretty chill since you went back to Chicago and took over my life for me.”
He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t drink like this anymore. I wasn’t quite as respectable as Alex would like, but I wasn’t a train wreck either.
“Why did Dad and Zach sign an NDA at the direction of the Morris family?” I asked suddenly, finally remembering where it had all begun.
Will fell into a stunned sort of silence.
“What is it, Will?”
There was muffled movement at his end, like he’d turned away, followed by a quiet murmur, Eliza, probably, and then a door closing. So he wants privacy for this. Even from her. That’s not encouraging.
“How do you know about that?” he asked a moment later.
I scoffed. “Why am I always the last to know everything?” It took exactly one second before I backtracked, already knowing why I was constantly left out. I’d left myself out for a few years. “Never mind. Scratch that,” I muttered. “I already know.”
I’d gone out on my own, not caring at the time that it had meant being left out of the loop. In fact, I’d desperately wanted out of said loop. No matter how much I regretted it now, I couldn’t exactly blame them for not having told me when I hadn’t wanted to be told.
“Adeline’s marriage was arranged as a union of business and convenience,” he said. “Her family does things a lot like ours, so you know how it goes. Preserving the family legacy. All that fun stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Zach wasn’t about it,” he said. “Not at all, actually.”
“Of course, he wasn’t. God, she was his girlfriend at the time. Where did the NDA—” Before I could even finish the question, my phone buzzed in my hand with another incoming call. Alex this time.
I groaned. “I’ve got to go. I think Big Brother’s spidey senses are tingling.”
“Drink water,” Will said. “Eat some carbs.”
“Don’t tell me how to live my life.”
He laughed. “Clearly, someone should. Good luck with Alex.”
“Thanks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.” I pulled the phone away from my ear to take the other call, launching into it without preamble. “What did I do wrong this time?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Nothing that I know of. Have you done something that I should know about?”
“Never. What’s up?”
“You have a dinner tonight,” he said. “Be at Tranquille at seven.”
“Tranquille, as in, the fancy, standing-reservations-only place you keep dragging Zach to? He hates it there, by the way. You should buy the kid a burger sometime.”
“That kid is only three years younger than you,” he said dismissively. “Thankfully, it’s not Zach you’re meeting there tonight anyway. It’s Jordan Stone.”
“A girl Jordan or a boy Jordan?”
He sighed. “Jordan Stone is Angela Stone’s father.”
“Who the fuck is Angela Stone?”
“Your future wife, if you play your cards right,” he said, sounding like his patience was running out. “Angela would look great on your arm at the gala, and I think she’d make a decent wife.”
I blinked too slowly, even my eyelids struggling to keep up. “Are you serious?”
“Of course, I’m serious,” he snapped and it occurred to me then, even through the haze of the hangover, that he wasn’t impatient with me today after all. Alex was stressed, even more so than usual. “I need to get this done, Jesse.”
Irritation curled from deep inside, cutting through the fog lingering from last night. I knew I’d removed myself from the family. I’d admitted that multiple times at this point. I’d made so many mistakes that even I had lost count, but I was here now and I’d had enough.
An idea hit me like a bolt of lightning as I opened my mouth. Love didn’t matter. It could happen. I’d seen it happen, but it wasn’t a prerequisite for marriage in our world like it was to most others. If anything, love was actually a liability.
So why not choose someone who didn’t even believe in love?
“I’ve chosen someone already,” I said. “Tell the Stones that we’re sorry, but the decision has been made.”
Alex was so distracted that he barely seemed to be listening anymore. “Oh, great. Fine. Bring her to the Radley dinner on Thursday with the investors. Their wives will be there. I’ll deal with the reservation tonight. I’ll just cancel.”
I frowned. “Wait, you actually trust me with this decision?” I asked before I could help myself.
If there was ever a moment to watch Alex squirm, this was it.
I knew for a fact that he was going to have things to say about me choosing her of all people.
He wouldn’t like the way it was potentially going to land with the public.
And me? Well, I’d never given a shit what the public thinks of anything.
A fake proposal was all Alex needed from me right now. Something very public to redirect the press so the spotlight was on me instead of Zach. Jacqueline was perfect for the role.
She was fun, smart, and not boring at all. She liked to talk, laugh, argue, and travel. She didn’t look at me like I was a project, a paycheck, or a headline. Just that set her apart from the women I was used to dating, and the fact that she wasn’t stuck-up either? That was gold.
Best of all, she didn’t believe in love either.
I didn’t remember much of our drunken night together but that fact had cemented itself in my mind—because I also thought love was for suckers.
The thrill of the chase was temporary, fleeting, and everyone got bored of their partners eventually.
The smartest way to approach this was to keep the relationship fake and without emotions getting involved.
That meant Jacqueline was the perfect woman for me.
There was only the one small but glaring issue, which was that she detested the Westwood family as a whole.
I could make this work somehow. For my brother. Even if a part of me just wanted an excuse to see her again. To find a way to get to know her better.
Alex suddenly spoke again. Or maybe he’d been talking all along and I just hadn’t heard him. “Don’t screw this up, Jesse.”
I smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He hung up without even really ending the call, just suddenly gone like he’d never been on the other end of the line at all. I stared at my phone for a second to make sure he really wasn’t there anymore, then dropped it on the bed beside me and lay back.
The first hiccup was that I didn’t have her number. I hadn’t asked for it—or maybe I had and I just didn’t remember, but either way, I knew where to find her. I just wasn’t going to go looking today.
Today, I was going to survive. Maybe find the painkillers.
Come Monday, however, once I was no longer on the verge of system collapse, I’d find her and be an engaged man before close of business.
A slow grin spread on my face as I thought about it, because if nothing else, this was definitely going to be interesting.