2. Sully
Sully
“ H ellooo!”
I wince at the sound of Madame Esmeralda’s voice.
The high-pitched greeting instantly sends my blood pressure rising.
The psychic who lives above our shithole of a law office is always dropping in unannounced.
Her gold bracelets jingle as she peeks in, her head tilted, her curly black hair—and that haunting white streak—bouncing.
Cal, my brother and law partner, constantly talks about a ring this woman supposedly wears. He swears he can never look away from it. I, on the other hand, am always caught off guard by her haunted hair and violet eyes. They have to be contacts.
“Callahan.” Just his name sounds like a song as it leaves her lips. The woman is a walking psychic stereotype, from the layers of flowing floor-length dresses from the 1970s to her big hoop earrings, to the airy, sometimes chilling voice. “We will need to reschedule our session.”
My brother’s shoulders slump. Why he’s disappointed that she isn’t going to babble at him for thirty minutes is ridiculous to me, but he’s bought into her so-called predictions, hook, line, and sinker .
“I know it’s disappointing, but it’s for the best. Your path is stable.”
Successful scam artists tend to focus on telling people what they want to hear and talking in riddles. Madame E is good at both.
With a shake of my head, I drown out their discussion.
My workload is unmanageable now that we’ve moved into my dad’s old office in Jersey.
The three partners—Cal, Brian and I—are required to be here, and by some miracle, we convinced Lo, our paralegal, to come too.
She’s the only reason we’re keeping our heads above water.
Until recently, we ran one of the biggest family law firms in New York City, with over one hundred support staff and associates.
I suppose technically, we still do. But thanks to my father’s idiotic trust provisions, the four of us are stuck working in a rat-infested office building in Jersey for the next year.
Fuck, we have so much work to do, yet Madame E has once again distracted Cal and Lo with stories of the ghost she swears lives in this building.
“Enough,” I bark before they can fall deeper into her nonsense.
Instantly, I’m hit in the side of the head with a small orange ball. It falls to Lo’s desk and bounces along the edge until it falls to the floor. My arsehole brother has such good aim he hardly needs to look at me to nail me with that bloody basketball.
“Wanker.” I snatch it off the floor before Cal can. “No more balls.”
He smirks. “It seems Mr. Grumpypants hasn’t had his happy-nappy today.”
While Madame E chuckles, Lo groans. “No. That one doesn’t work.”
Cal shrugs. “I like it.”
Of course he does. He’s thoroughly annoyed us all with his little rhymes since he decided walkie-talkie was such a fun word.
It’s baffling to me that we share DNA.
“I’m done.” I’m not sure why I’m even standing here anymore. I came into Lo’s office to ask her about a complaint we need served, and she confirmed it’s done, so it’s time to get back to my office and the peace and quiet it’ll give me. As I turn for the door, Madame E steps into my path.
She tips her head, that single white streak of hair catching my eye. Lips pursed, she narrows her purple eyes on me.
I try not to squirm under her gaze.
“Sullivan,” she says, her tone serious. “You need to get ready. The incubator is on the way.”
See? Riddles .
“Incubator?” Cal’s face lights up. “Are we getting chickens next?”
“No.” Lo is the one who practically shouts the single word, but it might as well have been me. Over the last few months, my brother has brought home forty-odd plants, at least half a dozen fish, and an oversized cat, all because of this damn woman’s riddles. “You promised no more things.”
“This is for Sullivan. Nothing to concern you.” Madame E turns and sashays out.
For me? There is no bloody way I’m bringing home a chicken or any other type of feathered creature. Especially since Cal’s enormous cat, one of Madame E’s more outlandish suggestions, would probably eat it.
“Wait.” Cal rushes after the old woman, with Lo on his heels.
“For fuck’s sake, let the woman go. We need to work.” I stalk to my office and slam the door. They won’t listen to me, but that’s no longer my problem. Inside my quiet office, I can get back to work so that when T.J. gets out of school, I can focus on him.
Since I’m forced to live in Jersey while my wife and son remain in the flat we once shared in New York City, I don’t get nearly as much time with him as I want. If I have it my way, that’ll change soon.
This move was forced upon me by my father’s will.
Even in death, the man is a force to be reckoned with.
Maybe it should have come as a surprise that he was in bed with a woman not even half his age—hell, she’s practically half my age—when he died, but alas, it was completely on brand for Terrance Murphy. The will is what truly shocked us all.
Before the reading, we were all under the impression that it would be straight forward.
He’d leave the firm to his two sons and our best friend Brian, who’s always been like another son to our father.
The firm he spent his entire life building, elevating it from a two-person operation in Jersey to the current massive office in New York.
Technically, he did all of those things.
He just put the firm into a trust first and included a bunch of ridiculous stipulations for us to keep it.
Brian, Cal, and I can eventually take over, but in order to do so, we have to spend a year in New Jersey, working and living in the building where he long ago started out.
If that wasn’t enough, our spouses and children are required to live here with us as well.
And getting my wife, who filed for divorce just months before my father’s death, to agree to leave her beautiful New York penthouse for a run-down mouse-infested flat in Jersey hasn’t been easy.
She’d rather finalize the divorce than ever set foot in this building.
But I have hope that I can change her mind.
Hell, all I have is hope. I cannot lose everything.
For months, I’ve been haunted by the idea that I drove away the one person who has always been there for me because I focused too much on providing for my family and too little on actually being with them.
I’ve made it my mission to show Sloane that isn’t true anymore, that I can be better.
But with this bloody trust issue thrown into the mix, it’s become exponentially harder.
If I abandon the idea of living in Jersey, if I stay in New York, where Sloane and T.J.
live, I’ll lose the firm, and won’t be able to provide the life they deserve.
Eyes closed, I run a hand over my face. I’ve spent enough time berating myself. There’s no point in doing it again. I need to focus all my energy on doing better.
On the other side of the flimsy hollow door, the bell chimes. Then the sound of my favorite voice floats down the hall.
“ Where is he ?”
“Sloaney,” Cal calls.
“ Where is he ?”
The angry tone should probably worry me, but any fear is drowned out by the knowledge that Sloane made the forty-minute drive from the city to see me.
If Madame E had said Sloane was coming, then maybe I would have stuck around and listened to her.
That’s the kind of foresight I’d prefer.
Not the nonsense she was spouting about an incubator.
I’m standing, ready to round my desk so I can greet her, when she storms in, blue eyes spitting fire.
She stomps—impressive in five-inch heels—across the room, straight to me. “ You ,” she accuses, poking me in the chest.
I have no idea what I’ve done this time, but it got her here, so I can’t be too upset about it.
My lips twitch, but I know better than to smile when she’s this angry. “Hi.”
“Come.” She clutches my burgundy tie and yanks me toward the door.
The glare on her face says she’s upset, but fuck if I’m not a little turned on.
There was a time when she’d drag me out of my office by the tie for sex.
It still baffles me, how we got from that to divorce papers, but I’ll do anything to get that kind of passion back.
Sloane has always inspired me to be my best. From the moment I met her, she blew me away.
Her brains and her fierce attitude drew me in and quickly led me to obsession.
The first time I saw her argue in torts class, I knew I’d met my match.
For more than a decade, she challenged me to be better. A better attorney. A better man.
But for the last few years, I’ve been failing her.
“We have to talk.” She drags me down the hall and into the supply cupboard.
As the door shuts behind us, dousing almost all the light, she tosses her purse onto the counter. Even in the darkened space, I can make out every detail of her expression. Probably because I’ve been obsessed with this woman for half my life.
Her dark hair is a bit of a mess, but the contrast between it and her light skin tone and stunning blue eyes literally steals my breath every time I look at her. My beautiful Irish wife captures the attention in every room she enters.
I’m still dumbstruck by the sight of her when she crosses her arms over her chest and huffs a hard breath out of her nose. Bollocks. Whatever I did must really be something.
Her nostrils flare as she inhales and exhales, like she’s trying to calm herself. “Do you remember that night back in September?”
I nod but keep my mouth shut, afraid that if I speak, I’ll wax poetically about it, and that’ll only send her storming out.
“The night I brought T.J. over for his first sleepover in this shithole? When we took the boys to dinner?”
I nod again. Hell yes, I remember that night. Vividly. Although dinner with T.J. and Murphy isn’t the part that’s replayed in my mind constantly since.