Chapter 36
DANE
Lucas practically shoved me out of the office, his hand firm on my shoulder as he guided me toward the elevator. I didn’t resist. The fight had drained out of me the second Keith mentioned Ina’s name.
The elevator ride down was silent, Lucas watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Concern, maybe. Or disappointment.
Maybe fear. He thought I was about to snap. Maybe he was worried I was going to snap on him.
We stepped out onto the street, and the cold air hit me like a slap. I hadn’t realized how overheated I’d gotten during the confrontation. I was very literally hot around the collar.
“Walk,” Lucas said, and started moving.
I followed because I didn’t know what else to do.
We walked for three blocks in silence before Lucas finally spoke. “You want to tell me what that was about?”
“Keith’s an asshole.”
“Keith’s always been an asshole. That’s not news.” He glanced at me. “But you’ve never come that close to actually hitting him before.”
“He deserved it.”
“Maybe. Probably.” Lucas stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to change. “But that’s not really why you’re angry, is it?”
I didn’t answer because I knew he was right. I wasn’t angry at Keith, not really. I was angry at myself. Angry that I’d screwed up so badly with Ina. Angry that I’d let fear dictate my actions instead of just being honest.
“She quit,” I said finally.
“I heard.”
“Norma is going to offer her the matchmaking position.”
“That’s good, right? That solves the conflict-of-interest problem.”
“She’s not going to take it.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Why would she? She can’t stand to be in the same room as me.”
“Can you blame her?”
“No.”
We walked another block. I watched people hurrying past, wrapped in their own lives with their own problems. A couple walked by holding hands and laughing about something. I felt a sharp pang of envy that made my chest ache.
“You love her?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah. I really do.”
We ended up at a dive bar that Lucas apparently knew well. It was the kind of place where the beer was cheap and the lighting was dim and nobody cared if you looked like you were having an existential crisis.
Which I was.
I was most definitely having some kind of crisis.
We sat in a corner booth with two pints. For a long time, Lucas didn’t say anything. Just let me sit there with my thoughts, which were spiraling in increasingly destructive directions.
“How long have we known each other?” Lucas asked.
I looked up. “What?”
“How long? Ballpark.”
“Twenty-five years. Why?”
“Because in those twenty-five years, I’ve watched you do some pretty incredible things.
Teach yourself to hide your accent so well that people forget you weren’t born here.
Graduate top of your class. Build a company from nothing.
Become a billionaire before you were thirty-five.
” He took a sip of his beer. “You’ve spent your entire life trying to prove yourself.
To prove you belonged here, that you deserved your success, that you were more than just an immigrant kid from a working-class family. ”
“Lucas, I don’t need my biography laid out. I lived it.”
“You’ve proven yourself. Over and over again. You can stop now.”
I frowned. “Stop what?”
“Stop pushing people away. Stop treating every relationship like it’s going to be taken from you if you’re not perfect enough.
Or not good enough.” He leaned forward. “You’ve spent so long building walls to protect yourself that you forgot how to let people in.
And when someone finally broke through, you panicked and pushed her away before she could leave first.”
I wanted to argue and tell him he was wrong.
But maybe.
A guy gets burned enough times, he starts to pick up on a few things, like how to protect himself. I took a sip of the beer and tried to ignore the fact it was a tad warm.
“I’m not trying to make you feel worse than you already do,” Lucas continued. “I’m trying to make you see that you have a choice here. You can keep doing what you’ve always done—stay safe, control the situation and stay alone. Or you can take a risk.”
“I did take a risk. And look where it got me.”
“You took half a risk. You let yourself fall for her, but you kept one foot out the door the whole time. You told Keith it was all fake to protect yourself. You kept looking for proof that it would work out instead of just trusting that it would.” He fixed me with a look that said he was not going to tolerate my usual bull shit. He knew me too well.
I grunted something incoherent. He was throwing a lot at me and it was going to take me a few seconds to catch up.
“So let me ask you something,” Lucas said, leaning back and tilting his head to the side. I suddenly felt like I was sitting on a couch in a therapist’s office. “What do you want?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “Ina.”
“Then what are you doing sitting here with me?”
“She won’t talk to me. She quit. She told me she’s done.” I shrugged. “I have to respect that.”
“Ehh, grovel. Show up at her door and don’t leave until she listens to you.”
“Lucas, that’ll just piss her off. She doesn’t want to see me.”
He laughed. “Are you going to let her get away? Are you going to spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you’d just been brave enough to fight for her?”
“No.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
“The board. If I go all in on this and I choose her over everything else, I could lose the company.”
Lucas leaned back. “Is that something you’re willing to do?”
I opened my mouth to say no. I couldn’t just throw it away for a relationship that might not even work out.
“Yes.” My eyes widened as I heard myself say the word.
Lucas smiled. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The moment you realized that losing Ina would be worse than losing everything else.” He raised his beer. “Took you long enough.”
I laughed for the first time in days. “I’m an idiot.”
“Yep. But you’re my idiot, and I’m going to help you fix this.” He set down his beer. “Here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to put Keith in his place. He’s been a problem for too long, and you’ve let it slide because you were old friends.”
“I already told him off. Isn’t that why I’m sitting here drinking shitty beer with you?”
“I’m not talking about telling him off. I’m talking about actually dealing with him. Fire him. Force him out. Whatever it takes. He’s toxic and he’s never going to stop causing problems.”
I nodded slowly. Keith had been my friend—or at least, I’d thought he was my friend. But Lucas was right. Keith was a problem I’d ignored for too long.
“And then?” I asked.
“Then you go get the girl. Grand gesture. Big speech. Whatever it takes to make her believe you.” Lucas stood. “Come on. You need to go.”
“Where?”
“To Ina’s apartment. Where else?”
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside her building. On the way over, I’d been psyching myself up, but now that I was at her stoop, I was absolutely terrified.
I climbed the steps, my heart pounding, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to say. Five floors should have been more than enough to time to sketch a rough outline, ready some bullet points, but nothing was coming to me.
I just knew I was doing the right thing. Every step closer to her made the hollow ache in my chest feel less fatal.
I knocked on the door and waited.
The door opened, and Abby stood there looking at me like I was something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Lame Kavanagh from Stupid’s Arrow.”
Rude as Abby was, part of me appreciated Ina had such a good friend to look out for her. “Look, I totally deserve that, but I’m trying to make things right.”
“You’ve got some nerve showing up here,” she said.
“I know. But I need to talk to Ina.” I gave her my best puppy dog eyes. “Please?”
“She’s not home.”
My shoulders sagged. “When will she be back?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I need to talk to her.”
“Why?” Her expression could melt steel. I realized I was going to have to work for this.
“I need to talk to her,” I repeated.
“Yeah, you said that already. And I said she’s not home. We could do this dance all day.” Abby tilted her head, studying me like I was a particularly interesting specimen of pond scum. “But let’s say she was home. Let’s say I went and got her right now. What would you say to her?”
“That I love her. That I was an idiot. That I want to fix this.”
“Wow. Groundbreaking. I’m sure that will fix everything.” Abby’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You know how many times I’ve heard that exact speech from guys who screwed up? At least a dozen. And you know what happened to those guys?”
“What?”
“Absolutely nothing. Because words are cheap, Kavanagh. Actions are what matter.”
I ran a hand through my hair, frustration building. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to prove you’re not just another asshole who’s going to break my friend’s heart.” She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her. “Ina came to New York looking for love. Real, magical, fairytale love. And you made her believe she found it. Then you ripped it away.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“To do what? Sweet-talk your way back into her bed?” Abby moved closer, poking me in the chest with her finger.
“Let me tell you something about Ina. She’s the kindest, most genuine person I’ve ever met.
She sees the best in people even when they don’t deserve it.
She believed in you when everyone else said you were a cold, heartless robot. ”
I winced because that was accurate.
“And you know what you did?” Another poke to my chest. “You proved everyone right. You treated her like she was just another transaction.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I don’t care what you meant. I care what you did.
” She crossed her arms again. “So here’s what’s going to happen.
You’re going to stand here and convince me, not Ina, that you actually love her.
That this isn’t just about your ego being bruised because someone finally said no to the great Dane Kavanagh. ”
I stared at her. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. You want to get past me? Prove you’re worth a damn.”
I took a breath, trying to figure out where to start. This was not how I envisioned this going. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me why you love her. And it better be more than ‘she’s beautiful’ or ‘the sex was great’ or I will kick you in the balls so hard little Dane won’t be coming out to play anytime soon.”
I involuntarily reached down to cover my junk.
She grinned. “I’m waiting.”
I stared at Abby and wondered if I’d accidentally wandered into some alternate universe. Was this what normal people did?
“You’re actually serious about this,” I said.
“As a heart attack.” She laughed at me. “Did you really show up here without knowing what you’re going to say? Because all you’ve done is ask me what to do, and I’m not here to be your matchmaker.”
I tried to remember the last time I’d been this uncomfortable. Maybe never. Standing in a dingy hallway being threatened with testicular violence by a woman who barely came up to my shoulder? That was a new experience.
“I love Ina because she makes me want to be better,” I started, then immediately cringed at how generic that sounded.
Abby’s expression confirmed my assessment. “If that’s it, I’m going back inside.”
“I’m not good at this.”
“Yeah, it’s crazy. I thought you had dated a lot.” Abby shrugged. “Clearly they weren’t after you for your personality.”
I took a breath and tried to organize my thoughts. She was right. I’d shown up to a gunfight without any bullets. Now I was desperately scrambling around my brain for ammo.
“Ina laughs at things that aren’t funny,” I said. “She laughs, not because she’s being polite, but because she thinks I’m amusing. No one has ever thought I was amusing.”
Abby’s expression softened slightly. “That’s kind of something, but if all you care about is someone laughing at your jokes, get a pet hyena. It would be less mean than Ina right now.”
“Okay, she gave me a ridiculous pink mug before we’d even met and I use it every morning.
It’s the only splash of color in my entire apartment.
” It was true. “Actually, she’s the only splash of color in my entire life.
Everything was black and white and data-driven before her. She made me see things differently.”
Abby nodded, which I thought was a good sign, but it could also mean she was deciding just how much force to put into her kick to my balls. “Continue.”
I kept talking, outlining all the things I loved about Ina. How I was weirdly obsessed with the back of her head, from watching her from my office. Yes, it was a little odd, but everyone’s path to love was paved with different bricks.
How the gifts she gave me resonated because it was clear she knew me well. How she knocked everyone dead at that gala in that blue dress. The one so hot we left almost immediately after she showed up.
I told Abby how much I missed Ina, and how empty my days were without her smile.
Abby started to clap, slowly and lightly at first, then building up to genuine applause.
What in the actual fuck was happening?
Abby stopped and looked at me with a smile. “Good for you. You’re not just a calculator with a nice car. You’re a real human being. And I absolutely think you should say all of that to Ina.”
I nodded, relieved. “So can I come in?”
“She isn’t here,” Abby said.
“She’s not here! You put me through all of that and she isn’t here?”
She shrugged. “I told you. I needed to make sure you were legit. I’ll allow you to talk to her, but I’m warning you, I wear steel-toed shoes. I will kick your ass and other parts.” She pointed at her eyes and then me. “I’m watching you.”
She went back inside and closed the door.
I stared at the door and tried to figure out what it meant that I had passed her test.