Ch18_EAA_EBOOK #2
He shook his head, his jaw ticking like he was making a decision. Before I could say anything, he crossed to his window and pulled the curtains open.
He pointed out to the pasture bathed in the blue haze of twilight. “Who do you think owns all that land?”
Where was he going with this? “Um…the company? A family trust?”
Beau turned from the window. “Who owns the company itself? What about this house? And the stocks? And all the other investments? And buildings? And mineral rights?”
My only other guess would have been Beau’s father, but then why would Beau worry about his dad contesting the will? Then my eyes slowly widened as the realization dawned on me.
“Your dad is just the CEO of Fontaine Energy,” I said softly. “But you own it all.”
He stepped around the footboard to stand on the side of the bed closest to me.
“Imagine not only dealing with the death of your grandfather on your 20th birthday, but also finding out that he left you everything. I went from drunkenly puking on the dirty bathroom floor of the frat house to being worth $860 million with a single fucking phone call.”
My internal calculator whirred. I had thought my $98 million Herringbone verdict was an incomprehensibly large amount of money…but Beau’s fortune was worth more than eight of them.
I had always considered Beau rich, but with his family’s money, not his own. Knowing that he was in complete control of nearly a billion dollars before he could legally drink…and his estate was certainly worth even more now…
I wanted to throw up.
Beau placed his hands on the mattress and leaned in, his eyes tightening.
“Everyone I let close to me only wanted a bite out of that fortune. I couldn’t take it anymore.
Dad ran the company, so I just…ran. I traveled the world.
I had five fake names. I crawled through every club and bar I found to escape the deep, cold loneliness. ”
My lip trembled. “You weren’t the only one. I used to toss back shots on a Tuesday night and crawl into bed with anyone just so I could forget that I was working myself to death.”
Even Ashley had never heard me admit that. Had my old firm not fired me, my heart probably would have given out and I would have died at my desk. My ambition was both a drive and a disease, but I didn’t know how to stop.
When you grow up with nothing, nothing is ever enough.
He canted his head. “But did you get arrested? When I was twenty-five, I beat up a guy because I saw him spiking a girl’s drink.
When the cops showed up, they found some party drugs in my pocket and put me in cuffs.
I spent three days in county jail before Mom bailed me out and then covered the whole thing up. ”
Was he trying to scare me? Didn’t he realize I was a lawyer and had seen people do more than just a pocketful of party drugs in an evening?
I leveled his stare. “Do you think I’m going to judge you?”
Beau laughed. “I tell you all my biggest secrets and you think I’m worried about you judging me?”
He leaned in closer, the weight of his palms making the mattress sink deeper. That familiar heat bloomed across my cheeks as his face was mere inches away from mine.
“I don’t care if you judge me, Olivia Adams,” he said softly. “I want to know if you’ll destroy me.”
I was better than to kick a man when he’s down, but the Olivia I had been in the past might have done it. I would have weaponized his secrets and humbled him, sent him crashing down until we were finally at eye-level. I wanted him to be nothing, just like me.
But now that I was a mother, and now that I might have even been Beau’s friend, I could never dream of hurting him.
“If you’re so afraid of me,” I asked in a measured tone, “why tell me everything?”
Beau took in a quiet breath. “Up in the ballroom, you said that at least the Fontaine name means something.” He pushed off the mattress and stood tall, gesturing to the shelves of photos behind him.
“Now you know what the Fontaine name really means. We run. We hide. We guard our money and our truth like dragons in a cave, and we behave just as gruesomely. My name is nothing to be proud of.”
I turned to the shelf of photos, but a flash of blue on the bottom shelf caught my eye.
There, next to a yearbook open to a photo of Beau and I standing with the rest of the debate team, was the sticky note I had left on his birthday coffee months ago.
Next to it, almost like it was a companion to the first one, was my crumpled pink note that read: “Work until your name is on the building!”
I had written that note and pasted it to the bottom of my computer monitor in my old office, dreaming of the day when the firm’s sign read “Parker, Hill, and Adams.” After a lifetime of a name with a bad meaning, I wanted to give it a new story and a better reputation.
My dad might have been a crook, but I wanted to prove to the world that I was worthy enough to have my name on a building, just like Beau.
The twins rolled around inside me. I was about to tell Beau exactly why I wanted to build a new story of my name by giving it to my babies…
but that idea suddenly seemed so shallow.
Neither Annie nor Brady would be just an Adams or a Fontaine, they would be themselves.
They would make their own stories and have their own mistakes and triumphs.
Maybe we both cared too much about winning a battle over a name and not enough about who our babies were going to be. For better or for worse, they were going to have parts of the both of us.
If we were going to truly love our babies, we needed to love ourselves first.
Beau’s eyes locked with mine. “You thought your name made you nothing, but how valuable is the Fontaine name now?” His mouth turned up in a bitter smirk. “What am I really worth?”
The air around us tightened, winding around my lungs like rope, as Beau waited for me to respond. His elbows remained locked as he propped himself up on the mattress, his biceps flexing beneath his sleeves. He was bracing himself for a scathing appraisal from his old rival.
Instead, I reached up and hugged him.
Beau’s chest froze as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, my fingertips running against the soft, waffled fabric of his shirt. His elbows buckled as I pulled him closer to me. My cheek rested against his neck as his scent filled my nose—like a warm winter, evergreen.
The mattress shifted as he sat beside me, freeing his arms to wrap around me with a deep exhale. We held one another in the haunting silence, but I wouldn’t let the ghosts of Beau’s past hurt him again.
“You are worth staying for,” I whispered. “You always were.”
He let out another deep exhale against my hair and tightened his arms around me. His quiet voice rumbled in his chest as he responded, “And so are you.”
We were the kids without fathers, but just for a few minutes, we had each other.
My eyes started to get misty, but I was so damn tired of crying. How long had I spent fighting the numbness of loss that I completely neglected to leave room for joy?
The twins were coming, after all.
Slowly, I released Beau and leaned back. He unlocked his arms but rested his hands on either side of me, making the mattress dip.
I looked into those pretty blue eyes and tried to swallow away the tightness in my throat. “This pregnancy has been hard, so hard on the both of us, but…”
I choked down a sob, but that didn’t stop a tear from falling. Slowly, he reached forward. He wiped away the tear on my cheek with his thumb and tucked a stray hair behind my ear.
“I’m sick of soaking in my own misery,” I whispered, choosing not to add that I was sure Beau was tired of my misery too. “I want to…I want to do something fun. I think we’ve spent so much time surviving that we forgot how to live.”
His hand lingered by my ear, his fingertips lightly smoothing my hair back. A soft smile played on his lips and I had to calm the fluttering in my stomach.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “I’ve worried about you for months, but maybe hiding in the house wasn’t good for either of us.”
I chewed on my lip and bashfully looked away. “I…I liked being in the house, that’s not it.” I glanced down at my belly peeking out of my nursing top. “It might sound silly, but…I want to get dressed up again. Living in lounge wear hasn’t been great for my morale.”
Beau lowered his hand and let out a hum of consideration. I glanced up to find him chewing on his tongue, his eyes fixed on a nondescript point on the floor.
Whatever decision he was making, it wasn’t an easy one.
After a heartbeat, he looked up and gave me a half smile. “All right, it’s a date. You’d better brush up on your dancing skills, sugar.”