Chapter 7
NATE
Alex and I barely made it through the front door of our father’s house before we were ushered into the study.
Despite the large windows overlooking the lake, walking into this room always felt like I’d been sentenced to prison for a social crime I hadn’t committed but my family always seemed convinced I had.
Dad sat behind his desk, his silver hair perfectly styled and his glasses perched low on his nose. He didn’t even look up from the Hinds’ projections spread out on his desk.
Alex must’ve sent them through this morning. Technically, Dad might be retired and living in Florida, but he’d come home for this deal. Westwoods tended to do that, coming out of retirement if a deal was big enough to justify it. Even long after they’d stopped personally signing the checks.
“Boys,” he said happily, his face all tanned and glowing these days in a way I’d literally never seen before he’d moved. “I see we’re progressing nicely on the Hinds account. Talk to me.”
We both sat down, quickly giving him an update on the bid structure first, the partnership logistics, and the long-term return strategy. He asked a few pointed questions, and as CEO, Alex answered most of them.
I filled in the gaps where necessary, but twenty minutes later, we’d exhausted Hinds and all other business talk. Assuming the meeting was over, I was already moving to stand when Dad leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“That Vanderhaul girl,” he said casually. “She seems rather intelligent.”
Alex nodded. “She is.”
Dad looked at him. “She’ll be useful in these negotiations?”
“Absolutely,” Alex assured him. “It’s only been a few days, but she’s already proven herself an asset. She works hard and she’s as motivated to get this done properly as we are.”
Dad’s gaze shifted to me. “I understand you’re working closely with her?”
“Yes.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “And?”
I frowned. “And what?”
“Do you trust her?”
I shrugged. “She wants the same outcome we do. That’s usually enough.”
“Hm.” That noncommittal hum stretched for longer than was comfortable. “You’re thirty-four.”
And there it was, the reason Alex and I hadn’t been dismissed after we’d given Dad the update about what was happening at the office. I resisted the urge to rub my temples.
Fuck. I should’ve known this would pop up again while he’s in town. “I’m aware.”
“It’s time, Nathaniel,” he said calmly, that edge that used to be in his voice when we talked about this not as sharp anymore. “Both of you have kept assuring me that you’ll get it done, yet neither of you seem to be doing a damn thing about it.”
I crossed my ankle over my knee and lifted my chin as I met his gaze. “We will. Eventually.”
“Eventually tends to become never when left unattended,” he said.
“I’m not opposed to marriage.”
Dad sighed. “You’re just uninterested in it.”
“I’m uninterested in rushing it. There’s a difference. When Alex got married, the opportunity presented itself. A similar thing happened with Charlotte. It has, however, not yet happened in my case.”
Dad gave me a look I knew meant he was assessing whether to nudge or push today. “Perhaps not, but it’s not always about waiting for an opportunity. It can also be about creating one. Look at your cousins. None of them waited. They actively pursued the opportunity instead.”
I nodded like I always did, because arguing with him was like trying to convince gravity it was doing it wrong. “Yes, sir.”
Dad launched into the speech I’d known was coming, rehashing the way our family did things and why. My mind drifted out of the room. I didn’t need to hear what he was saying.
Marriage is about blood ties. Strategic alliances. The same bullshit we’ve all been hearing since we were old enough to understand what a last name carried.
Instead, my thoughts were halfway across the country, replaying the long email I’d woken up to the other morning. Emma joking about running away together like it was a ridiculous fantasy neither of us would ever actually chase.
I wanted to, however. Especially right now.
It didn’t matter that I barely knew anything about her beyond the essentials.
All I knew was that she was an only child from New York.
She worked, but I didn’t know what she did for a living.
She liked early mornings and terrible reality television, and had a laugh I could practically hear through text alone.
We never talked about family, or financial status, or anything like that, and yet, I was still deeply in love with her.
Our relationship was just about us. Our feelings in real time. Our unfiltered thoughts. We didn’t expect anything from each other except honesty.
If she knew about my family’s views on marriage, she’d probably think I was a sociopath. A freak.
Or worse, archaic. Kate’s voice echoed in my head with annoyingly startling clarity.
As much as I hated to admit it though, Kate Vanderhaul was a great many things, but wrong wasn’t one of them. That was the problem.
Emma lived a normal life, quiet and uncomplicated as far as I could tell. Dragging her into the Westwood traditions would feel like dropping a songbird into a boardroom and asking it to negotiate a merger with a lion.
I wasn’t doing that to her, which meant that whatever this was between us had always had an expiration date—and I’d always known about it. I just hadn’t known it would grow to matter so much.
“You’re distracted,” Dad said.
The sound of his voice brought me crashing back into the room. “I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“The bid,” I lied easily, pushing to my feet. “Look, let’s just get it done. Then we can talk, okay? Abram isn’t going to put off retirement simply because you want me standing at the end of an aisle sooner rather than later.”
Dad didn’t look convinced, but Alex stood and jerked his chin in a nod. “We’ll update you once we have Hinds’ meeting scheduled. In the meantime, we’ll keep working on it.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant working on the bid or on finding me a wife, but I wasn’t in the mood to find out.
Dad waved us off, standing and moving over to the window, probably already mentally flipping through his contact list to figure out which of his friends had daughters he hadn’t reached out to yet.
Alex walked beside me down the hallway toward the front door, his hands tucked into his pockets. We hadn’t even reached the foyer before he spoke. “What’s your deal?”
“What do you mean?” I glanced at him. “I don’t have a deal.”
“You’re off your game.”
“I’m tired.”
“You don’t get tired,” he countered. “You drink another cup of coffee and get over it, so I’ll ask again, what is your deal?”
I exhaled slowly. “It’s complicated.”
He finally stopped walking, waiting for me to do the same before he fixed me with that firm, locked stare that would make lesser men confess to things they hadn’t even done yet. “Is this about Vanderhaul?”
“No.”
He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Alex’s brow lifted slightly. “Let’s have a drink. Clearly, we need to talk and we’re already here. We might as well do our job as his kids and do some damage to Dad’s stash of expensive whiskey.”
“I have my own expensive whiskey at home.”
“So do I, but Dad’s is somehow still always better.” His face broke into a relaxed, mischievous kind of smile I hadn’t seen for a long time before he’d married Jane. “What do you say? Are you going to have a drink with me?”
I sighed but nodded, turning around and heading to the bar in the lounge with him. As we sat down, we both shrugged out of our jackets and loosened our ties. Alex even kicked off his shoes, padding around in his socks as he reached for two glasses and a bottle.
Ice clattered against the crystal when he dropped it in. Then he poured us each a stiff drink and pushed one of the glasses toward me. “What is it, Nate? What’s going on with you? You know it’s your time.”
I kept my gaze on the whiskey in my hand, turning the tumbler slowly between my fingers. “Yeah, I do know it’s my time, but nothing new is going on with me.”
Alex propped his elbows on the bar and looked at me across the polished counter. “We’ve talked about this before. Dad just handed you a list of excellent prospects. Good women from good families.”
Prospects. Like we’re acquiring companies instead of building lives.
I shrugged, keeping my tone neutral instead of admitting that I’d spaced out and hadn’t even known he’d mentioned one name, let alone a whole list. “It’s nothing. I’ve just got a lot on my mind with the Hinds buyout.”
“You said it was complicated.” Alex held my gaze for a long moment, looking at me with the same expression he got when he was scanning financial statements for hidden discrepancies. He’d always had that ability to look straight through surface-level bullshit.
“Are you seeing someone?” he asked bluntly. “Someone you don’t want the family to know about?”
Emma’s name flashed across my mind, the way she somehow always managed to make me smile and how my heart went fucking crazy whenever I thought about her emails. For a split second, the truth sat right there at the tip of my tongue.
Alex and I had always been close. Not super close. There was a whole hell of a lot we didn’t talk about, but close enough that I’d always gone to him if I needed help with a problem I couldn’t solve myself.
I imagined what might happen if I said, Yes, I’m seeing someone and she makes me forget how suffocating this life feels. Someone who doesn’t know the rules I’m bound by and who would probably run if she did, but I’ve never actually seen her, even if I am seeing her.
That last part tripped me up more than anything else. Besides, I wasn’t dragging Emma into this mess, so Alex didn’t need to know about her. Even so, my grip tightened on the glass as I shook my head. “No.”
The word scraped the inside of my throat on the way out and Alex’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he’d felt that slight sting of pain himself, but he didn’t call me out on it. I tossed back the rest of my drink and stood up. “If that’s all—”
“It’s not.”
I paused and he looked up at me again, his expression shifting from big brother to executive in the blink of an eye. “Kate and her parents are having dinner here this weekend.”
“I didn’t know her parents were coming too, but sure. Why are you bringing that up now?”
“Because whatever is going on between you two needs to stop,” he said, his voice not loud, but it carried the full weight of his authority. “I’m serious. We need the Hinds account and we need them to be able to secure it. Just play nice, okay? This isn’t like you.”
Heat flared in my chest, hot, fast, and defensive. “There’s nothing going on.”
“Then act like it,” he replied evenly.
I stared at him for a beat, every instinct telling me to argue, to push back, or at the very least to tell him he had no idea what he was talking about. Instead, I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair.
“Good talk,” I muttered, then left, desperately needing a walk to clear my head.
Naturally, that meant rain was battering the driveway in thick, relentless sheets by the time I got outside. The cold hit me instantly when I stepped past the front door, not bothering with any of the umbrellas hanging on hooks inside.
I just kept walking, the rain soaking through my shirt and jacket in seconds, but I welcomed it.
I needed something to cut through the noise in my head.
Dad’s neighborhood was quiet, streetlights glowing through the downpour.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and strolled down the street without having a destination in mind.
It’s your time. Good women from good families. Blood ties. Duty. Legacy. Stability.
In my family, when the topic of marriage came up, it was never about love. Alex was desperately in love with his wife now, sure, but it hadn’t been that way on his wedding day. Charlotte? God, it’d nearly broken me what she’d had to go through, but she was beyond happy now too.
So were my cousins. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the same thing could happen for me, but Emma’s name surfaced in my mind again, uninvited and stubborn. None of them, not my brother, my sister, or my cousins had had an Emma when they’d been told to marry.
More importantly, none of them had already been emotionally involved with someone else at the time, so completely in love that they couldn’t imagine a day when they didn’t hear from that other person.
Cleverly, they’d done as I should’ve and kept their hearts firmly out of whatever else they’d had going on.
A gust of wind shoved the rain sideways as I reached the corner near a bus stop. I slowed without meaning to, spotting a young couple under the narrow shelter, huddled close together beneath a shared umbrella that wasn’t nearly big enough.
The guy said something I couldn’t hear and the girl burst into laughter, swatting his chest while their fingers stayed laced together like they didn’t know how to separate. I forced myself to keep walking, but as I passed a restaurant farther down the block, movement inside caught my eye.
Another couple sat near the glass, leaning across the table, laughing before they kissed. The action seemed so natural, it looked like it was second nature to them.
Meanwhile, just seeing it, bearing witness to the world other people lived in but knowing I wasn’t part of it, felt like it was slicing through whatever muscle and tendons were keeping my heart attached to my chest.
The fantasy I’d been building of meeting Emma in person and seeing if whatever we were could survive outside of cyberspace suddenly felt too fragile. Reality was closing in and it was making that dream fade under the starkness of what was real.
My world wasn’t built for spontaneous kisses across restaurant tables or laughing under tiny umbrellas. It was about contracts, alliances, and carefully selected futures, and the sooner I accepted that, the sooner I could let Emma go so she could live her life, happy and unencumbered.
No matter how much I would rather run away with her, it was becoming abundantly clear that the time for fantasizing and fucking around with pretty little daydreams was over.
All that remained was to tie up half a decade worth of online history in a nice bow and then, somehow, to get the hell over it—before I wound up emotionally cheating on a wife I didn’t even have yet.