Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Oliver
“Fuck you very much,” I say, my fingers flying across my keyboard. “Oliver.”
I sit back and review the email that I just composed. The Regards closing I used instead of the one I typed out loud seems to be a good choice.
I hit send.
Blowing out a breath, I sit back and look out the window.
The sky is filled with hundreds of bright stars that twinkle from the heavens. Cars scoot around on the roads below, and Shaye is in one of them.
My lips twitch as I consider the fact that she’s on her way to me—to the office. My immediate frustration at not finding the file quickly diminished when I realized that she might have it. And while I do regret that she has to trek to the office so late on my account, I also … don’t.
I rub my chin.
I can’t decide if Shaye is a blessing or a burden.
On the one hand, today exceeded my expectations.
She was quick, efficient, and eager to learn.
That’s a trio that’s hard to find. But every card has two sides, and this situation is no different.
All of that ability is housed in a tight little body with a glowing personality—neither of which I can ignore.
Sure, I work with beautiful women on the regular. I’m always able to put them in a box. Dangerous. A competitor. High-maintenance.
That one is too clingy, and this one expects too much.
Shaye, unfortunately, doesn’t fit in a box.
As Holt reminded me yet again on his way out of the office this afternoon, Shaye is now our employee. Family first. If I’m going to have her in our business, I need to be cognizant of our relationship—keep it on one side of me. Keep it in one of those boxes that I can’t seem to get her in.
My phone buzzes on my desk. I scoop it up, hoping it’s Shaye. The name on the screen says it’s not.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey, son.” Dad’s voice barrels through the line. “How’s it going?”
My body tenses. I lean forward and place one elbow on my desk as if it’ll somehow bolster me for this conversation.
“I’m good. You?” I ask.
“Same old, same old.”
In the course of a normal conversation with the old man, I’d volunteer information about my day. I’d tell him about Shaye or about the predicament on the Jewell project. I might ask him to meet me somewhere for a drink and he’d oblige. This, however, isn’t a normal conversation.
I hoped that when he finally called me that I wouldn’t feel as irritated with him. Maybe time would’ve softened my reaction to him missing Rosie’s birthday or that Mom would’ve called and smoothed it over like she’s done before. He’s a grown man, Oliver. He has a life outside of me.
My fingertips strum against the desktop. “Did you just get back to town?”
“I got in yesterday,” he says. “Did some golfing up north. Did a little fishing. Pretty good time.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Is there something wrong?”
I blow out a breath. The sound rattles through the phone. I sit back in my seat and feel a shot of adrenaline push through my veins.
“Yeah, actually,” I say. “I’m a little pissed off that you missed Rosie’s party.”
He scoffs. “She’s a kid. She didn’t miss me being there.”
“Maybe you’re right. But maybe your kid, Boone, did.”
“Oh, come on, Oliver. Don’t try to guilt-trip me about missing a little girl’s birthday party—a little girl I just met, mind you.”
I spring forward, chair squealing. “That little girl is your granddaughter.”
“She’s not my blood.”
The pressure building at the top of my head feels like it’s going to blow. My jaw falls open as a response fit for my father eludes me.
“I’m sure your mother got the granddaughter a very nice, very expensive gift,” he says, sarcasm thick in his tone.
It takes everything I have to keep my composure. “I’m sure that you are missing the fucking point, Pops.”
“Did your mother get to you too?”
“Did my mother …” I clench my teeth together and exhale—for my own good as much as his. “I don’t know where you were going with that, but it would behoove you to leave Mom out of this conversation.”
“It would behoove you, Oliver, to remember who you’re fucking talking to.”
I get to my feet. My free hand goes to my tie, jerking it free from my neck. “I know exactly who I’m talking to.”
“I’ve already been hassled by your mother about this whole party bullshit, and I’m not about to do it again with you,” he says, the statement more a warning than an information bulletin.
“Fine. Let’s leave the party out of it. When is the last time you talked to Boone?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t called.”
“And it never occurred to you to check on your youngest son? The one who’s going through a bunch of shit right now and might, I don’t know, need his dad’s advice? Or at least to know that he’s got his dad behind him?”
“If he needed me, he’d call.”
I run a hand through my hair and face the windows again. “Maybe he just expected more from you. Maybe he expected a little support without having to ask for it. Hell, maybe I expected more from you.”
“You know what? I raised you kids. I did right by all of you and your mother for the past thirty, forty years. I paid my dues. You’re grown-ass men who can handle yourselves. And if you can’t, well that’s not my fucking problem anymore.”
I force a hot, tense swallow. His words ring through my head on repeat—ricocheting through my mind like a bullet fired from an enemy.
Only it’s not an enemy. It’s my father.
My lips part to follow up with a question or a comment, but nothing comes out. My brain fails to find an appropriate response to the admission from Dad that he has been choosing to detach himself from our lives.
No. He’s chosen. Past tense.
I’ve suspected this is the case. Things have been slowly changing with him over the past year or so—less calls.
Less appearances. Less normal Dad shit that he’s done my entire life.
Even though I’ve thought something wasn’t quite right, it still stuns me to hear him verbalize it. To admit he’s paid his dues.
What the actual fuck?
“What’s going on with you?” I ask him. “Where is all of this coming from?”
“I’m tired. I’m tired of all of this. I’ve spent my entire life making choices that benefit everyone else, and as soon as I decide to do a few things for me, everyone’s pissed.” He sighs. “At what point do I get to live my life, huh?”
I look around my office—the one that used to be his.
I remember sitting on the old brown leather sofa he had against the back wall, listening to him finishing up his day.
He’d set the phone down or dismiss his secretary, and then smile at me and say, “Let’s go tell Mama how pretty she is.
” I recall coming in the door with Holt, the two of us sent here by Mom for fighting, and listening to an hour-long speech about how family is everything.
It feels like yesterday that Wade and me, wet behind the ears, helped map out our very first project together with Dad at the helm.
What the hell happened?
“You’re the one who preached to me my entire life that family comes first,” I tell him, massaging my chest where his invisible bullets landed. “Family is life. Did you forget that?”
“That’s just a bunch of rhetoric.”
“Is it?” I slide a hand in my pocket and lean against the wall. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re still young, Oliver. You still view the world through a pair of rose-colored glasses. Just wait until you get to be my age and have a bunch of grown kids who still need you and a wife who still expects you to come home for dinner. Let’s see what you have to say then.”
I imagine that scenario. I pretend I’m him.
I envision having a son like Boone who became a husband and a father overnight—and how proud I’d be.
Having your eldest son take over for you like Holt and I did?
Priceless. And then having Wade, a fucking genius, branch out your company into a brand-new area?
Does it get better than all of that?
It’s everything he’s said he’s always wanted, the pinnacle of a life he planned from an early age. And now he has it. He achieved it all, and somehow he’s unhappy?
With us?
It stings. His words, his confessions burn the center of my heart. The man who I’ve always looked up to, the man I tried to emulate considers me an inconvenience?
“I think I’d be pretty happy with my life,” I tell him, my voice hollow. “Your kids are great. Your wife is amazing.”
“My wife is a pain in my ass.”
I shove off the wall, my eyes nearly bulging from my head. How dare he.
“I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but Mom is a big part of why you were successful in the first place. Slow your roll when it comes to her.”
“What is it with you and your mother?”
“I don’t know. Respect?”
He snorts angrily. “You always have had a problem with women, haven’t you? Hell, the last time you buddied up to one, it cost me my cigar business.”
Fire floods my body.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I boom.
He sighs as if this conversation is boring him.
“Look,” I say, my voice wavering with the anger coursing through me, “you wanna be a dick? Fine. You can go to hell.”
“Easy there, son.”
“No, we’re past that,” I tell him, my body shaking with fury.
“Maybe Mom makes excuses for you. Maybe Boone chooses not to say shit when you let him down. But me? I’m not going to stand here and watch you hurt everyone who loves you.
And I’m sure as hell not going to listen to you throw the fact that your partner fucked my fiancée in my face. So, no—go to hell. I mean it.”
The line clicks. He’s gone.
I stare at the screen in disbelief before tossing the phone on my desk. It rattles around, spinning in a circle, before coming to a stop next to my keyboard.
I rub my hand down my face, trying to rationalize what just happened. It’s as though I’ve been blindsided—hit with a two-by-four when I wasn’t looking.
What the hell is wrong with him?
My face is hot, my body tense, as I pace around my office.
I’m simultaneously shocked and saddened, hurt and horrified. Regardless of my suspicions, I never expected this. It’s so out of character for him, so … odd.
But if that’s the way he feels, fuck him.
I stop moving when I realize that the door to Shaye’s office is closed. It was definitely open a few minutes ago.
Curious, I walk across the room and knock gently.
“Come in,” Shaye says.
I open the door, and my dad is completely forgotten.
Holy. Fuck.