Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MILLER
Whenever we’re all in the city at the same time, we hold our Boston Commoners owners’ meetings in our box at the stadium—as long as it’s not too cold to be kept warm by patio heaters, that is.
The love of soccer brought us together, after all, and the novelty of looking out onto our own green turf at every available opportunity doesn’t show any signs of wearing off.
But since it’s a cold, damp Thanksgiving evening and neither Leo nor I made any noises about getting together at either of our homes—me because my place is an uncharacteristic mess, Leo because the last time we went there Oliver knocked a bottle of beer onto a new cream rug that was made from unicorn hair and spun by angels or something—we’re getting together at a restaurant in the North End.
In a private room, of course. Chase and Oliver are way too recognizable for us to get any peace anywhere public, and Leo’s pretty popular in his own way.
Very few people would recognize me. I’ve been interviewed on news shows and had features done about me in magazines, but I’m not even close to being a household name in Boston, never mind the country—or the world, like Oliver and Chase are.
I’m just a rich guy who builds buildings that some people claim wreck the skyline while secretly wishing they could afford to live in one.
I’m not a British prince who fled to the US to escape his controlling family and the tabloids, or a Hollywood heartthrob who’s been voted Sexiest Man on Earth more times than I care to remember, or the legendary grumpy billionaire investor who sits at the center of the panel on the smash-hit entrepreneur TV show Lions’ Den.
Attempting a stretch in the back seat of the car, I tuck my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans and tug on them.
I’m so stuffed from doing little more than eating all day at Mom and Dad’s house that there is definitely no food on my agenda tonight, even though we’re meeting at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city.
The only thing I might just about be able to squeeze in is a snifter of Irish whiskey.
But I’m grateful for this evening’s get-together, because it means I don’t have to go home and be alone with my thoughts—my entirely Frankie-based thoughts.
And it’s good for Oliver and Chase to have a little Thanksgiving gathering of sorts, since neither of them has any family in Boston.
And a good chance for Oliver to poke fun at our American traditions.
Last year he went on a whole rant, asking who the hell first thought to make a sweet dessert pie from a vegetable.
As for Leo, I have no idea if Leo even has any family. I’ve always imagined he emerged in the world fully formed, wearing matching gray pants and turtleneck, from a neat, black, silk-lined box.
My phone buzzes right as the car comes to a halt outside Hampstead House.
brOOKE
The crew is confirmed to be at the new project first thing tomorrow morning. And you’re paying them extra for starting on Black Friday.
Excellent news. My mouth almost breaks into a smile, using muscles my face hasn’t employed since before I found Skinner on the other side of Frankie’s door. The mere thought of that whole incident of living hell makes my skin crawl with fury, shame, and gut-wrenching misery.
But at least I have something in the works that I know will make Frankie happy. Even if she never wants to see me or talk to me again, at least I will have made some good come from this.
I hand the driver a fifty and open the door.
Brooke’s message makes my step one percent lighter getting out of the car than it was getting into it. But that’s only one percent lighter than lead, though. Let’s face it, I’ve pretty much dragged myself around like a dead weight ever since I got home.
“Evening, sir.” The doorman taps the brim of his hat and opens the door for me. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
I nod and step inside.
“Mr. Malone,” says the woman at the front desk. “Happy Thanksgiving. Your colleagues are already here. End of the hall and to the right.”
I give her a wave of thanks and head down the softly lit, thickly carpeted, wood-paneled hallway lined with images of Boston’s bygone eras, each with its own spotlight.
The last door on the right is the Farber Room where we have had several bad-weather dinner meetings.
“Here he is,” Oliver says, breaking off the discussion already in progress and raising his beer glass as I walk in.
“And never looked happier.” Leo’s sarcastic tone is my favorite.
“Says the man who I have never once seen have a good belly laugh,” I say.
“Oh, he did the other day,” Chase says. “When Amelia tried to demonstrate a dance she used to do when she was a college cheerleader.”
Amelia is our executive assistant at the club.
Leo is intent on moving his knife one-eighth of an inch to the left. “It was the chant that was funny.”
“So how was rural Upstate New York?” Chase asks. “And the…donkeys?”
“And the hot donkey owner.” Oliver raises his eyebrows over his glass. “It’s a whole saga. Tell them, Mill.”
The other two make an oooh sound just as the server, thankfully, enters the room to take our orders.
“I wouldn’t usually ask a question like this,” Chase says, “seeing as how I’m so utterly sick of answering media questions about my own private life that I wouldn’t inflict on anyone else.
” He nudges his cleared plate forward and leans on the table.
“And I ask only out of concern for your well-being, because you work so fucking much and never seem to have a girlfriend, like ever. But, aside from all the weird shit with pretending to be someone else and sleeping in a barn and cleaning up after donkeys, did you really like Frankie?”
“I’ve never seen you with a girlfriend either,” I object.
“Top-level deflection from Malone on the left flank there,” Oliver says in his best soccer commentator voice.
“Okay, okay.” I make a calm-down gesture. “I think we all know I’m not exactly boyfriend material, so there’s no point talking about this.”
“Who told you that?” Leo asks.
“Pretty much every woman I’ve ever dated.”
“But you did really like Frankie though, right?” Chase asks again.
It was kind of good to get the story of everything that happened in Warm Springs off my chest to people I know I can trust with my life. But I’m also kind of regretting it because they might never let it go.
The only thing their questions are achieving right now is to ratchet up the gnawing in my chest over how much I hurt Frankie, how much she did not deserve to be treated the way I treated her, and what an idiot I was to fuck up the first relationship of my life that made me feel things—both good and bad.
“I have to leave.” I drain my whiskey glass, the amber nectar warming my throat as I push my chair back and stand up. “There must be some plans for sewage drainage somewhere that require my attention.”
“Why won’t you answer Chase’s question?” Oliver asks. “What are you scared of?”
His words stop me in my tracks.
The others fall silent.
“I’m not as brave as you,” I say to Oliver. “You’re the bravest man I know.”
“None of us would be sitting around this table if we hadn’t had to be brave at some point in our lives,” Leo says.
“Well, I’m pretty sure only one of us has ever walked away from a royal family,” I insist.
“That sounds way too dramatic,” Oliver says. “I stay with them when I go back for my charity things. We still talk.”
“If by talk you mean pace up and down the conference room shouting, ‘Why do you refuse to understand?’ to the King of England on the other end of your phone,” Leo says.
“That was one fight with my grandpa. He and my grandma are actually pretty great. And my sister’s okay too,” Oliver says. “Even though she does toe the company line just for a quiet life.”
“Isn’t it the tabloids you left more than your family or the country?” Chase asks, the only other one of us who has had to fear for his safety when being chased by paparazzi and screaming admirers.
“Maybe, but this is about Miller,” Oliver says. “Don’t we all want to see him happy?”
For someone who comes from a background of the stiffest of stiff upper lips, Oliver sure does wear his heart on his sleeve. Maybe that’s why he thinks he doesn’t fit in.
“Miller is very sure we don’t need to talk about him any longer,” I say. “Anyway, I’m glad that as well as picking over the remains of my fucked-up life, we also managed to unanimously agree not to sell Schumann. So we did achieve something worthwhile—we turned Leo into a human.”
“Only a temporary affliction, I assure you.” Leo takes a sip from his vodka on the rocks.
“Night, guys,” I say, and head for the door.
Jesus Christ, I am so sick of not being able to sleep.
A constant slideshow plays across the inside of my eyelids.
Images of a naked Frankie, of looking up at her from between her legs and watching her come undone under my mouth, of the spark that zapped between us when I stumbled back into her in the kitchen that first day, and of waking up on the hay bale to her touch on my leg, are all bad enough.
But also ringing around my head now is what Oliver said earlier.
What are you afraid of?
I almost brushed him off, saying I’m not afraid of anything.
But in the last two hours that I’ve been lying here, staring at the hand-blown glass light fixture in my ceiling, that question has started to bother me. In the extreme.
I snatch my phone from the nightstand and call him.
It rings so many times I’m stunned it’s not gone to voicemail.
“Miller?” Oliver sounds like he’s so barely awake his lips aren’t moving properly yet. “What’s wrong? What’s happened? Why…”
“What did you mean, what am I afraid of?”
“What?”
“At dinner. You asked me what I’m afraid of. What did you mean?”
“Seriously, mate. It’s, hang on, it’s eleven minutes to four in the morning. I thought it must be a call from the UK. I thought someone must be dead or been caught shagging someone they shouldn’t be shagging or something.”
“Sorry.” The unreasonableness of what I’ve just done suddenly hits me. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have called. Sorry.”
“Well, obviously it does matter.” Oliver sounds more awake now and like he’s pushing himself upright. “You wouldn’t have called me sounding like your house is on fire if it wasn’t important.”
“Yeah, but I’m being a dick, waking you up.”
“It’s hardly like I have to be up early to catch the bus to my day job. If I had a calendar, it would be completely blank tomorrow. Or, rather, today.”
And right now, in the darkness of the bedroom of my penthouse that my architects designed and my interior designer decorated, in a forty-seven-story building I built, it dawns on me that maybe Oliver feels he has nothing to show for his life.
“Tell me,” he says. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know what I’m afraid of.” For some reason, that’s the hardest sentence I’ve ever uttered in my life.
“Are you in therapy?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Oh, mate, you totally should be. It’s fucking great. I love it. And not only because there’s finally someone on the planet I can be totally sure won’t sell what I tell them to the press. It helps. It really fucking helps.”
“That sounds terrible,” I say. “Not the therapy—the never being able to trust anyone in case they sell you out. You trust me, Chase and Leo, though, right?”
“As much as it’s possible to trust anyone, yes. But this isn’t about me. You know what I think? I think this is about the donkey woman.”
Oliver makes no attempt to fill the silence that hangs on the line until I summon the courage to say, “Her name’s Frankie.”
“I know. So, what’s the answer to Chase’s question? Do you like her? Like, properly like her?”
“Yup.” I drop my forearm over my eyes. “And I fucked it up.”
“Then go fix it.”
I laugh to myself. “If only it were that simple.”
“Things usually are more simple than you think.”
“I’m certain she’ll never forgive me. I’m not even worthy of her forgiveness. There’s no reason for her to believe that I’m not someone who goes around lying about who I am and seducing women because I want something from them.”
“Do you need a reference letter?”
“I’m not sure she’d even trust the word of British royalty.”
“Well, given some of my relatives…” Oliver chuckles and sighs. “Anyway, what are you afraid of, Mill?”
“Oh, shit. I don’t know. A whole fucking bunch of things, I guess.” I drag a hand through my hair. “Of not seeing her again. Of her not wanting to be with me. Of me trying to talk her around and her telling me to fuck off and die.”
“And what would be the worst thing that could happen if she did?”
We sit in silence for a moment, Oliver giving my brain the time to process his question.
“I guess I’d be lying here in bed alone and feeling like shit,” I say.
“Which is exactly where you are right now.”
“Yes.”
“Which means you have nothing to lose, right?”
I dismiss the suggestion with a huff. “Apart from my dignity.”
“Oh, dignity is highly overrated.” He snickers. “Fuck dignity.”
Where has dignity gotten me? It got me dropping out of college and working like crazy to keep a roof over my family’s head.
It got me seeing the potential in house-flipping and getting into it to make more money.
It got me into constructing my first small apartment building.
It got me to grow and grow that business until I’m here now with a billion-dollar company and renowned buildings all over the city.
So dignity has served me well.
Until it sent me to Warm Springs to get my own back on Skinner.
And that means dignity has also snatched away the potential love of my life.
“You still there?” Oliver asks.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “Fuck dignity.”