Chapter Eleven
Jackson
January
It's been five months and three weeks since Rose walked away from everything.
That's how my time is measured now. Rosalie-less days and hours. I used to track quarters, fiscal years, board cycles. Now there's just before she left and however long this is.
The holidays left something to be desired, but they weren't nothing.
Samson and his family hosted Thanksgiving at their place.
They invited Michael and Blaire, who invited me out of what I can only assume was pity, and I accepted, not because I gave a shit about turkey, but because some pathetic corner of me thought she might be there.
I spent most of the drive over rehearsing what I'd say if I saw her, running through versions that ranged from casual and unaffected to dropping to my knees in Samson's driveway and begging her to put me out of my misery.
She wasn't there.
Bennet's phone lit up while we were at the table, though.
A text wishing him and Blaire a happy Thanksgiving.
I watched him read it twice, watched his face soften before he glanced in my direction and decided not to say anything with me sitting right there.
I pretended not to notice and spent the rest of dinner doing the one thing I've gotten exceptionally good at over the last five months.
Being fine.
I couldn't bring myself to go back for Christmas.
Part of it was her absence, but part of it, if I'm honest, was James.
Watching that kid was a shock to my system.
He looks like her. He looks like her and Bennet both, same gray eyes, same way of tilting his head when he's working something out, and absolutely nothing like Samson or Lauren or his siblings.
I spent half of Thanksgiving wondering if Bennet sees it.
I don't understand how he couldn't, but maybe there are things you stop seeing when they've been in front of you your whole life.
Maybe there are things your brain quietly agrees not to question because questioning them would rearrange too much furniture.
He's a smart kid too. So fucking smart it almost hurts to watch.
Samson and Lauren's house is full of his inventions, gadgets and half-built contraptions on shelves, things he's tinkered around with, he says, shrugging like brilliance is just some mildly inconvenient habit he picked up.
He talked me through an automatic feeder he'd rigged for the dog for twenty minutes, complete with diagrams and several improvements he was already planning for version two, and I stood there nodding while my brain short circuited.
She gave him up so he could have this.
I understand her better now than I did when I could touch her.
That might be the cruelest part of all of this.
Jade has been a hell of an addition to the company, ruthless in her approach and every bit the badass Rose was.
Is.
Every bit the badass Rose is.
I still catch myself doing that. Past tense sneaks in where it has no fucking business being, and I correct it every time.
Two months ago, I accidentally became a distressed asset investor.
My father owned a handful of businesses that were hemorrhaging cash because money has always evaporated in that man's hands, and when the banks started circling after his arrest, I bought the companies myself.
Sold off the assets actually worth something, settled the debts and somehow turned a profit doing it.
Then somebody brought me another one.
One acquisition became two. Two became five.
Somewhere along the way I'd unintentionally founded a distressed asset firm, which my therapist would probably have a field day with if I were stupid enough to point out the obvious metaphor: a man who spends his professional life buying broken things and figuring out how to make them whole again.
We're leaving that one alone.
It doesn't change anything with Sullivan. I love this place. Love being a partner in it, love what Bennet and I built together.
This is just something with my name on the letterhead for once.
Just mine.
"Hey, Jack-Jack." Blaire pokes her head through my office door with a soft knock.
It's funny how fast she and I became whatever the hell we are.
She's the sister I always wished I had, and she planted herself in my life with the subtlety of a wrecking ball about two weeks after she and Bennet went public.
Somewhere between then and now she decided I belonged to her too, and nobody thought to consult me.
"Hey, Bumble-bee. What are you up to?"
She slips inside and closes the door behind her. "Food, please. Preferably spicy. And beer." She bounces on her tiptoes, palms pressed together like she's praying to me. "Luigi's?"
"Fucking hell, woman, that's three times this week." I close my laptop anyway because we both know how this ends. "Where's your husband? Make him take you."
Bennet and Blaire eloped a couple of weeks ago. It was so completely them, just fucked off to Vegas for a few nights of married debauchery, came home wearing rings and went back to work like nothing in our universe had shifted.
I'm still mildly offended I didn't get to throw him a bachelor party.
Mostly because he would've hated it.
"He's busy. And I don't want to go alone. I'll look like a lonely cat lady eating lunch by myself. Jenn's out of town."
I feign deep, wounded frustration.
Blaire waits me out, entirely unbothered, because she's already watched me cave twice this week and we both know she's about to make it three.
"What do I get for the inconvenience?" I steeple my fingers under my chin, elbows on the desk.
She drops into the chair across from me, all business. "I'm a bargaining woman. What do you want?"
"Three football games."
"One."
"Two. And I get to choose the beer."
"Your taste in beer is piss poor, Jack-Jack. I can't in good conscience agree to those terms."
"Take it or leave it, Bumble-bee." I sit back with a smirk, already reaching for my jacket.
"Fine. Now hurry. Our reservation's in twenty and you've wasted valuable time with these silly negotiations."
I stop with one arm halfway into my jacket.
"You already made the reservation?"
"Obviously." She's out of the chair and heading for the door before I've even got the jacket on. "We both knew how this would end."
I throw my head back and laugh.
A real one.
The kind I haven't done much of lately.
Blaire looks back at me from the doorway, smiling like she knows exactly what she managed to pull out of me but has enough sense not to acknowledge it.
I grab my wallet and follow her.
Five months and three weeks.
Life keeps happening anyway.