A thundercloud crossed over his expression. “So this is what you’re going to do, Kelsey?
This is your life plan—push away anyone who could care about you so you can’t ever
get hurt?”
Her vision went blurry with tears. “You told me not to let you hurt me. You
told
me. This will hurt me. You said yourself you’re no good for me. I deserve better
than becoming another Saturday night special. Don’t pretend that’s not what this would
become.”
He scowled. “How the fuck am I supposed to know what this could become? But you’re
not even willing to see where it could go? To feel whatever we feel and go from there?
I care about
you
, dammit. Not just fucking you.
Being
with you. I’m old enough to know the difference. Are you?”
“I guess not.” She laced her hands behind her neck, still sitting in the fetal position,
tears tracking down her cheeks. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re going to sit there and pretend you don’t feel something for me, too?”
“This is what I do, Wyatt,” she said, lifting her head and meeting his eyes, her heart
splintering at his guarded expression. “I fall too fast. It doesn’t matter what I
feel for you. Every time I’ve trusted my heart in my life, it led to nothing good.
I’m addicted to relationships. And what you’re offering me right now is the like the
biggest, purest dose of heroin I could imagine.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, but didn’t reach for her. “Baby, you are not that girl
anymore. Your heart wasn’t telling you lies back then, the drugs and addiction were.
Look at me.”
She forced herself to meet his eyes.
“You’re telling me you felt like this with those other guys? The boy who didn’t take
you to prom? The dudes who fed you pills and alcohol and pushed you on stage when
you were just a fucking kid? The guy who put you on the Miller brothers’ radar?”
“Please.” She shook her head, wishing he would stop. His questions pushed at her brain,
making everything scramble—her thoughts, her emotions, her fears. Of course that’s
not how this felt. How she felt about Wyatt was different than . . . everything. It
was too much. It was all too much. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
He jaw flexed, his teeth obviously pressed hard against each other, but he didn’t
look away. “You want a drink, Kelsey?”
She inhaled a sharp breath. “
What
?”
“You want a drink? Simple question. There’s a whole bottle of tequila in the cabinet.”
She stared at him in horror as he got up and strode over to the bar, uncapping the
bottle and pouring a healthy shot. He stalked back toward the bed, the golden liquid
sloshing in the high ball glass, and plunked it down on the bedside table. “Do you
need salt. I’m sure we have that, too.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Maybe.” He crossed his arms, staring down at her with ice chip eyes. “So, salt?”
“No!” She scrambled off the other side of the bed, pulling the sheet around herself
and squaring off with him. “I don’t want a goddamned drink. Why the hell would I—”
He smiled. Fucking smiled.
Then she realized what he’d done.
She put her hand to her forehead, her brain feeling like it was going to explode behind
her eyes. “Jesus, Wyatt.”
“Get in front of the bed,” he said simply. “On your knees.”
She blinked, her mind spinning so fast she could barely understand English, but her
body complied before her executive functioning caught up. She found herself lowering
to the ground without an ounce of hesitation, the sheet still tangled around her.
He stepped around the corner of the bed and sat down on the edge of it, taking her
face in his hands. “It’s okay if you don’t love me back yet. It’s okay that you’re
scared. But you are no longer allowed to use the excuse that you aren’t strong enough
or good enough to try something with me. Because that is utter bullshit.”
Her throat went dry, her heart tattooing her ribcage. Maybe she was finally strong
enough to handle emotional upheavals, but anxiety wrapped around her ribcage and squeezed.
She didn’t know how to be in a real relationship without sabotaging things. Without
getting needy and clingy with the guy. Without getting wild and jealous. Without losing
her own way while trying to be what the guy wanted. “I don’t know how to be normal.
The closer we get, the more I want to run.”
He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Then I guess I’ll have to be faster
than you.”
“You deserve better than that,” she whispered.
“You’re right. I do.” His palms spanned the side of her head and he tilted her face
upward. “And so do you. You want to spend your whole life running? Pushing away the
good things because you’re afraid they’ll disappear?”
“They always do,” she said, the knot in her throat like a steel fist.
The sympathy that crossed his features busted something open inside her. He shouldn’t
care this much. She hadn’t earned that emotion on his face, that . . . love. She didn’t
even know if she was stable enough to exist on her own yet, much less as half of something
else. Wyatt had already suffered through a relationship with a girl who’d used him
as her emotional crutch. Kelsey refused to be that kind of albatross to anyone.
“I need to go home, Wyatt.”
“Kelsey.” His voice was a plea.
She met his eyes, letting all the emotion drain from her body until only the echo
of loss pounded through her, and she said the one request she knew would do it. “I
need space.”
At that, those three simple words, his gaze clouded over, his expression closing.
His hands lowered to his side in defeat. “I’ll call for the boat.”
TWENTY-SIX
The smells and sounds were the same. The clicking key
boards, the ringing phones, the scent of the carpet cleaner the weekend crew used.
Even Wyatt’s desk was exactly as he’d left it, everything in its place. His assistant
had placed a stack of messages on top of his desk calendar, arranged first by urgency
then by date they were received. Everything the way he liked it. Routine. Predictable.
Safe. These four walls had been sanctuary for more years than not. Yet, as Wyatt sat
in his desk chair, staring out the row of windows, he simply felt lost.
The day outside was bright despite the chill, but the tint on the building’s windows
gave everything on the other side a gray hue, reflecting Wyatt’s mood back at him.
He’d spent yesterday digging through files and combing through reports, not exactly
sure he wanted to see what was there, but finding what had been hiding in them anyway.
A goddamned nightmare tucked in a seemingly innocuous row of numbers.
And now nothing would ever be the same.
Cary, his assistant, breezed into his office, the smell of coffee alerting Wyatt of
his presence. Cary cleared his throat in that practiced way he had to let Wyatt know
he was no longer alone. “Mr. Austin, so good to have you back. I brought you coffee
from a new place today. Hope you don’t mind. The other was out of the kind you like.”
“Thanks. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Wyatt spun in his chair to face Cary.
Cary looked down at the steno pad in his hand. “So you have Mrs. Caracas coming in
at ten. She wants to shift some investments around. Then I have Mr. Bristol in after
lunch—he’s ranting about the big loss he took last week.” He rolled his eyes. “As
if you didn’t warn him that it was a shit move. And—”
Wyatt held up his hand. “Just send the schedule to my email. And cancel anything I
have for the rest of the week.”
Cary’s eyes widened to panicked-deer mode. “What? But you have—”
“I don’t care,” Wyatt said, cutting him off, but not having the energy to explain
further. “I’m going meet with my father in a few minutes. We aren’t to be interrupted.”
Cary clamped his jaw and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Wyatt grabbed a folder off his desk and walked over to Cary, putting a hand on his
shoulder when he reached him. “Thank you for keeping the ship afloat while I was gone.
I know your position isn’t an easy one and that I can be a prick to deal with sometimes.
You’ve done a great job.”
Cary looked stunned, as if Wyatt had spoken it in a foreign language, but he quickly
found his composure. “Thank you, sir.”
Wyatt left him behind and headed toward his father’s office. It was a walk he’d made
thousands of times. But never before had he carried the dread he did today. He still
had a sliver of hope he was wrong, but his gut never lied. And his gut was screaming
foul.
He strode past his father’s assistant, giving her a curt response when she attempted
to thwart him from walking in unannounced, and opened his father’s office door. His
dad was on the phone when Wyatt walked in but he waved him in anyway. Wyatt shut the
door behind him and took a seat in the palatial space that the rest of the staff secretly
referred to as the Oval Office.
His father wrapped up his conversation after a few minutes, then hung up the phone,
sending Wyatt a smile. “Welcome back, son.”
“Thanks.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “Looks like you
got some sun.”
Flashes of running through the waves with Kelsey flickered through Wyatt’s mind, a
painful reminder of what he no longer had now that he was back in this gray fog of
a building. “Well, it was a beach vacation.”
His father chuckled. “I’m impressed you spent that much time outside. I heard you
got more than a suntan, though. Saw the email about Belle Pritchard. And I just got
off the phone with Andrew Carmichael a few minutes ago. Seems you made quite an impression
on him.”
Wyatt’s gaze narrowed. “What the hell is he doing calling you?”
“He’s ready to work with us. Said he needs a risk-taker and you proved yourself to
be one last week.” A beaming smile broke through. “I have to tell you, son. I wasn’t
sure you could pull it off. But color me impressed. You’re not as socially inept as
I thought. Maybe I’ve raised a true CEO after all.”
“I’m not accepting his business,” Wyatt said flatly.
His father sat up straighter, deep lines digging into his forehead. “You sure as hell
will. I’ve already confirmed with him.”
Wyatt took the manila folder from his lap and tossed it onto his father’s desk. “Tell
me you’re not laundering money for your clients.”
His dad blinked, once, twice.
Wyatt leaned forward and opened the folder, pointing hard at the report on top, the
red circles he’d made around certain transactions. His tone was lethal when he spoke
again. “Fucking tell me that you are
not
putting this company, its employees, your family, and
me
at risk for goddamned prison.”
“Where’d you get these?”
Wyatt made a disgusted sound. “What the hell does that matter? You thought you could
hide it forever? Get your minions to doctor reports before they got to me without
me noticing the inconsistencies?”
His dad’s jaw twitched.
“Tell me it isn’t true, Dad. Look me in the fucking face and tell me.”
“Don’t make demands on me, son,” his father said coolly. “Especially when you already
know the answer.”
Hearing him admit it was even worse than Wyatt thought. A part of him really had been
hoping someone else was responsible. That he hadn’t been so blatantly betrayed by
his own father. Wyatt’s temper burned through him, the need to punch something coursing
through him. “You put everyone at risk, Dad.
Me
. I’m your goddamned son! This company is supposed to be mine one day, and you were
going to hand me a fucking time bomb? All these years, I’ve been the one to stand
by you even when you acted like an asshole. And
this
is how you were going to reward me? Do you know how much I’ve given up to be this
guy for you?”
He scoffed. “How much
you’ve
give up? I’ve spent my life molding you into who you are, giving you everything you
needed to be successful. Without me—”
“I’d probably have a fucking life,” Wyatt finished bitterly. “I wouldn’t be sitting
in some office for fourteen hours a day and thinking I’m making some kind of difference,
when all I’ve been doing is supporting a sham and criminal.”
His father’s face went full red now, his composure slipping. “Don’t give me some Pollyanna
bullshit, Wyatt. This business is a good one and a smart one. You’re naive if you
think the other companies aren’t doing the exact same thing. To land the big fish,
you have to make some concessions, and helping them wash a little money is a minor
one.”
“Launder a little money?” he bit out. “Do you even care where that dirty cash might
be coming from? Drugs? Slave trade? Hey, it’s okay if some little girl gets sold into
prostitution as long as you get your big client, right?”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Ha! Dramatic? You’re lucky I’m not fucking climbing across this desk and shaking
you,” he seethed. “I want it stopped. Immediately. We need to drop the clients who
don’t want to be completely above board.”
His dad sniffed. “That’d be half my list. Not a fucking chance.”
Wyatt was so disgusted at the off-handed reply and his father’s smugness, he could
barely stand to be in the room anymore. All these years, he’d looked to this office
like the brass ring, the ultimate sign he’d captured that goal, that his inertia hadn’t
been thwarted. But now the idea of it made his skin go cold.
Wyatt rose. “You fix it. Or I’ll blow the whistle.”
His dad shot to his feet. “How can you be so stupid? You do that and we lose everything.”
Wyatt gave his own derisive sniff. “Lucky for me, you’ve taught me how to invest well.
I don’t need family money anymore. I’ve got loads of my own.”
“Son—” There was honest fear in his voice now.
“Clean it up. Starting today.” Wyatt walked to the door, grabbing the handle and then
looking over his shoulder. “And find another CEO replacement to groom. I’ve got better
things to do.”
His father’s eyes went round. “What?”
“I quit.”
Wyatt walked out and didn’t look back.