Defending My Mobster (BWWM Romance) (37 page)

Harry appeared again.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said.

“Get out,” I snapped. “Get out of here. I don’t want to you see you.”

“Hey, this is not my fault..."

“I said get out!” I shouted, and the few employees I could see swiveled their heads in my direction. Did they know I’d just been fired? To hell with them. To hell with all of them!

I spent most of the time throwing out past projects, filing new ones with notes so Harry could take them over, and getting rid of scraps and junk. When I finally left my office at the end of the day, for the last time, it was empty and bare. There was no personality in it. No character. No life. It was just a room, void of life, with memories of seven years hanging in the corners like fog.

I pulled the door shut, and walked away without looking back.

120K a year, and this was what it had all come to? Seven years of duty, an amazing paycheck that I earned every month. A life in Cape Town that I’d left behind. All for this? Being canned on my ass. The proof of almost a decade of my life fit into an apple box.

What was I going to do now?

Chapter 9 - Alyssa

I met Nate in the lobby. He often left much later than other employees. We usually talked a bit before heading home. Sometimes I caught the bus home. Sometimes Nate dropped me off. I felt amazing, even though my stomach was a knot of nerves about the baby I needed to tell Nate about.

I kissed him on the cheek and was just about to say something, but he looked miserable. I noticed the box in his arms.

“What’s that?” I asked, but the flicker in his eyes, the pain, told me what it was.

“I’ve just been fired.”

“Oh Nate,” I breathed. “I didn’t think…”

“I didn’t either. After all the time I’ve spent here. After everything I’ve done for them.”

He shook his head and started for the car park. I followed.

“Do you want me to take the bus?” I asked carefully. We’d arranged for him to drop me off tonight. He looked like he wanted to say yes, but then he shook his head. I was relieved. I didn’t want to leave him alone in his mood.

He dumped the box with his belongings in the back seat and got in behind the wheel, starting the car before I closed her door. He pulled out into traffic, hooting like a crazy at a taxi that pushed in front of us.

“It’s going to be alright, Nate,” I said. He was in a foul mood. This was really getting to him.

“Who the hell was Parker to fire me?
Me!?
” His voice was strained.

“We’ll just get you another job. There has to be something available.”

“Where am I going to get another job?” he asked, his voice louder than it needed to be. “With the way things are right now, there’s no way I’m going to just get something that’s worth my time. No one’s just going to offer me a salary as high as mine was.”

“We’ll find something, okay?” I had to stay optimistic for his sake. He looked like he was going to have an aneurism.

“No one’s going to pay me what they did here. My work is so specialized, and with this economy… I don’t know.”

“You can just make do with a bit less for now, couldn’t you? It’ll be alright. You’ll see.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

“Really, it’s going to be fine.”

My optimism was starting to annoy him, I could tell. I was trying to cheer him up, I couldn’t stand seeing him this depressed. But I got the feeling he wanted to wallow in self-pity.

“I don’t know if we should have done this,” he said.

“Done what?”

He sighed and the atmosphere in the car changed. I frowned. I didn’t get the feeling he was talking about unemployment anymore. Well, so much for our talk about the baby. I couldn’t bring it up now.

“I don’t have a job. I have a bit of savings, but not a lot, and with you out of a job..."

“I’m not out of a job…” I said.

“What?” he looked at me for a second.

“I still have a job,” I said softly.

He kept quiet for a moment, muscle ticking in his jaw his clenched it so hard. His breathing sped up, and when he looked at me his pupils were pinpoints of black. His annoyance turned to anger. Anger into rage.

“You were hired in the beginning of the year, and you got to keep your job, where I, the one who’s been working there for seven years –
seven! –
get fired?”

I looked away, staring at the passing cars through my window.

“Parker called me in. We talked for a while, and I told him that I had nowhere else to go. I told him I liked it here. He said he wasn’t going to kick me out on the street.”

He lifted his hands and slammed them down on the steering wheel. I flinched. Nate had never been violent in any way.

“Dammit!” he shouted.

“Nate, calm down,” I said. I fought to keep my voice calm, to talk to him rationally. He was losing it.

“You’re in HR. You couldn’t have stopped this?”

“What power do I have?”

He swore under his breath.

“Look, this was a mistake. All of this.” He was more controlled now. The rage contained. His hands relaxed on the wheel again. Somehow this controlled calm scared me more than the explosion of anger. There was something very absolute about it.

“All of what?” I turned to him, my eyes on his face. I wasn’t going to look away for this, let him hand out blows while I had my cheek turned. He was going to do it to me again. I knew it. Ripping my heart out once had been hell. I didn’t know if I would survive round two.

“I love you, I do.” The ax fell.“But I can’t do this. Not without money.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. Tears pushed into my eyes even though I fought to keep them away. My voice was thin. “After everything we’d just been through last week, you want to end it? Again?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice sounded lifeless, mechanical. “I just can’t do this without money. I don’t feel like a real man. And without my mother’s..."

“You told me money didn’t matter!” I cried. My calm façade had finally broken. My voice rose and I started crying. Shit. I hated being this weak and vulnerable. I hated that he’d been able to do this to me twice in the span of two weeks.

“What was all the talk about money not mattering, and you had enough so you didn’t need the woman that wouldn’t accept me? What about saying how free you were without her, and a man old enough to make his choices alone?”

“This is my choice,” he said. He was being a coward. A pathetic coward. A liar. He was everything a man shouldn’t be. The hurricane tumbled through my life again. As if it hadn’t wrecked enough. After losing him, it would be complete.

He stopped in front of my apartment building.

“You’re a pathetic excuse for a man, you know that?” I sneered, opening the car door. “And none of this has to do with money or a job or your mother. It’s got to do with
you
. I’m not running after you again, Nate. I’m the woman. It’s not my job.”

“Alyssa…” he started, but I leveled him with a glare.

“While you’re sitting there, thinking about how bad your life has become, think about the lives you’re ruining because of your wounded pride.”

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“NO? Well, I’m pregnant. I was going to tell you before you behaved like a toddler.”

I got out and slammed the car door shut, leaving a gaping Nate behind. A vacuum sucked out all the air around me, and I couldn’t breathe. But I held my head high and marched away. I wouldn’t show him how much it hurt.

When I rounded the corner and he couldn’t see me anymore, I slid to the floor and cried.

Chapter 10 - Nate

I don’t remember how I got home. Her last words get bouncing around in my head like an echo.

Pathetic excuse for a man

Ruining lives

And worst of all:
pregnant

Why hadn’t she said anything? Would I have listened if she did? I felt like a loser.

I rummaged in the kitchen cupboard and found  a bottle of rum someone had left behind after a get together long ago. I didn’t drink rum as a rule, but I had nothing else in the house and I didn’t want to run to the liquor store on a Monday night and look like an idiot for buying alcohol.

I knew I was unemployed. Harry and Alyssa and a few other people knew. I didn’t have to let strangers know about it, too.

I took a swig out of the rum bottle and double in a fit of coughing. Rather add coke then.

I drank until there was only one drop left in the bottle. My head was spinning and I felt sufficiently numb. When I thought about my job or Alyssa, I felt nothing. It was bliss. I lay back on the couch, and let the heaviness drag me under into a welcome pool of darkness.

I jerked awake. A piercing headache thumped at my temples, and the world spun when I got up. The sound of knocking on a door penetrated the haze around me. The hammering at my temples wasn’t just me. Someone was at the door.

I opened it. Carol walked past me before I could invite her in.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” she asked.

“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” I answered. I swayed a little, and pushed my palm against my forehead.

“She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you’re just pushing her to the side whenever you feel like it? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I got fired, okay?” I said. “What am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can support her or anything. She deserves better.”

“Bullshit. That’s absolute crap and you know it. You have more money than anyone in this bloody family, and you’re throwing a tantrum because what happens to people in the real world happened to you too.”

“She’s pregnant,” I said deftly, looking down at the floor.”

Carol missed a beat. She hadn’t known. Well, one up for me, at least.

“Well, all the more reason you should take care of her. She loves you! And I know you love her. Don’t sit here and drink yourself into a stupor because something didn’t go your way. Do something about it.”

I shook my head. I struggled to focus on her. She wore a dress that was a very bright yellow, too much for my eyes.

“Is she still at your place?” I asked.

“She is. The poor woman cried herself to sleep, so I had to come here and tell you what a fool you are. After all she’s done for you…” Carol shook her head and folded her arms over her chest like my mother used to do when I was in trouble. I was glad Alyssa wasn’t spending the night alone. If I couldn’t take care of her, someone should, at least.

“I don’t know how to deal with this,” I said. I sat down on the couch, and Carol sat down on the armchair opposite.

“One day at a time, okay? You have enough money to last for a while, while you’re looking for a job. What you need to do is call your mom and tell her what you’re all about.”

I winced. “Alyssa told you about that?”

“The poor girl was hysterical, and who could blame her? You really need to fix things with her.”

“And if she doesn’t want me back?” I asked, looking at my cousin.

She looked at me, her eyes finding every flaw in me, it felt.

“Then good riddance,” she said, and got up.

“That’s really mean,” I said.

Carol looked over her shoulder on her way to the door.

“If you can’t handle that, you’re not equipped to live this life of yours. People are mean. People are disappointing. Shit happens. But if you start throwing the things away that are important, and dying every time something bad happens, you should go home to your mom and stay there.”

I wanted to retort, but she was right. Mean, but right. And she left, slamming the door, before I could say anything more.

I crawled into bed, pulling the covers over my head.

Hours later I woke up. A soft grey light shone in through the windows. It was almost sunrise.