Mr. Forrester: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (30 page)

I
knew
I shouldn't have been on the line. I'd just gotten back to Chicago the night before, hadn't slept in two days, and had barely eaten as well. I was bleary eyed, running on fumes, and my mind was not in the right place it needed to be to keep up with the pace and the pressure of the line at Alinea. I should have called off, regardless of whether Horst and Shannon would have been slightly upset or not.

Instead, there I was, in my whites, trying to work the meat station. Prep had gone okay, after all slicing six ounce steaks and tying strings around fillets is stuff even a child can do. Even the start of service wasn't too bad. While it was a Friday night, we were in a rare period where there wasn't much going on in Chicago. The Cubs and White Sox were on road trips, basketball hadn't started, and the Bears were still in the preseason. Most of the universities were still on summer vacation, and even the business cycle was down. Everyone was resting up before the push into fall.

Also working in my favor was the Alinea menu cycle. Shannon liked to change menus on the seasons, and we were still a few weeks out from the change from the summer menu to the fall menu. As such, most of our regulars had already eaten what we had to offer, and so the start of service was slow.

Around seven o'clock though, things got busy, and I ran into trouble. Tickets started to pour in, and I was falling behind. It was the little things that were getting me in trouble, and I knew it. I wasn't coordinating my tickets so that if a table ordered a steak and two lamb chops, all of them came off at the same time so they'd hit the customer's table at the perfect temperature. I was leaving one side down a bit too long, turning caramelization into scorching. By eight, I already had four plates come back to me from Shannon for redoing. She was getting on my ass, nothing I didn't deserve, but I couldn't take it anymore.

The straw that broke the camel's back was double thick pork chops. You have to understand, cooking pork chops is different from cooking steak or lamb. Pork has to be cooked through, or else the risk of food poisoning is a lot higher. You can't have rare pork chops, in fact in the United States there are very strict laws on it. However, because the chops are double thick, you can't have your fire too hot, or else you end up with a chop that is cooked in the middle and a hockey puck on the outside, or perfect on the outside and dangerously raw in the middle.

It was this second sin that I was guilty of. I'd put the pork chops on the section of the grill reserved for beef and lamb, not even thinking about it. Going by instinct, I flipped it to a beautiful golden brown crust, and then finished off the other side. Instead of checking the interior temperature, I plated the chops and sent them off with the rest of the order, already forgetting about it to focus on the next ticket.

Shannon came by herself a minute later. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked me, quietly seething. "Sending me underdone chops? Are you trying to get us shut down by the health department, or are you really that fucking stupid?"

Before you think that Shannon was out of place for cursing and yelling the way she was, remember where I worked. Alinea is a fine dining restaurant, and high class chefs have always been tin pot dictators. While Gordon Ramsay might garner ratings and shock value with his rants on his shows, the fact is, he's nowhere near the worst. I've seen hardened chefs reduced to tears by some of the masters, and in fact had been reduced to tears myself. The most frustrating of all was when I did two weeks of summer internship in college at a camp run by Marco Pierre White. He's Ramsay's mentor, and in fact made Ramsay cry when he was a young chef. The thing about Marco is that he doesn't yell at you, he's grown beyond that. He just keeps up the pressure, and won't accept less than perfection. He's unrelenting, uncompromising, and has a way of looking at you that leaves you shattered on the inside. The thing was, after the cook, he'd be your biggest supporter, and show you how to gain strength from the shattering.

Shannon though wasn't trying to get me to become stronger. She was pissed off, I was pissed off, and I was not in the place to get cursed at. "Fuck off Shannon, I'm sorry about the chops. I'll get another one ready for you."

I saw the change in Shannon's face as soon as the first sentence left my lips. She was the executive chef of a Michelin starred restaurant, one of the few women to do so. She was brought up in the old school, where the executive chef was never, and I mean
never
referred to by their first name while at work. As for telling her to fuck off? You can imagine how I'd crossed the line with that one. "No, you won't," she said, reaching over and snapping down the lever that controlled the gas to my grill. The flames went out, and the whole kitchen went momentarily silent. "You think your problems matter? No. Get out. You're fired."

I had a set of tongs in my hand, and I wanted to grab Shannon by her nose with the hot grease covered metal and twist. I wanted to scream at her I didn't need her job or her patronage to become a great chef. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run away. What I did, however, was set my tongs down, take my apron off, and set it in her hands. While I made my way towards the tiny changing area where our bags were kept, I worked at the buttons on my top, to the point that by the time I reached my locker, I was standing in just my pants and my white undershirt. I opened my locker and pulled on the light jacket I'd worn for covering up, and grabbed my bag. There was nothing else inside.

Turning around, I saw Horst looking at me, his face a blend of compassion and disappointment. "I'm sorry," he said, holding his hand out. "Chef wants me to get your top."

I handed it over silently, my eyes brimming with tightly held back tears. "I'm sorry too Horst."

"I shouldn't have put you on the meat station after seeing the way you were walking in. Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head, the first tear falling down my cheek. "What is there to talk about? Just, thank you. You were good to work with, and I'm sorry I let you down."

"You didn't. You didn't know, but your performance tonight was not the only reason Shannon fired you."

"Oh?" I asked hollowly. Like it really mattered.

"Since you came back to Chicago, and she saw you and your brother....Julian is it? Either way, since she saw that, she's become more critical of you. You were on an invisible tightrope, and you didn't know it."

I nodded, and looked up at him. "I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Now not only am I out of a job, but I lost him too." I looked up at the ceiling, and blinked, promising myself I wasn't going to cry in front of Horst. "And he isn't my brother.”

The ride home on the bus felt longer than normal. Coming into the apartment, there were so many things that reminded me of Julian. There, on the sofa, was a t-shirt of his that I'd been wearing to bed the few weeks I'd acknowledged to myself that I was in love with him. In the kitchen I saw the five pound tub of protein powder he'd bought, sitting bright red on the counter like a shining reminder of him.

I went into my bedroom and could see the shape of his head still on the pillow he'd used, and the noticeable fact that the last time the bed had been slept in, two people were using it. I looked at the rumpled sheets for a minute, and couldn't stomach the idea of sleeping there that night. Instead, I headed for the third bedroom of my place, the smallest room that I'd sworn over and over again I was going to convert into a home office or study, and never got around to doing. The original bed was still there, the mattress covered by a fitted sheet but nothing else. The empty white space was a good metaphor for how I felt, empty and bare. I collapsed onto the mattress, and let the tears I'd been holding back since Horst said he was sorry come out. They were bitter, and burned my cheeks as they soaked into the sheet beneath me.

T
he waves crashed
onto the sand before retreating, wiping away the footprints of the people who were walking below the wave line, leaving the sand smooth and pure within seconds. I wanted to join the waves, to join the sand and be washed away, to be numb and forgotten. Instead, I could feel every second of the past three days come crashing down on my mind, starting with talking with Yuki and ending with getting off the plane in Miami.

I hadn't planned on going to Miami. It was just the first plane that was flying out of Logan Airport when I got there. I'd already left the manor, my bag slung into the back of one of the gardener's trucks. The trucks belonged to the manor, so I wasn't technically stealing it, but my license was suspended. If a cop had pulled me over, I most likely would be spending the night in jail. As it was, I got all the way to the long term lot without incident, parked the truck and put the keys in my pocket. Yuki kept extras of all the vehicles, and she could pick it up. I sent her a text message about the truck in case she didn't know, along with the lot and space number, then paid for three days parking with the cash I had in my wallet. I might have been a bastard, but I wasn't going to cause any more problems that I had already done.

Getting off the flight in Miami, I wasn't too sure where to go. It was already late at night, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of finding a hotel room. Instead, I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked into the night, heading towards the beach. Something in the idea of the waves and the timelessness of the ocean was speaking to me.

As I walked through the warm Miami darkness, I thought of all the mess I'd caused. I deserved every bit of pain I got from fucking Gina and not telling Krystal, even if I had done it before she and I fell in love. That I'd gotten Gina pregnant, and was now going to have a baby was beside the point. The baby was innocent, but I'd hurt Krystal, who was just as innocent. She didn't know about my original plan, how she'd started off as a pawn in a grand game of revenge against my father. She didn't know how something about her had stopped me, and had changed me into becoming a better man. She didn't know how I'd abandoned my plan after realizing I was falling in love with her, and how she'd become a role model for me, and how she'd given me the courage to confront the truth about my relationship with my father, and to repair a relationship that had been broken for almost twenty years.

I was lucky that I didn't get robbed or killed. Miami International is not exactly in the best neighborhood of Miami, and I walked through even worst neighborhoods on my way to the beach. A white boy who looked like me walking through some of those neighborhoods after midnight was asking for it, but maybe it was something in my face or the way I was moving, nobody messed with me. Maybe it was just dumb luck, I wasn't really paying attention nor did I care.

I ended up on the beach about an hour before sunrise, just as the first of the few swimmers who wanted to use the Miami beaches were staking out their spots. The Florida coast is terrible for swimming, with waves that lap the beach like a puppy dog rather than crash, so it wasn't like much was going to happen there. I was staggering by that point, exhausted, and fell asleep or passed out in the shade of an overturned row boat on the beach, I couldn't be sure which.

That had been a day prior. Now, with three days growth of beard, a pretty wicked sunburn and having not eaten too much, I felt hollowed out. It reminded me of the stories I'd heard when I was a kid, and I'd gone to church with a friend for a few months. The Old Testament was full of prophets who just went off into the desert, usually for forty days and forty nights, coming back with some message from heaven, and a raging case of insanity as well. I could understand how they felt, and I'd only been on the beach for two days.

I was watching the waves and wondering how painful it would be to just walk into the waves and not stop, when I heard someone call my name. "Julian? Julian Castelbon?"

I turned my head, my neck creaking and my eyes blinking. It took me a few seconds to recognize the fit, well dressed man coming towards me across the early evening sand. "Dwayne?"

Dwayne Forrester came jogging up and squatted in front of me, looking intently into my face. "Yeah, it's me. Julian, how long have you been out here?"

I waved my hand airily, it was all the strength I had left. "I dunno. Two days? Three?"

Dwayne's face changed in expression, and he took my hands. "Come with me, man. I'm getting you off this beach and taking you to my place."

Part of me wanted to tell him just to leave me there, it didn't really matter if I died or not. But Dwayne had been an old friend, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone else. Besides, at that point I really didn't care. I tried to stand up, and was shocked to find out that I couldn't stand up at all. Falling back on my ass in the sand, I looked at him stupidly, my butt hurting from the thump and my pride hurting even more. Dwayne took a knee next to me and threw my arm around his shoulder. "Okay. On three. You might be dehydrated and heat exhausted, but you're still a big guy. Ready? One, two, three!"

Somehow, he got me to my feet, and the two of us made our way away from the waves to a parking lot, where Dwayne bundled me into a BMW SUV. I watched him start to go around to the driver's side, but before he opened his door, the world swam for me, and I passed out.

I woke up and it was still dark. I was on a white leather couch, and I'd been stripped out of the filthy clothes I'd been wearing and covered with a light cotton sheet to cover my nudity. My skin was bright red from my shoulders to my fingertips, and my face still felt like it was about five inches from a heater vent. My torso on the other hand, was goose bumped from the air conditioning, and I shivered under the sheet. I tried to speak, but only a dry rasp came out of my throat. Trying to move wasn't much more successful, and I had to just lay there in the darkness like a helpless baby.

Thankfully I didn't have to wait long, as the door to the room opened and Dwayne came in. He looked at me and knelt next to me, holding a cup in his hand. "Slow now. If you'd been out much longer I was going to call 911, regardless of if you'd ended up in the society pages again or not."

He wet my lips with a damp sponge, and I sucked water from it like a baby. It was glorious, the best thing I'd ever drunk in my life, and I nodded gratefully once he took it away. "How long?" I finally asked once the moisture hit my throat and I could form words again. "It's still dark, I can't have been out too long."

"It's dark because you've been out twenty seven hours," Dwayne said quietly. "Just be glad Erica and Liz aren't around, you'd have woken up in the hospital either way. Now rest, have some more water, and we'll talk in the morning."

He gave me the cup, with a flexible straw sticking out of the top, and raised my head to put a cushion more comfortably underneath it. "Thank you Dwayne. But why?"

"Tomorrow, man. Relax, go back to sleep, and we'll talk then. Don't worry, I'll check on you during the night, you'll have plenty of water and anything else you need."

Considering I'd been unconscious for over a whole day, there should have been no reason I'd go back to sleep. But as soon as I finished the cup of water and closed my eyes, I slipped back to sleep, and although my dreams were of heartbreak and sadness, I still slept until the next morning.

"
S
o what the
hell were you doing going all Castaway on Miami Beach, man?" Dwayne asked the next day. He'd brought me a very simple breakfast of fruits and watery oatmeal, both because my body needed the fluids still, and because he was worried I'd vomit anything stronger. "Seriously, you looked like a homeless guy there, with your bag on the sand next to you, your eyes blinded almost, and as red as a lobster."

I slowly chewed at the piece of mango that was currently on my fork, swallowing carefully before answering. "I think I was trying to kill myself," I said. "I don't really know, I was just kind of walking until I gave out."

Dwayne sat across from me in the dining room, still carefully studying me. I was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from my bag, both of which hung on my body. I'd probably lost close to twenty pounds in the three days since I'd left Castelbon Manor, mostly water weight though, and my hands still shook slightly from the effort of trying to feed myself. "So what happened? This isn't the same Julian that I knew years ago."

I thought back to soon after I'd left college for the second time. Wanting to get away again, I'd flown to the Virgin Islands, where I'd met Dwayne Forrester. The youngest son of the Forrester Hotel empire, he and I had hit it off well, with a lot of second hand familiar connections. He was a few years older than me, and we formed a kind of mentor-apprentice friendship. We'd spent close to three months partying it up among the islands, hopping from place to place probably about two steps ahead of the local constabulary. "Yeah, Curacao was pretty wild, wasn't it?"

Dwayne nodded and gave me a ghost of a grin. "And Trinidad, and Maracaibo, and St. Kitts, and Santiago. Hell, by the end of it I was wondering if we were just going to become a pair of buccaneers and start raiding the Spanish Main again."

"Well, we did plunder quite a few bootys," I joked, feeling a bit of strength return. "Although I don't remember who got more."

"Doesn't really matter," he replied. "But what's up with you now? I mean, I've read your name from time to time, you seem to have kept your penchant for getting yourself in trouble."

I nodded. "Yeah, I have at that. Meanwhile, the little I've read about you has been nothing but good news. Congratulations on taking over the Forrester chain. By the way, what's this about Erica and Liz? Is your sister living with you or something?"

Dwayne shook his head and got up, getting a photo from the kitchen. "Here, take a look."

I looked at the simple snapshot, and was blown away. The woman with Dwayne was tall, easily five ten, and beautiful in a lot of the same ways Krystal is. Their bodies weren't at all alike, Krystal being shorter and more voluptuous, but they both had a quality to their eyes that told me she was a good person. Held between them was a precious little girl that looked maybe a year old, I wasn't too sure. "You're married?"

"I am," Dwayne told me, a huge grin on his face. "The picture's a little old, but that's Liz in between me and Erica."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Wow man. You found yourself a beautiful woman too. Just your type, tall, leggy.... she looks like she should be a model or something."

"Would you believe she was? She then went into designing, and we met through a fashion show in London. There were a lot of bumps along the road, but we found happiness together. Now that you look a little more like a human being, I wish she and Liz were in town. But, they're overseas in France right now. I'd be with them, but I have a quarterly shareholders meeting I have to go to tomorrow, and frankly I can't miss that. I'm flying to Paris the day after tomorrow though."

"I see. Wow, you've got your life on the right track. Jesus," I said, before the enormity of my crisis crashed down on me. I sat there, emotion choking my throat so that I could barely even make a noise, and told Dwayne everything. I had to give it to him, he didn't once interrupt me or look at me in any way that would make me think he was being disparaging towards what I'd laid out. Instead, he waited until my words trickled off, making sure I was done.

"Dammit Dwayne, what am I supposed to do?"

He thought about it for a second before answering. "I'm of two minds, Julian, and they aren't exactly disagreeing with each other in terms of wanting to help you, but they do disagree on the best way on how to do it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, intrigued. Dwayne was one of those guys I respected for quite a few reasons. First of all, his family is about as rich as the Castelbons. Both of us could, and probably at some point in our family histories, had bought a US Senator or two. Hell, we could probably afford to buy a whole country. So for Dwayne, there was never any reason for him to be intimidated or in any way, shape, or form be concerned about my money. Secondly, Dwayne was almost as fit as I was. While his height and frame were a bit lankier, he wasn't a beanpole by any means. In fact, there was one time the two of us had gotten into a bar fight during our carousing of the Caribbean that I had to admit, he did more than carry his half of the brawl as we took on seven merchant marines. Finally, Dwayne was smart, plain and simple. Whereas I'd been blinded by my anger all my life, Dwayne had actually turned his anger into something constructive. Even when we were younger, it was obvious he was going places, despite his partying with me.

"A part of me wants to get up and slap the piss out of you for even thinking of such a fucked up thing to do," Dwayne said, "and to slap the piss out of you for not manning the fuck up and doing the right thing, which would have been to stick it out at the Castelbon Manor, and try and patch things up yourself. You shouldn't even be here in Miami, you should be in Chicago right now begging Krystal to let your sorry ass back into her life. By the way, I know who she is, although I doubt she knows me. When she was at Kendall College, Forrester Hotels sponsored a culinary competition for students. She was a sophomore at the time, but still cooked her way into the top five, losing out in the end to two seniors and a junior. My father was the presenter of the awards, but I was on the judging panel."

"I didn't know," I said, chagrined. Dwayne was right, I should never have come to Miami. Running away was just kind of a habit of mine. "Okay, point taken, no slapping required. What's the other part of your mind thinking though, before I go and book a flight to Chicago?"

"The other part of me wants to cut you at least a little bit of slack. Julian, the reason you and I bonded so closely all those years ago is that we both identified with being pissed off at our fathers, although I was angry with both of my parents. But, your anger was always hotter than mine, it was almost always an incoherent rage. Hell, I kept expecting to read you'd really gone off the deep end and gotten yourself killed because you were so pissed off at the world, when really at the time you were pissed off at John Castelbon. Ironically, while my anger was legitimate, yours was misplaced, but I've been the one to come out the other side of my anger stronger and better than I was, or at least earlier than you have. It took almost losing the best thing to ever happen in my life to understand that, and to set aside my anger for the love of Erica. That's still so new for you, I can understand you making a mistake. Did you know that after my mother and father found out about me falling in love with Erica, we went almost four months without talking to each other?"