Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
As soon as this is over, I’m going straight to the airport.
My brain spins as we exit the elevator and head to our cars.
I have no idea what Blaire will say if I just show up at her apartment. Maybe she won’t even entertain a conversation with me. If she does, I still don’t know how any of this will work out between us.
We still live a thousand miles apart.
All I know is that I have to try. Because she’s the one—the only one I’ve ever wanted to fight for. The only woman who makes my life more uncomplicated by being a part of it.
I stop at my driver’s side door and wait for my brothers to catch up.
“Do you guys want to ride with me?” I ask.
They look at each other. I know something is amiss when Oliver smiles and Wade shakes his head as if he’s in disbelief.
“Go on,” Oliver says. “We got this.”
I furrow my brow. “Go on where? You got what?”
Wade rests his hand on my shoulder. “I think this is ridiculous, and that you’d be much better off in life being alone. But I can see that you think otherwise. So, in your best interest and probably not ours, I think you should go to Chicago now.”
“What? You’re crazy. We have a meeting with Graham in thirty minutes.”
Oliver winks. “We know. Trust me. But I’m going to have to fight myself from punching you in the face every time you do that little exasperated sigh that you’ve been doing for the past two days.”
I look at my brothers to see if they’re serious. “We’re in this together. I’m not going to bail on you guys.”
“We know you’re not,” Wade says, opening my door for me. “You’ve killed yourself for months to get this thing in order. You’ve gone above and beyond and are the only person I know who could’ve pulled this off. Because we are going to pull this off. I have no doubts. You’ve done your job. Now let us do ours.”
“But …” I stammer.
“Trust us like we trust you,” Wade says.
“Can I just point out how nice it would be if we had a jet? Because you could get to Chicago so much faster.” Oliver looks back and forth between us. “What? I thought it was a good point.”
I don’t know what to say. Sure, I’d rather skirt off to Chicago—in a private jet if I had one—and find Blaire and put an end to my personal misery. Or try to. But they can’t really expect me to leave them high and dry.
“Go,” Oliver insists. “I like being in charge anyway.”
“Fuck you,” Wade says. “I’ll be the one calling the shots today.”
Oliver groans. “I’m the joint CEO of this company. You are the head of the architectural division. I outrank you.”
“Then do it without my drawings, genius.”
Oliver looks at me and rolls his eyes. “We’ll figure it out. But you need to go. I heard there’s a ticket for you for the twelve thirty flight.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I tell them.
“Say that I’m in charge,” Wade says as he turns toward his car.
Oliver follows. “You’re so full of shit. You are not in charge.”
I laugh as I slip into my driver’s seat and close the door.
A part of me wishes I was going with them. But a bigger, more important part of me needs to find its other half.
And that half is in Chicago.
Thirty-Two
Blaire
“And this is why I don’t drink wine,” I groan, holding my temples.
The sun is too bright outside my office windows. The staff is too noisy. The sandwich that someone made in the break room is too stinky for me this afternoon.
“Can two glasses of wine in the evening cause this much pain this many hours later?” I ask Yancy as she enters my office. “Because I swear my head is going to split open.”
Yancy sets a cup of coffee on the edge of my desk. “Maybe this will help.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that the smell makes me want to gag.
My blood pulses in my temple. It’s almost blinding. The pain is unrelenting despite the migraine medicine I took this morning.
It’s unbearable.
“You look really bad—in a sick, not a rude kind of way,” Yancy says.
“I don’t even have the energy to be offended by that.”
“Good.” She leans against the wall and crosses her arms over his chest. “You have a pretty tan.”
“Thanks.”
She’s trying to cheer me up, and I’m grateful for that. But the truth is that I don’t want to be cheered up. I want to wallow in my misery for a day or two, get it over with, and then move on with my life.
After Sienna left, I looked up heartbreak. Everything I read said that you really have to own your feelings before you can proceed with life. It matches what I know from my experience with Jack. So I’m going to feel this pain unless it kills me.