AllFreeNovel
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Time to face the music.
“Yes?” I answer.
“Where are you?”
“Cherry Cove.”
“Funny, I thought we both decided it was a dead end. Then I hear from your father that you’ve got the yacht out there.”
His scoff has my fist balling. There are very few people in this world I answer to, and he isn’t one of them.
“Seems like a lot of goings-on when I thought we came up dry,” he says. “Could it be that you’re dipping your dick in a certain bookstore owner?”
“Your concern for what my dick is doing has me wondering where your own priorities lie.”
“We can talk about priorities if that’s where you want to take this. How about the fact that I’ve had to face the last few meetings without my partner?”
“I’ve faced the board many times without you. Too many times to count,” I tell him, reminding him that when he was too hungover or chasing some random pop star from continent to continent, I was always at work, ready to bail him out.
When you were too shitfaced to remember. When you were too busy fucking women you had no business fucking. When you were on trips to exotic places and couldn’t bother to answer your phone.
“Well, I’m heading your way tomorrow,” he informs me.
There’s music playing where he is, and I’m sure he’s at the bar, looking for the nearest young lady, flashing her brand newover twenty-onedriver’s license.
“I don’t need?—”
“I’m coming. We can take another crack at potential business ventures,” he insists, and I straighten from the kitchen counter.
Something Eloise said yesterday has me pausing.
“Ivan, you’ve been on the up-and-up with these people, right? No backdoor deals, no threats?” I watch headlights bounce through the night, heading down the winding driveway toward the house.
Hope fills my chest even as the man on the other end of the line mumbles words I don’t believe.
“No need to come here. I’ll meet you in the city tomorrow,” I say, hanging up just as I step onto my porch.
The night air is warm and the crickets chirp, as if they’re filled with just as much anticipation as I am.
Her car jolts to a stop and she rushes out, her door still open, the keys still in the ignition causing that awful dinging sound to fill the air.
Is this…
Is she…
Something seems off about her. There’s a look of determination on her, mixed with that wideness in her eyes that she gets when she’s about to cry.
Those eyes eat me up, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make her feel good.
I don’t think as I bound off the steps, catching her just as she rushes up.
She erases a week’s time, grabbing my face so my lips meet hers.
Shock has me still for a moment before wrapping my arms around her and lifting her off her feet.
She sighs into my mouth, tilting her head back so I can press kisses into the column of her neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
