Page 133 of Wait for Him

I still catch myself doing that. Past tense sneaks in where it has no fucking business being, and I correct it every time.

Two months ago, I accidentally became a distressed asset investor.

My father owned a handful of businesses that were hemorrhaging cash because money has always evaporated in that man's hands, and when the banks started circling after his arrest, I bought the companies myself. Sold off the assets actually worth something, settled the debts and somehow turned a profit doing it.

Then somebody brought me another one.

One acquisition became two. Two became five. Somewhere along the way I'd unintentionally founded a distressed asset firm, which my therapist would probably have a field day with if I were stupid enough to point out the obvious metaphor: a man who spends his professional life buying broken things and figuring out how to make them whole again.

We're leaving that one alone.

It doesn't change anything with Sullivan. I love this place. Love being a partner in it, love what Bennet and I built together.

This is just something with my name on the letterhead for once.

Just mine.

"Hey, Jack-Jack." Blaire pokes her head through my office door with a soft knock.

It's funny how fast she and I became whatever the hell we are. She's the sister I always wished I had, and she planted herself in my life with the subtlety of a wrecking ball about two weeks after she and Bennet went public. Somewhere between then and now she decided I belonged to her too, and nobody thought to consult me.

"Hey, Bumble-bee. What are you up to?"

She slips inside and closes the door behind her. "Food, please. Preferably spicy. And beer." She bounces on her tiptoes, palms pressed together like she's praying to me. "Luigi's?"

"Fucking hell, woman, that's three times this week." I close my laptop anyway because we both know how this ends. "Where's your husband? Make him take you."

Bennet and Blaire eloped a couple of weeks ago. It was so completely them, just fucked off to Vegas for a few nights of married debauchery, came home wearing rings and went back to work like nothing in our universe had shifted.

I'm still mildly offended I didn't get to throw him a bachelor party.

Mostly because he would've hated it.

"He's busy. And I don't want to go alone. I'll look like a lonely cat lady eating lunch by myself. Jenn's out of town."

I feign deep, wounded frustration.

Blaire waits me out, entirely unbothered, because she's already watched me cave twice this week and we both know she's about to make it three.

"What do I get for the inconvenience?" I steeple my fingers under my chin, elbows on the desk.

She drops into the chair across from me, all business. "I'm a bargaining woman. What do you want?"

"Three football games."

"One."

"Two. And I get to choose the beer."

"Your taste in beer is piss poor, Jack-Jack. I can't in good conscience agree to those terms."

"Take it or leave it, Bumble-bee." I sit back with a smirk, already reaching for my jacket.

"Fine. Now hurry. Our reservation's in twenty and you've wasted valuable time with these silly negotiations."

I stop with one arm halfway into my jacket.

"You already made the reservation?"