Page 290 of Manhattan Bossholes

“Oh, please.” Dee waved off my comment. “Natasha’s brought you to life. I’ve never seen you more excited to get into the office or to talk about furniture lines.” She lifted her hand, placing it on my cheek. It was soft and weathered and wrinkled. She seemed so fragile. My heart clenched. “I’m so glad you haven’t let your past experiences keep you from finding love, Trent.”

Yeah, sure. Whatever. As long as I glossed over the whole fake part of my relationship with Natasha, we could say I’d been looking for love. I cleared my throat. “Well, I had a terrific example in you and Papa Davis. Even if things weren’t as great at home, I always had you two to look up to.”

“I’m glad we could give you that,” Dee said. “I know how much you struggled.”

I shrugged off her comment. “It’s ancient history now.”

“But we carry that history with us whether we realize it or not. And I think it’s important you do acknowledge that, to make sure it doesn’t affect your relationship with Natasha.”

She’d been there to comfort me through my breakups with Tessa and Katie, but I knew she wasn’t thinking about them. No, she was referring to my parents.

They’d never had much interest in parenting. Growing up, they’d always been cold, dismissive. Distant. Work was all that mattered to them. They figured they’d done their parental duty by hiring nannies and housekeepers to make sure I was fed and clean. They would mostly just check in to make sure I was keeping my grades up and not doing anything to embarrass the family. By the time I was a teenager, I started acting out on purpose just to get a reaction out of them. I’d thought that negative attention would be better than no attention, but instead of cracking down to get me to toe the line, they just washed their hands of me. Without Nana Dee and Papa Davis, I’m not sure where I’d have ended up.

Jimmy was the oopsie baby, conceived during a “second honeymoon” where they tried to patch up their failing marriage, away on an island, far from all the other women Dad wouldn’t stop screwing. But instead of bringing them together, Jimmy just gave them another reason to snipe at each other until everything finally fell apart five years ago.

“I’d never treat Natasha the way Dad treated Mom,” I snarled, disgusted at the thought of his rampant, flagrant cheating. “Or the way Mom treated Dad.” Mom wasn’t a cheater—she was a needler, picking at every flaw, every insecurity. Turning everything into a fight. They’d both poisoned their relationship in their own ways, and I wanted none of it. Just like I wanted nothing to do with either one of them.

Dee patted my hand. “I know. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become, even if I wish your parents had done more to help you along the way.”

I snorted. “I’m glad they didn’t. I was better off without them. I’d be even better off now if they’d go back to leaving me the hell alone.”

Dee let out a sigh. “I think it’s hurt their pride, how well you’re doing with the company after they had to be kicked out for running it into the ground. They just want to feel like they’re still a part of things—and the only way to do that now is through you.”

“There’s no way I would ever follow any advice from them,” I scoffed. “But if they’d take some advice from me, it would be to stop calling me and start calling Jimmy. He’s the one who could really use some love and support right now.”

“He has love and support,” Nana Dee pointed out. “Because he has us.”

My emotions boiled over. “But if you don’t get treatment, neither Jimmy nor I will have you for much longer,” I bit back.

Dee grew quiet. A muscle in her cheek twitched, and I tried to swallow down my frustration. I hadn’t meant to upset her. “You know my feelings on this.”

“I do,” I said. “But I also see the way it’s wearing on you, and it doesn’t have to. You could have the surgery.”

“I don’t want the surgery.”

“But this is what you want? To be exhausted and sick, stuck in bed until the end?” I didn’t want to guilt-trip her into a treatment she’d decided against, but I hated the thought of watching her suffer just as much as I hated the thought of losing her. She was the glue that held our family together—the part of it that mattered, anyway—and I couldn’t believe she was considering going down without a fight. What was I supposed to do without her?

“Trent—” she said, her voice far too calm.

“What the hell do I know about holding this family together?” I said.

She squeezed my hand. “You’ll manage.”

What if I didn’t, though? What if I was just like my parents, and all I managed to do was tear things further apart?

19

NATASHA

“You said this is steampunk, right?”

“Futuristic-tech-meets-steampunk,” I said to Trent, parroting Stacy’s words to me as we followed her and Dominic down the sidewalk. I’d been trying to understand the premise of this play since she’d started making the costumes for the damn thing, but I still wasn’t sure I had it. “…I think.”

Trent wrinkled his nose in response. I could practically hear the grumpy growl he bit down. “Right.”

I could tell exactly what he was thinking by the way his eyebrow arched. No, thank you. If I suggested that we duck into a bar and ditch this double date, he’d totally be on board. I glanced away from him. I wouldn’t need that much convincing, either—I’d rather be doing anything else, but I needed to support Stacy.

We needed to support Stacy.