by Shain Rose
Her head tilted just enough that the pink ends of her hair swayed over her tits. “Aren’t you living a fortunate life? The life you want?”
“Sure but it isn’t the one they want me to live.”
“So, are you ashamed?”
I raked my hands through my hair. “No, woman. Just come with me.”
“Why would I go sit with your family on a holiday, Jett? I’m not your girlfriend. It’s weird.”
“You aren’t?”
“No!” she practically spit back at me, busying herself with straightening her already tidy living room.
“So what the hell are you then?”
“I just figured ... I don’t know. I was the person you were sleeping with.”
“We established we weren’t just messing around. You’re the only person I’m sleeping with, and I better be the only one you’re sleeping with too.”
“I have family to see on Thanksgiving.”
“You specifically told me this week you weren’t going to see them.”
“Well, maybe I changed my mind.”
“Pack a bag for Wednesday. We’re staying over two nights.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Tough shit. I want you there and you don’t need to be eating Thanksgiving dinner here all by yourself. You’re coming.”
“Can you be any more demanding?”
“Absolutely. Take off your top, hop up on that counter of yours, and spread those legs.” I pointed over to her kitchen. “I need to fuck some sense into you for thinking you could ever tell me no.”
Always up for a good time, my little pixie did exactly as she was told.
28
Jett
We spent the next few days at Vick’s place working like dogs on a deadline. Bastian called her Monday night, and I heard her continually agreeing with him.
Then, she said something like, “Yeah, I’m still healthy. What do you mean?”
The turn of conversation made me drop what I was doing and listen harder. She glanced over at me and got up from where she was parked on the couch to walk down the hall.
“No, Bastian. I’m not concerned because the product was and has always been good.”
I wanted to follow her, but I waited for her to come back into the room and jumped right in. “Why is he asking you how you are? That a personal call?”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Phantom.”
“I beg to differ. If I put my hands down your pants right now, I’d find you wet.”
She glared at me. “Overconfidence doesn’t suit you either.”
I chuckled. “Answer the question. He call you for more than business?”
She sighed. “It’s all business. He’s just—”
She got cut off by her phone ringing. She silenced the unique ringtone. It was the ringtone she always silenced.
I eyed her with a question on my face.
“I haven’t told my mother that I’m not coming to Thanksgiving yet.”
“That’s not going to be a fun conversation, I’m guessing.”
“No. It won’t be. We don’t really see eye to eye on a lot, so …”
Her phone rang again. This time, I snatched it from her and pressed the green button. She lunged for me, but I swung out of her way and walked to her bedroom. “Hi, Ms. Blakely. How can I help you today?”
Her mother sniffed. “Well, I called to talk with my daughter who owns this phone. Who is this?”
I smiled. She sounded older but just like Vick. “Jett Stonewood. Her boss.”
Her voice was high when she replied. “It’s past seven. She’s still at work? You keep her that late?”
Interesting. The woman didn’t even pause for a second to consider that she was talking with a Stonewood. She rolled on like the name meant nothing to her at all.
“We’re not working.” I got straight to the point. “Also, I invited her to my family’s Thanksgiving.”
Silence stretched over the line. I waited her out as I’m sure she was waiting me out. Finally, she replied, “I’d like to speak with Victory now.” Her tone was clipped.
“Mrs. Blakely …”
“Give my daughter her phone.” The woman’s voice had taken on the same tone as my mother’s when she’d reached the end of her rope.
“If it’s any consolation, I hope to meet you at some point. You’ve raised a hell of a woman and you managed a great company.”
The woman didn’t have the same need to ease someone’s discomfort as Vick did. She harrumphed, and I handed the phone over to Vick who had been hiding her face in her hands for the past minute.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, shooting daggers at me. “No, Mom. I’m not ...Yes. No, Steve and I weren’t ... right. I understand he’s part of the family … I agree that dating my boss isn’t the smartest.”
She sighed and went to sit on the couch where she rubbed her head, and with every passing minute, I realized the mistake I had made.
Victory Blakely was being managed by a brilliant and ruthless businesswoman. Her mother obviously tried to run her daughter’s life the way she had run her company.
“Mom, I just can’t talk about that right now … Because … no, it isn’t anyone’s business but mine. And I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing just fine here.”
She paused and then shot up from the couch. “No. I don’t want you to come visit. I’ll come home in a few weeks. I promise … Of course Dad needs to see me.”
Her body relaxed and her eyes started to glisten a bit. “Mom, he has to deal with you daily, I know he needs me there now more than ever. You’ll run him into the ground otherwise. I won’t make plans for Christmas.”
She glanced at me. “I don’t know Mom. We aren’t … it isn’t really like that. He just wants me there for Thanksgiving.”
I walked up close to her and the phone. “I’ll come for Christmas. Happy to.”
Vick shoved me away and put her finger up to shush me. “Yeah, okay. Well, we can talk about it later, Mom. I’m not committing to bringing him. I love you,” she singsonged. “Goodbye.”
She hung up so fast I was sure her mother was trying to say more.
“What in the actual fuck, Jett?”
“You silence that phone every single time she calls.”
“And for good reason.”
“She micromanages your life?”
“Among other things.” She curled in on herself, her eyes shuttered closed.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
“You know, if you were a business deal, I’d say the whole thing was off. You can’t hide your hand like that.”
“I’m not a business deal, Jett. And I’m sure you’re hiding things too.”
“Ask me anything you want to know.”
She stared at me like I’d just suggested wearing our clothes inside out. “Really?”
“Ask.”
She picked at an imaginary fuzz on her shirt and combed the strands of her hair with her fingers in her mirror. “Why are you so against relationships or marriage or happiness in general?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
“Because normal people want a happy ending.”
“I get that all the time when I sleep with a woman.”
She rolled her brown eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Why do I need a reason to believe in reality? It’s a fact that all relationships end at some time or other. You break up or you die.”
“That’s morbid.”
“I had a great childhood, if that’s what you’re asking. Everyone knows that. They’ve printed it in magazine after magazine.”
“You could have told them to print that. Is it the truth?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “My parents fought when they separated, sure, but there was always love there. I wasn’t deprived as a child. I didn’t have a traumatic relationship, maybe one or two women scorned but nothing life altering. I don’t have a reason for the way I
am. I don’t need one, Vick. I honestly believe it makes the most sense.”
“I just think it’s a sad way to live. With no hope for something better.”
“I hope to make other lives better. I try to run a successful business. I try to push this city forward.”
“Ah. You don’t want the complication. You do realize being happy doesn’t mean you have to quit putting one hundred and ten percent into your company, right?”
“We’ll agree to disagree.” I shrugged. “My turn. You want to answer the question about your mother or your whimsical lifestyle?”
“Can’t a girl dream?”
“You take it to an extreme and you know it.”
“At one point in my life, I was wrapped in a lot of darkness, so much so it felt like tar clinging to every piece of my mind and dragging me into the pits of hell. I don’t want to be there again. I won’t be there again.”
“If you don’t confront the dark, you can’t ever get to the light.”
“Now that, Phantom, is the most profound thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Yeah, well, I have to come at you from different angles.”
“Come at me straight on and you’ll probably get me naked in that bed over there.”
She was avoiding the tough questions. She was still hiding her hand. But I’d worked a one-in-a-million deal before. I knew how to play the long game, and as I looked at her, I knew I wanted to play.
I wanted to win.
And I would.
29
Vick
“I need a drink,” I admitted to Brey as we had lunch together before Jett and I would head off to the Stonewood home.
“I can’t believe you are telling me this now, hours before you leave. On a work lunch.” Her green eyes practically bugged out of her head.
“Well, when did you want me to tell you?”
“Probably right when it happened.” She shifted in the cafe’s white chair. “Or the next day. Or even a call this morning would have been nice. A text with a brief summary that you would see me at my husband’s family’s Thanksgiving dinner because you are dating his brother.” She paused to glare. “I’m honestly too shocked to go back to work I think.”
I ignored most of what she’d said. “You could probably tell your brother-in-law you’re feeling sick.”
“Jett doesn’t care if anyone is sick because he would work through it and expects us to do so as well,” she seethed.
“Truth,” I agreed and took a bite of my salad. “In his defense, we all love the work almost as much as he does.”
Brey nodded. “We’re killing it at the Tower lately.”
“I completely agree. I feel everyone’s energy, and it just rubs off on me. I so enjoy our team.”
She smiled. “I’m not dropping this topic, Vick. You might be enjoying the team but you’re definitely enjoying the boss.”
“Really?” Brey surprised me with how much she’d grown over the past year. She never would have blurted that out before. Now she did it with a smile on her face. “You know I don’t kiss and tell.”
“You always kiss and tell,” she retorted.
“So! I’m not doing it this time.”
“No need.” She pursed her lips and looked away. “I’m very aware you two are kissing. I feel it every time he glances your way. And he does, Vick. A lot.” She waggled her eyebrows at me and sipped some of her water.
“Fine.” I sighed and then admitted, “I want to believe he could be this committed guy who can put me before work. I want to be married and have what you have.”
Her smile immediately died. She knew just as well as I did it wasn’t plausible.
“I know it sounds stupid. But I want it so bad. I always have.”
She took my hand. “I know you want those things and you deserve them, Vick. I just don’t know if …”
“If Jett’s the one for that? If he’s just having fun?” I finished her thought, and she frowned and squeezed my hand like she didn’t want to agree but knew she couldn’t disagree. “Lately, there are so many moments where he says just the right thing and acts just the right way that I think he might want it too. And I believe him.”
“He probably does want those things. It’s just …”
“You aren’t sure he’s capable of getting them with how invested he is in the company?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I sighed. “I have to remind myself that I’m probably imagining all of it because I want it so bad.”
“You aren’t. And even if you are, it’s okay to want things. It’s okay to hope. I hope for both of your sakes that it works. The two of you seem so much happier.”
“But we’re happy until we’re not. What if I’m still doing the same thing with him in ten years? What if he can’t commit to anything more?”
“Have you asked him?”
“After just a few weeks of dating? I mean he did just claim I was his girlfriend, but that was in the heat of the moment. Honestly, I don’t even know if we are actually dating.” I groaned and looked up at the ceiling of the restaurant.
“Oh, you’re dating. Jett’s made it clear to Bastian. Very, very, very clear.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Bastian told Jax and Katie, I guess.”
“Katie’s still seeing Bastian?” I asked way louder than I intended to. “That must be why she hasn’t returned my calls.”
“She’s in a weird place. I think something is going on with her and Rome, honestly. Don’t say anything but I think they slept together.”
I physically winced at her confession because, truth be told, I knew they had. I walked in on them fighting about it and they couldn’t deny it.
Brey studied me and then nodded. “So, you knew? You didn’t tell me because I’ve slept with him too?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. “Honestly, Brey, you went through so much last year, you didn’t need to know that the guy you’d slept with also slept with one of your best friends.”
“We sound so messed up,” she sighed.
“Aren’t the best of friends always messed up?” I smiled at her.
“I like to think we’ll figure it out one day. Until then, I guess we get to see how awkward Thanksgiving dinner is going to be.”
“It’ll be fine. I’m just a friend. Nancy loves me.” Nancy—Mrs. Stonewood—loved everyone and everyone loved her. She could have run the world with her charm had she wanted to. Instead, she let her overly driven husband go live in the city so she could raise her kids in a small town, away from the chaos that was Stonewood Enterprises. The media followed them—after all, they were the American equivalent of the British Royal Family. Yet in Chicago, and their small hometown, people normally left them alone. They were the town’s royalty and their natives. They were respected, revered, and probably feared too.
Brey nodded. “Nancy will be so happy you came. She’ll wonder though.”
“I’m going to need to drink a lot to get through this holiday, aren’t I?”
Brey shrugged. “Depends on if you act like you’re actually seeing the man. You could just be tagging along.”
“Yes!” I jumped on the idea. “That is perfect. I drove home with him because we got off work at the same time, and we thought it would be fun to have me tag along because I wasn’t going home.”
“As long as Jett—”
“He doesn’t care.” I waved her off. “It will just make everyone more comfortable. No awkward vibes.”
“It probably—”
“Thank you. I was worried. I didn’t know what to think. When he asked … I just thought … Does he normally bring women back for Thanksgiving?” The words flew out of me before I could stop them. It’d been the question on my mind for the last few days. I recoiled at my own outburst. “Oh, God. Don’t answer that.”
“It’s probably something you should just ask him, Vick. He’s never been too closed off.”
“Just blatantly op
en and honest and straightforward even when it’s painful. The answer could be really, really excruciating at this point.” I waved the waitress over, knowing we needed to get back to work and also not wanting to discuss how easily I could get my heart broken.
“If that’s how you feel, then you need to tell him. You need to be just as candid with him.”
“I’m not sure I can be.”
“You better try. Or you will end up losing more than you think you have.”
I bit my lip and handed our waitress some cash as she walked up. When Brey tried to add more money, I stopped her. “You got last lunch.” Then I turned to the waitress. “Keep the change.”
We headed back to Stonewood Tower, and I slid into my chair, prepared to make a few calls for the next hour.
My desktop pinged just as I scooted my chair forward.
Jett: Ready to head out?
Me: It’s pretty early. I was going to make a few more calls to prepare for the holiday weekend.
Jett: They can wait. Everyone’s checked out anyway.
Me: That go for the whole office?
Jett: Leave it to you to try get everyone an extra half day off.
Me: People want to give thanks for their families and enjoy their company now. Like you said, everyone’s already checked out.
I waited for a response but didn’t get one. I looked up to the man’s office but like the Phantom he was, the windows were dimmed.
I opened an e-mail and pulled my colorful ponytail over my shoulder. I worked the strands into a braid as I thought over a response to the e-mail Bob had sent me. We needed to smooth the waters with the FDA if we wanted Levvetor to gain any traction but I didn’t know how to do that when they were blatantly choosing to back a different company.
Gloria’s voice sounded over the office’s built-in speakers. “On behalf of Stonewood Enterprises, I’d like to thank you all for your hard work this month. We’ve done some outstanding work. To avoid holiday traffic and spend as much time with our families as possible, please take the rest of the day off and enjoy the long weekend. Again, thank you.”
“Are you ready?” His deep voice rumbled low from behind me.