“I’m watching my baby sister dance with a boy. She looks so pretty and grown up tonight. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I used to rock her to sleep.”
“My parents always say they blinked and we were all in college. I think you’re doing the right thing, taking time off after you have the baby. And I think we should take the offer to sell off Captive.”
“I don’t know if I could ever sell it, Riley. It’s our baby.”
“Yeah, and we blinked and now we’re going to send it off to college. Dallas thinks we should take the offer too.”
“I know he does and I don’t want to downplay his role, but he hasn’t invested in it the same way you and I have.”
“We’ve invested in it with our lives. Don’t you think it’s time we get them back?”
“You know I want to slow down. It just sounds too perfect to be true.”
He leans back and holds his arms out. “You know what they say about me. I’m the king of romance. It only makes sense that Captive Films gets a happily ever after ending too.”
I smile at him.
“You look beautiful tonight, by the way. You really are glowing.”
“This dress is a good color on me.”
“It’s more than that and you know it. You’re happy. You’re pregnant and marrying your true love in a week. It shows in your face. Except in the morning when Tyler brings you coffee.”
“The other morning when I was getting my ass handed to me by the board, he brought me coffee. I lost it and yelled that I never wanted coffee again.”
“What did he do?”
“Brought me back lemon tea and told me it helped his sister with her morning sickness. I hadn’t told him. He just knew. I know you pay him well, but if we do this, I want to give him a really big bonus.”
“Hopefully not so big that he won’t want to keep working for the new and improved Captive,” Riley says. “We need him.”
“I know. And I want employment contracts for all of the employees. Something that states if they don’t keep their jobs for at least two years, they get some sort of buyout.”
“I think Dallas can negotiate that.”
“Are you sure it will make you happy, Riley? You love your job. Love doing deals. We won’t have that anymore.”
“Deals are fun, but they aren’t my passion. You know that.”
“I didn’t know if your passion has changed. You’re a really good executive.”
“If we do this smaller company, I want Dawson to take over as CEO. I’ll help, but I want to produce again—”
He stops mid-sentence and stares into space.
“Earth to Riley.”
“I think I know when it happened.”
“What happened?”
“It was about three weeks before graduation. We were sitting here, just like this, at our year-end athletics banquet. Ariela went home that weekend and missed both it and our soccer game the next day.”
“I remember the game. You kicked the winning goal, sending us to the playoffs.”
“When I was at the banquet, she texted me. Just a sad face. When she got back, she cried about missing the banquet.”
“You won a lot of awards.”
“And she cried when she heard I kicked the winning goal and she missed it,” I say.
“It wasn’t the first or the last time you kicked a winning goal.”
“I know, that’s why it was weird. I think it was more. I think that’s when her parents must have told her whatever they did to convince her, or force her, to go to Princeton. It was her dad’s dream. She studied like crazy to get good grades because of it. But what I don’t get is why she would marry freaking Collin.”
“Because he was there, probably. He liked her. Her parents liked him. It was the probably the path of least resistance.”
“Sounds caveman of me, but all I can think about is that she slept with him.”
“I think you two just dealt with it differently, Riley. You never let anyone in. She pretended to let someone in but didn’t. It’s hard to replace a once-in-a-lifetime love.”
“Honest to God—no bullshit—do you think we could work now? After all this time? I’m such a different person than I was back then.”
“I wish I could answer that. I think only you and Ariela can decide. When you slept with her, you said it was different. Did you sleep with anyone in Vegas?”
“More like many someone’s,” Dallas says, laughing and setting another drink in front of Riley.
“Actually, I didn’t,” he says.
“What do you mean?” Dallas asks. “Knox said you had two hookers in the bedroom, maybe three.”
“We hooked up but I didn’t have sex. I tried. I couldn’t.” He buries his face in his hand.
“What aren’t you telling us?” I ask, touching his arm.
He points down at his pants. “It wasn’t cooperating. I got pissed. Told the hooker it was her fault and I wasn’t going to pay her. I think that’s when she stole my wallet and ran out.”
“Which then started the naked party parade.”
“Yeah.”
“You were probably just too drunk to maintain an erection, dude. It happens,” Dallas says, slapping Riley on the back and then walking off to talk to someone else.