Sophie’s head tilts. “But it’s true, right?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. I spent my entire childhood wishing I had a father. I chose the wrong one for them, but…he’s still their father and they’ll be dealing with him in some capacity for the rest of their lives. They deserve, as much as possible, to have a relationship with him that isn’t tainted by what he did to me. “Daddy and I just weren’t very happy together.”
Henry sits in my lap and rests his head against my chest, while Sophie frowns, deep in thought. “Is Whitney the Peach Queen now?”
“No,” I say with a sigh. “She isn’t anyone.”
It’s a struggle not to sound bitter, and I guess I don’t quite succeed. Sophie squeezes into my lap beside Henry and places her small hand on my cheek in consolation. “It’s okay, Mommy. I still think you’re pretty.”
8
CALEB
My daddy has a girlfriend.
You’re not the Peach Queen anymore and Daddy wanted a newer model.
I wish I could remove that moment from my brain, forget the way Lucie paled as her daughter spoke.
I’m not sure what it is I thought happened between her and her husband, but it wasn’t...that. Because who the fuck cheats on Lucie? How the hell does anyone get lucky enough to wind up with her and choose someone else instead?
I see her later that evening, swinging her feet off the dock’s edge. From a distance, she doesn’t look all that different from the girl she once was, the skinny kid who’d sneak down to the dock at night, all wide-eyed and uncertain, and whisper her secrets to me as if she couldn’t stand to hold onto them a moment longer. I’d only seen her here a few times before she admitted her dad was Robert Underwood—and then it started to make sense, that uncertainty of hers. Because even among tech CEOs like my dad, Underwood was a big deal. And I already knew he was the type of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to ruin someone who stood in his way.
“He wanted my mom to get an abortion,” she’d said on one of those nights, her slender shoulders hunched over. “My mom says she would have, if she’d known how cheap he was gonna be.”
It was the kind of shit no kid should ever know about their parents, but especially not at her age. And when her mouth trembled as she tried to force a smile, I felt sick, and helpless. I wish, now, that I’d done something for her, though I still don’t know what I could have done.
My feet hit the dock and she turns, unsurprised to see me here, and raises a brow. “Did you wait until nightfall so my daughter wouldn’t pepper you with personal questions?”
“Yes, I’ll be doing all my boating and sunbathing between midnight and five a.m., henceforth.”
That only wins me half a smile.
“I guess nothing about that incident made you decide you like children.”
I drop down beside her before swinging my legs over the dock’s edge for the first time in a decade. “I don’t actively hate kids, you know. I just think they’re monsters who require an unreasonable amount of care while offering you very little in return.”
She leans back on her hands. There’s something gentle in her eyes. “They offer you everything in return. But it’s...intangible.”
“Excellent. You enjoy your intangible benefits. I’ll enjoy keeping all my free time and expendable income to myself.” This wins me a full smile at last.
“If you need anything,” I add haltingly, “money for a lawyer or something, let me know.”
“Thank you. I’ll be fine. Though it would be amazing if you could stop witnessing my most embarrassing moments.”
“You do seem to have quite a few of them, if we’re being honest.”
It’s the joke you’d make to a friend, not an employee, and even though she laughs, I probably shouldn’t have said it. It’s dangerous, how familiar she feels. How easy it is around her. “And about the job—”
She waves me off. “It’s not your fault. I was told three months at the start. I just thought it was a standard probation thing, not a firm end date.”
“I’ll keep you on until you find something else.”
“You don’t have to—” she begins and I cut her off. I know I was a dick last week. I wish I could explain why.
“Lucie, you’re doing an amazing job. If TSG’s financial situation was different, I’d think you were the hire of the century. So stay as long as you need to, but don’t blow all my money on stupid shit.”
Her eyes crinkle. “You mean stupid shit that lets your employees know you care?”
“I pay them,” I argue. “Why do I need to pretend I care too?”
She grins. “I mean, it would be better if you actually cared.”
I laugh quietly. “I prefer all my relationships remain transactional, if possible.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “I look forward, then, to meeting your mail-order bride.”
My bride. Eventually she’s going to ask where the hell Kate is. I should probably just tell her, but...it seems safer not to, somehow. It would have been safer not to walk down here in the first place, actually.
I climb to my feet. “You’re settling in okay, aside from my insistence on firing you?”
“I could still use a tour. I’m trying to figure out where I can put a climbing wall.”
“I’ll make sure you continue to not get a tour, then.”
She laughs, and I feel like a kid who’s won the hardest game at the fair. Which is exactly what makes Lucie so dangerous: because every time I see her, I want to see her again, and every time she smiles, I want to be the one who put that smile there.
I want to win that game at the fair, when the prize isn’t one I’d be able to keep.
9
LUCIE
Kayleigh shows up at my cubicle first thing Monday morning, looking even more displeased than normal, which is truly an accomplishment. “Caleb told me I’m supposed to give you a tour,” she says with a heavy sigh. “Where do you want to start?”
I’m on my feet before I really have time to think about it—Kayleigh doesn’t strike me as someone who likes to be kept waiting.
I’ve seen most of the offices at this point, but I must have missed something, because…it’s all offices. “Maybe the spaces where people relax. Like break rooms?”
“You mean the cafeteria?” she asks.
I’d assume she was joking if she wasn’t already back on her phone. I’ve been to the fluorescent-lit cafeteria in the basement, with its cheap plastic tables and linoleum floors. The one time I went down there to eat, I chose to skip lunch rather than experience a damp sandwich in cellophane or green beans floating in a haze of greasy water.
“No, I meant, like...if you want to chat with a friend here… where do you do that?”
She rolls her eyes. “Nowhere. It’s not really that kind of place.”
I’m not sure if this is a TSG issue or a Kayleigh issue, since she’s not exactly friendly. But if she’s correct...it’s definitely a problem. I sat beside my aunt for enough summers to know that while people stay at a job for the salary and benefits, what keeps them there when the grass looks greener elsewhere is when colleagues feel like friends. Which can only happen if they’ve actually hung out a bit.
“Is there no other large space? In a building this size, there must be something.”
She shrugs. “Yeah, but it’s closed now.”
“Can you show it to me?”
She glances up, a single brow raised as if I’ve asked to read her private texts. “I guess. But if anyone asks, you’re the one who put me up to it.”
I follow her to the elevator, and we ascend to the seventh floor. She’s on her phone posting something to Instagram. I’m fairly certain she just took a picture of my heels. My own phone chimes, but I ignore it. It is, undoubtedly, Jeremy and anything he has to say can wait. Forever, preferably.