“I have the approval. The contract is coming in on Monday.”
“I need those rooms.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, placing the papers on the edge of my desk. “Those rooms have been contracted. You can see about—”
“I need at least room D. It’s the only one that can be converted to include a kitchen based on the wiring and floor plan,” he shot back, cheeks flushing.
I shook my head, having no idea what to say to him at this point.
“This is bullshit!” Paul exploded, and I jumped in my seat, unintentionally flinching. He then barked out a harsh laugh. “Why am I even surprised? Seriously. Of course you got that stupid dance shit approved.”
Paul started to turn away, and I don’t know what exactly triggered in me, but my back stiffened as if a steel rod had been dropped down my spine.
This isn’t right.
The way he talked to me. The way he looked at me. This man didn’t have to like me, but he needed to respect me—respect my position and my authority. What had I told myself before? That I would not tolerate this. I was not the same nineteen-year-old Jillian who let people walk over her—who had been cornered by a guy before and had to be saved by Steph.
That was not me.
Oh hell no, I did not survive a gunshot wound to the motherfucking face for this dickless prick to speak to me like this.
“Paul?” I called out.
He stopped and turned, impatience written clearly on his face. “What?”
The hair along the nape of my neck bristled. There it was. That tone. It made my skin feel like it was stretched too tight. “Close the door and please take a seat.”
His eyes flashed. “I have a session about to start.”
“Please close the door and have a seat,” I repeated, refusing to allow him to excuse his way out of this. “Your session will have to wait.”
Paul hesitated for a moment and then he turned. I saw his lips moving, and I knew he was muttering something under his breath as he closed the door. He took his sweet-ass time making his way to the chair and sitting. He met my stare a bit belligerently.
I drew in a deep breath. “As you may have realized, I’m partially deaf. I can’t hear out of my right ear, but the interesting thing about losing a part of your hearing is that it forces you to pay attention to people when they’re talking. You have to follow conversations closely, watch their lips, and read their body language.”
Paul looked back at me like he was already bored with the conversation.
Clasping my hands together, I placed them on the table. “I don’t need to hear the words you mutter or purposely speak too low to know that you have little to no respect for me.”
A flicker of surprise widened his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You speak to me as if you don’t understand that I’m your boss.”
His lips thinned as he shifted in the seat. “Brock is my boss.”
“Yes and no. He’s your boss and I’m also your boss,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Especially when he is not here. You don’t have to like me. Not at all, but you need to respect me.”
A faint shade of pink colored his cheekbones. “I don’t know where you’re getting that I don’t respect you. I think you’re being a little dramatic.”
He was about to see “dramatic,” because my head was seconds from spinning full circle. “Do not gaslight me, Paul.”
Part of me wondered if he even knew what that meant. He inhaled roughly, flaring his nostrils, and a tense moment passed. “Respect is earned. It’s not given.”
I forced my expression to remain blank. “And how have I not earned your respect?”
“Your father owns this Academy,” he shot back. “And you’re sleeping with the boss. Exactly how have you’ve earned this job?”
Whoa.
He did not just say that to me.
Anger whipped through me. My first response was to fire him on the spot, right then and there, because even though I did need to talk to Brock before I decided to end someone’s employment, I was one hundred percent sure that he would back me on this.
But firing him was too easy.
“Let me explain something to you, Paul. I was born and raised in the Lima Academy. There is not one thing you know about this place that I do not. This is not just a job to me, but it is a part of my legacy. The blood that runs through my veins built this facility. If you had no problem with my uncle running this Academy, then you should have no problem with me,” I said as my skin prickled. “I don’t need to address your second comment, but I’m going to. Yes, I am going out with Brock. So maybe you should take that into consideration the next time you open your month and speak to me.”
The pink faded from his cheeks, and Paul paled.
“While Brock doesn’t make any concessions toward me because of our relationship, I’m pretty sure he and my father would not appreciate such insinuations, but most importantly, I don’t. This is the one and only time I’m going to have this conversation with you,” I warned, lifting my chin. “We can work together. We can continue to make Lima Academy a state-of-the-art training facility that includes an amazing opportunity that could expand my father’s dream. Or you can find another job. That’s your choice. Don’t make me make it for you.”
Paul was silent.
“That’s all for now,” I finished.
He sat there for a few moments and then he nodded curtly. I watch him rise from the chair and stiffly walk out of my office, leaving the door halfway open.
Once he was gone from my sight, I exhaled at the same point I laughed. It was shaky and strained, because a tiny part of me couldn’t believe I’d actually done that.
I didn’t just stand up for myself and my decisions, I delivered an epic verbal bitch slap. I sort of wanted to pat myself on the back.
Screw patting myself on the pack.
I was going to eat a plate of cheese fries tonight.
Smiling, I turned to my computer and got back to work, feeling . . . I don’t know. Strong? Confident. Badass. I felt like I imagined how Steph felt, and that was amazing.
The grin stayed on my face for several hours as I got caught up on email. It was getting close to four in the afternoon and the little Christmas tree I’d brought into the office twinkled and shimmered in the fading afternoon light. I was about to go raid the vending machine when there was a soft knock on my door.
I looked up and my breath stalled.
Kristen Morgan stood in the doorway of my office. I blinked, thinking I was hallucinating, but it was her. Dressed in dark denim jeans and a white turtleneck that hugged her upper body, she looked like she just walked off a Macy’s catalog.
Did she have the wrong office?
If she did, why in the hell was she here to see Brock?
“I know this is very unexpected, but I was hoping you had a moment,” she said, curling one manicured hand over the door knob. “Because I really need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I was absolutely dumbfounded.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “I need to talk to you about Brock. You deserve to know the truth.”
Chapter 32
“Deserve to know what truth?” I asked, having no idea what the hell she was talking about.
Kristen gestured at the chair. “May I?”
So polite.
I nodded and then, as she sat and placed her purse on the floor, I snapped out of the shock of seeing her here. “Wait a second.” I placed my hands on my desk, extremely wary of this. “What are you really doing here? We’ve maybe exchanged a handful of words our entire life and you’re suddenly here because you need to tell me the truth about something?”
“You have every right to be suspicious of my visit.” She crossed one impossibly long leg over the other. “If it was you coming to me, I’d feel the same way.” She smiled weakly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I know Brock isn’t here. That’s why I came down today.”
A chi
ll settled over my skin. “How do you know that?”
“I was with him for years. We were engaged and we shared several mutual friends who work for your father,” she explained. “It came up in casual conversation that he was there.”
Casual conversation my ass. I did not like the idea that someone working there was keeping tabs on Brock and reporting back to Kristen. Instinct warned me that I needed this conversation to stop right now, before she could spew any “truths” at me. I didn’t know Kristen well. Brock never said anything bad about her, but I couldn’t fathom that there was some altruistic reasoning behind this visit.
“I’m actually really busy today,” I started. “So I’m not—”
“Did Brock tell you that I was pregnant?” she cut in.
I stopped—stopped talking and maybe stopped breathing. It took several moments for me to force out one word. “What?”
“I guess he didn’t. I’m not entirely surprised.” She tilted her head to the side. Icy blonde hair slipped over her shoulder. “You probably aren’t even that surprised. You’ve known him since you both were kids, so you know he’s not much of a talker.”
Brock was a talker—with me, at least. The room felt like it was spinning. “You were pregnant?”
Thick lashes lowered as she slowly nodded. “It was not too long after we got together. Maybe a little over two years into the relationship. I was on the pill, but I wasn’t exactly taking them regularly.” She laughed softly. “I wasn’t very responsible back then and . . .” She took a deep breath. “Since you’re with Brock now, you know how he is. He likes to . . . fuck.”
My stomach turned sour and a dozen mental roadblocks flew up.
“The pregnancy didn’t . . . it didn’t stick,” she went on before I could respond. “It really tore me up. I didn’t want to get pregnant back then, but once I found out that I was, I was happy, and he was happy. I wanted that baby, and I wanted Brock. I loved him, and when I lost the baby, I was a mess.”
I didn’t know what to say. Brock had never mentioned that Kristen had been pregnant and that seemed like something one would share. Then again. Brock rarely talked about Kristen.
“After I lost the baby, he proposed to me about three months later,” she said. “As you know, I said yes.”
I jerked in my seat. “I’m . . . I’m sorry to hear that you lost a baby. I didn’t know, but I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.” And why Brock had never mentioned it to me.
“I’m telling you because when Brock proposed to me, I knew why he had. I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t what I feared, but I was wrong.” Her gaze met mine, and there was a fine sheen to it, as if she was holding back tears. “I wanted to believe he wanted to marry because he loved me, but that wasn’t the case. Brock asked me to marry him because he felt guilty. He felt responsible for me losing the baby.”
“How . . . how did he feel responsible?”
“It was during a rough part of the relationship. He was traveling a lot, leaving me behind. I was stressed out. We were arguing a lot. It wasn’t his fault, but he blamed himself,” she said so sincerely that I wasn’t sure how to process it. “And that’s why he asked me to marry him. He wanted to make me happy again and he succeeded for a while, but I soon realized he was with me because he felt guilty. Not because he truly loved me. But that’s his MO.”
The chill returned, encasing my insides in ice.
“Brock felt guilty when it came to me, but it never touched on the guilt he carried because of you.” Her gaze lowered and her shoulders tightened. “I was there that night. I knew who you were when you were talking to Brock. I could see how much you cared about him, and I could see that Brock barely even noticed that you were there.” She shook her head, exhaling softly. “Anybody could’ve seen it. You left, and he stayed with me. I felt sorry for you.”
Well, that was just lovely. My fingers curled inward. The nails dug into my palms.
“I was there with him when someone came running into Mona’s screaming about someone being shot. We didn’t go outside immediately. His friends did—Colton and Reece. They ran out. I don’t remember how we heard it was you, but we did. He saw you on the ground. It was brief, because one of the brothers pushed him back, but I’ll never forget the look on his face,” she said, a distant look settling into her expression. “Like he blamed himself for me losing the baby, he blamed himself for you getting shot.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I was quick to tell her.
“I know that. You know that. But no one, not me and not even you, could change the way he felt, especially after that Christmas when he brought me to your house. I just want to let you know, I didn’t want to go,” she said. “I didn’t want him to be there, because I knew what it would do to you and him.”
My heart turned over heavily. “Kristen, I—”
“The entire time we were together that guilt festered. It was an open wound spreading into every aspect of our life,” she interrupted as tiny darts of pain shot across my palms. “For six years, you were all that he would really talk about.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Her cheekbones turned pink. “He was already around your family, but I know he talked to your mom about you. I overheard them on multiple occasions, and I never said a word to him about it. I thought that if he knew that you were okay, that you were doing fine, he’d eventually let it go and fully be a part of us—of our future. He never did. And he never stopped talking about you.” She let out a bitter-sounding laugh. “How do you think that made me feel? It was worse than being with someone who was in love with someone else.”
Unable to say a word, I pressed the tips of my fingers to my lips.
“Actually, I would’ve preferred that he had loved you. At least I would have lost him to someone he loved. Not to someone he felt this twisted sense of responsibility for.” Her red lips thinned. “I even asked him, right before he ended the engagement, if he was in love with you—if he had spent six years with me loving someone else.”
The room was still whirling, and I didn’t want to hear what she was about to say, but I didn’t stop her. The woman who delivered the epic verbal bitch slap was gone. I was frozen in my chair, unable to stop this train wreck.
“He said he didn’t. Not in the way I was afraid of,” she said.
My gaze flew to hers, and I got what she was saying. I didn’t need to read between the lines. She just told me that Brock didn’t love me. Truth was, she might be right. We hadn’t exchanged those words, and finding out if he loved me or could love me the way I loved him, had always loved him, was mine to discover from him. Not from Kristen.
But it was too late.
“When he decided to retire and began talking to your father about coming down here to work, I knew he would find his way back to you—find some kind of way to make amends, assuage his guilt, and I’d had it.” Anger colored her tone for the first time. “I told him I did not want him coming down here, because not for one second did I believe that he wanted to be the GM. He was trying to find a way to get close to you. I made him choose, and he chose you and he chose his guilt. That is why we broke up.”
“Okay,” I blurted out. “This sounds crazy, and I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry things didn’t work out—”
“You really think I’m making this up? You’re telling me not once has he mentioned his guilt?”
Brock had.
Her chin lifted. “Has he even told you that I’ve contacted him many, many times since he moved here?”
“What?” I stiffened.
Kristen leaned forward. “I wanted to get back with him. I’m woman enough to admit that. We’ve talked it out. The weekend he came back to—”
“To finalize the sale of the house?” My stomach dropped to my toes. He’d returned looking like he hadn’t slept. Kristen had followed him. Never once did he tell me that she was trying to get back with him or that she was contacting him. “Were you two together?”
/> She bit down on her lip. “Part of me wants to tell you yes, because maybe, just maybe, if you shut him out of your life for good, he’ll be able to move on, to actually live, but I’m not going to lie. I tried.” She laughed again, the sound hurting and cutting all at once. “It didn’t happen and not from lack of effort.”
I sort of wanted to hit her. For real. It didn’t matter at that moment that Brock and I weren’t together then. This woman who knew I was with Brock was sitting here telling me how she was still trying to seduce him.
“What in the actual fuck?” I said. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear myself. Trust me.”
“Then why are you here?” I demanded. “What is the point?”
“The point is I’m trying to do you a favor. I’m trying to stop you from making the same mistake as me and stop you from making a fool out of yourself like I have.”
My brows flew up. “Really? I’m supposed to believe that? You’re sitting here telling me that you’re in love with the man I’m with, and I’m supposed to believe you’re trying to do me a favor?”
“I’m not still in love with him. I’ve learned my lesson,” she said, eyes bright. “And yes, I am doing you a favor, because if you’re still in love with him after all these years, you’ve wasted just as much time as I have, because he’s not with you because he loves you. He’s with you because he believes he ruined your life.”
My mouth popped opened.
“When he learned you dropped out of college? Screwed him up in the head. When he found out you were seeing someone that your parents never met, it messed him up. When he found out you were single again, living all alone, he was torn up. Everything that ever went wrong in your life since that night you were shot, he blamed himself for it.”
Oh my God.
“You might think it’s crazy. You may not even want to believe me, but he would go to the ends of the earth for you,” she said, snatching her purse off the floor. “But not for the right reasons.”
My hands were starting to shake. “You need to leave.”
Kristen shook her head at me like I was a fool turning down a million dollars. “You need to ask yourself why now. Why is he with you? If he wanted you and loved you for all the right reasons, why did it take six years?”