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Ihadto stop myself. Any further down this line of thinking would lead me to breaking my one and only rule for this friendship. Don’t fall in love with Connor Ferguson. Even though it would be so easy. Even though he made it so simple to do, it was off limits. Not impossible, just off the table. Because I valued this relationship without sex and feelings more than I valued anything else right now, and if I could somehow not complicate it—If I could keep things just the way they were, maybe I could end up keepinghimforever.

Pushing the thoughts of Connor being too sweet aside, I leaned into the other things occupying my mind. I knew I was being sour and edgy and probably too sore about the subject, but I couldn’t help it. What my father said to me this morning stuck with me.Everythingabout the morning had stuck, landing on my heart with the heaviest of wings.

Aren’t you? You live off money you haven’t worked for…

You at least need to get on the starting line…

What are you interested in. Do you know?

I chewed at my lip, my gaze turning angry as I stared at my plate. “I understand where they’re coming from, I justhatehaving my hand forced. It’s not like I wasn’t trying to figure myself out, I just—”

“You just haven’t yet,” he finished for me, and it wasn’t the normal hardass Connor talking, but a softer, more understanding one.The one me and my heart had to watch out for.

“Right,” I said. “And now there’s this pressure to have things figured out when I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well, have you tried anything at all?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then that’s where you start, Ceci.” Taking matters into his own hands he picked up my fork and physically pressed it into my hand, willing me to eat. “No one cares if you fail, they just want to see that you’re headed somewhere. That you’re not lost, and you’re trying. And it’s not because they want to control you, but because they care. We all do.”

One word perked my ears and finally gave me the strength to let it go, at least for the night.

We.

That word soothed me, letting me know that everything would be alright. Because he had a knack for making me think we were in this together.

Always.

Chapter Five

CONNOR

“Why are you looking at me like that, Clay?” my oldest brother asked my next as we sat around his office at the big hour of seven in the morning.

Leaning back in his chair, Clay spread his legs out wide but crossed his arms tight over his chest, making himself comfortable. “Because I smell a rat, and my nose is never off.”

“You might want to keep that quiet,” I said, my attention on the open laptop on my lap as I worked on what I hoped to be the finishing touches for my newest project. Though I was busy, I still made time to razz my older brothers. Leaning in, I lowered my voice, “They say you can smell yourself the most.”

Knocking a hand against my shoulder, Clay smacked his lips. “Man, shut up. Aren’t you the least bit suspicious that he called us in heretogether?”

“Seeing as I grew up with the two of you and we have been in many rooms together, no,” I said. But that’s only what Isaid. What I was thinking was entirely different.

The truth was, itwasstrange to be called into my brother’s office first thing in the morning with Clay or even Clint when we all worked in different departments. Unless we were dealing with executive decisions or strict family business, there was almost no reason for him and I to be in the same meeting. So where Clay smelled a rat, I smelled Marsha Ferguson. This had her name written all over it. I just didn’t have the time or mental energy to be putting into worrying about it right now. Not when my secret projects were finally coming to the kind of breakthrough that led to me making moves.

The project was a simple one. I’d been developing code for my own cyber security scanners and apps for about a year now. It was something I’d done for my own computers forever, but this project was special because I was building it with the potential to go…public.

The “moves” is where things got sticky.

Movesmeant going out on my own and starting something entirely new.

Movesmeant doing something out of my comfort zone and far out of the realm of preferred routes in my family’s eyes.

Movesmeant betting on myself and following a dream I’ve had for a long time. My own business. My own path, diverted from the one my family expected of me and designed selfishly for my wants and needs alone.

I'm not going to lie, it was a scary thought, breaking away from my family. One that I hadn’t fully come to terms with. Which is why I hadn’t jumped into anything. I had more than enough capital for a startup. I had the groundwork for it too. The only thing that was holding me back was… Well, she was probably on her way here right now.

On cue, a knock on the door sounded before immediately opening. Sweeping in with the confidence of a woman who single-handedly revolutionized one of the biggest companies in the country to being one of the biggest companies in all of North America. She was that very same woman.