“You can’t have it both ways,” I said dryly. “You can’t send me away when you didn’t want me and then honestly expect me to come running back as if I owed it to you to do so.”
His wild and bushy eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “I didn’t send you away because I didn’t want you. I sent you away because it was Suzannah’s wish.”
“What?” The heart that Dani was slowly starting to push back to life curled up at his words.
“Your mom wanted more for you than the local public school and the skater friends you’d been hanging out with. She wanted to give you a sense of your heritage and the honor that had been handed down amongst our family. She was the one who enrolled you and made the first-semester payment…” His voice disappeared as if suddenly realizing the reason for my hard feelings all these years. “I didn’t know she hadn’t told you.”
I didn’t want to believe it. Even amid her depression and loss, she wouldn’t have sent me away like that. We were a team. She’d said it over and over to me until… Until she’d walked into a pond and let herself drown. Until she’d wrung the bell on life and left her own family?her son?shorthanded.
“I was there as much as they’d let me,” Carson said, as if trying to make it up to me. As if trying to show himself in a different light, and I hated to admit it was working. The times he’d sponsored the chess team and the debate team and every single sport I’d been involved with came rushing over me, not as Carson trying to prove he was an important man, but trying to prove I was important to him.
God, what a fucked-up life I’d lived.
The discussions we’d had about my role with the company whenever I’d come home from my deployments hit me equally hard. I’d thought he’d been demanding I give it all up to play the role he wanted for me, but maybe it had just been his way of leaving the door open. Had I been so blinded by grief, sadness, and hate that I hadn’t seen it for what it was? Him waiting for me to take the hand he was holding out?
I’d barely spoken a word during our conversation, but now I literally couldn’t. I wasn’t sure what to say as I tried to adjust the entire filmstrip of my life in my head with a different filter.
Once more, he was the one to do the talking. “When you went to the academy, I understood it. It was a continuation of what you’d been taught. And when you told me you were going to be a SEAL, I understood that as well. A young man wanting to prove he could be the best of the best. The challenge. The honor.” He gave me a wry smile. “The women.”
I snorted.
“I was young once, too,” he said, keeping a smile I wasn’t sure how to read because it was obvious I’d been reading him wrong for years. “Whenever you came home and I talked about the company, it was because I wanted you to know this is yours. That it’s all waiting for you. Thatwe’reall waiting for you.”
Damn. Tears glittered in his eyes, and I had to look away before I lost it myself. I pushed my nails into my palms.
“Henry has been taking over more and more of the business so I can step down and focus on diversifying our products. I’m hoping to travel a little more. But Henry certainly isn’t relishing holding both COO and CEO titles. We’ve been trying to figure out how?who?we could count on. You could take the operations role. It’s yours if you want it.”
There it was. The shove. The little push that had my emotions turning back to stone even as I tried to see it from my new vantage point. The angle where he wasn’t the villain of my story. I swallowed my pride and years of anger as I said, “I know nothing of the business. There has to be plenty of people who would do a better job.”
“I’ve never made it a secret amongst the staff that you would eventually take your place on the management team. No one is going to feel stepped over if that is what you’re suggesting.”
This was the reason we’d fought. He made assumptions. He acted like there was no choice for me but this. I couldn’t help taunting him a little. Our old ways too hard to let go of. “I’ve always insisted that I didn’t want it. I told you to sell it and be rid of the entire headache.”
He nodded. “I guess I’m as stubborn as you. I wouldn’t let go of the hope.”
We sat there a moment, weighing each other’s words. I didn’t want to give him hope. Even if I decided to give up the SEALs—which I wasn’t set on—it didn’t mean I’d run home with my tail between my legs. I couldn’t see myself sitting behind this desk. I could work for Garner. Hell, I could start my own security company and do a better job than he was doing. So, I told Carson the truth. “I don’t know that I’ve changed my position.”
We eyed each other for a long time, and as always, I wasn’t the one to look away.
“You’re here,” he said, waving his hand at Mom’s office. “It means something.”
And I couldn’t correct him. Because it did. It meant something. I just wasn’t sure what it was, or if I’d ever give him the answer he wanted.
“Henry and I happen to be meeting today to go over the five-year plan and my semi-retirement. Would you like to sit in? Just to hear what’s going on?”
It sounded like the worst thing I could do. Talking crop rotation and oil sales was a completely different type of planning than talking tactical entry points and evac locations. But I also felt like maybe I owed it to him and myself to do it. Like I owed it to the kid who’d loved Carson with a hero-like worship.
“I can do that,” I said, and it looked like a weight was lifted from his shoulders, but it was placed on mine instead. I wanted to throw it off but knew it was too late.
Carson introduced me to some of the staff as they filtered in. I stored away the names I wasn’t sure I’d ever use. And then Henry showed up, surprise written on his face at the sight of me. I was surprised as well. It had been a good ten years since I’d seen Henry, but it looked like he’d aged even more. In some ways, he’d gotten older than Carson, even though he was quite a few years younger than my uncle. Maybe it was the gray that stood out against his jet-black hair or the wrinkles on his brown face.
When I asked how he and his family were doing, he brought out his phone to show me pictures of his kids and their spouses and their grandkids. His smile was wide as he bragged on his son and daughter, scrolling through to a picture of them with gorgeous coils of black hair and tall bodies pressed in suits in front of an office building that readGordon Family Lawyers.
Even though Henry’s kids had gone to elementary school with me, we hadn’t hung out together. Carson was right; I’d hung out with a group of skaters. Mini societal rebels. People I probably would have raised hell with and gotten in trouble with if I’d stayed at the public high school here in town. Henry’s kids had been scholastic all-stars, and I had a vague recollection of them ending up at Ivy League schools and setting records. Now, they obviously owned a law practice and bled success.
After the discussion of families was over, Carson and Henry went to work on their plans for increasing distribution channels, adding on to the online store, developing more health products, and sourcing new plants for the new lines. I just listened but realized their strategy was complex, complicated like any other strategy Carson engaged in.
At nine-thirty, I got a text from Dani.
