Chapter 79 – Pleasing the Boss

Oh, wow. We’re going there now. To the real stuff. “It was always just me and my mother. Even when my father was still living with us, I never knew him as not a junkie.”

“Is he still…?”

I say the word he politely avoided. “Alive? No. Died in a mugging when I was twenty. A mugging. I’d been certain he’d die of an overdose, but nope. A mugging. It was probably over drugs.”

He withdraws his knuckle, giving me space that I don’t need. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’d lost him long before that. His death was closure.” I shift, stretching my legs out and propping my bare feet on the edge of the ottoman. “My mother was finally able to let him go. Married a nice Protestant man and now she lives a happy suburban life. At least that’s what the Christmas cards say.”

“You aren’t close?”

“Not really. The only thing we ever had in common was how much we stupidly loved my father.” I look out through his floor-to-ceiling windows at the city sky, unwilling to watch his reaction. He’s suggested that I have daddy issues in the past, and now I’ve basically confirmed the fact.

Except it’s not my father that instilled the patterns that I seem to retrace over and over again, and for some reason, I find it worth acknowledging. “You know, she was my only role model where love was concerned. She treasured whatever scraps she got. She gave and gave and gave until she was a scrap herself.”

Summoning my courage, I dare to look at him. “I think I’m doing better than she did, considering.”

I’m surprised how much I want his validation. From his exp**ssion, I see he’s contemplating giving it, but I can also tell that, if he does, it will be a lie.

I reach out to his forearm, forgetting the effect physical contact with him has on me until electricity flashes up my limb, even though we’ve been casually touching off and on all evening. “Don’t respond to that. I know you have your opinions about me…”

“Don’t think you know my opinions, Brystin.” He places his hand over mine. It’s firm and gentle all at once. My gaze drifts to where we’re connected. I turn my hand so our palms k**s, and he laces his fi**gers through mine.

It’s basic touch considering all the ways we’ve been physical, but I feel dizzy and out of breath. My fight or flight response yells at me to run, even though I’m usually a freeze kind of a girl. Apparently, my instincts know this is turning into something bigger. Am I ready for it?

Hyperaware of my every move, Hadrian notices my panic. “You okay?”

“I’m…” I take a deep breath. I’m okay, but vulnerable, and in need of a distraction.

So I do what I do best and turn the tables so I’m the one asking the questions, knowing this will send us into the territory we’ve been cautiously working toward all night. “What about you? How did your parents f**k you up?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He gives a genuine laugh, something he does so rarely, it’s hard not to feel like it’s a gift.

“Obvious is in the eye of the beholder.” I don’t know what the f**k I’m saying. I’m buzzed—from him, not the alcohol—and I feel like I’m walking a tightrope toward him. He let me onto the platform in the parking lot, giving me a path to get inside his head—inside his heart—but I’m afraid of falling before I reach him. I’m trying to tread carefully. “I guess I’d like to hear it from your perspective.”

“Well, let’s see.” He lets go of my hand so he can fidget, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle on his pant leg with his palm. “My father, as you know, is a strong-headed ruler of the western world. Until his heart attack a couple of years ago, anyway. He’s impossible to live up to, and yet his approval requires that I do. I know I never will, but I haven’t figured out how to stop trying so I think that’s probably the bulk of my f**kedupness, as you may have guessed by now.”

He takes a beat, and I think this will be as far as he dares go, only to discover I’m wrong. “But then, of course, there’s my mother. Who actually did die from an overdose—on purpose—not that I can talk about it truthfully with pretty much anyone, which means I probably have a lot of mental shit to deal with. Especially because my father worshiped her. She was his only weakness, if you ask him. He loved her to the point that it crippled him.

“And that was confusing for me, because I hated her.”

His bluntness startles and moves me. “Hated her for killing herself?”

“Before that too. She had fo—” He takes a breath. “She had children who loved her. And it wasn’t enough.”

I’m quiet, knowing there’s no way my response will adequately exp**ss how much I’m feeling for him. Another beat passes where I try to figure out what he needs most to hear me say. “You know she was probably mentally ill.”

I swear I feel him resist an eye roll. “I realize that. I know it’s unfounded.”

Yeah, Brystin. I’d eye roll too. Do you hear yourself?

“I don’t mean that. I just…” I pivot to face him and try again. “It helps sometimes for me to remember that my father wasn’t capable of choosing me. Maybe your mother wasn’t either.”

“Maybe I’m more f**ked up than you are because realizing that doesn’t help.” He takes my hand again, sq***zes it. Lets me know I didn’t say anything wrong, and that he wants me to understand. “I still hate her. Even when she was alive, she wasn’t there. Not mentally or emotionally. Her heart was always with…him.”

“Him? Your father?”

“Hunter,” he says, purposefully.

“Your cousin?” As soon as I say it, I remember Adly’s sl*p at the yacht club, and I start to wonder if I missed something.

“I see your brain going. What do you know about Hunter? I’m sure your inquisitive mind has looked him up.”

I researched him the day after the awards. He hadn’t been on my radar and then he’d been nasty that night, so of course I needed to know more. “He’s a year older than you. Reynard’s son, who comes right before your father in birth order. He has two half-brothers—”

“Yeah, okay,” Hadrian says, with a strange chuckle. “Go on.”

“Reid and Alex. Both younger. And a stepmom.”

“Nelani is his second stepmom.”

“Right, because he divorced Reid and Alex’s mom—”

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