Istrummed my fingers on my desk, studying numbers on my computer screen. We had to make changes for sure. I wasn’t going to grow this business by taking on anyone and everyone who wanted an opportunity these days. In my board meeting this afternoon, I hope that I’d gotten that message across to everyone in my acquisitions team, who’d been headhunting like we were trying to buy up every last business on the entire globe.
“Jimmy,” I heard Collin’s voice call out when Summer announced him into my office.
I glanced up, needing to give my eyes a break from the list of businesses I was going to send to Alex. I needed a fresh set of eyes and more information before I decided whether or not we needed to pull back on investing.
“How’s the brain surgeon this fine afternoon?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and happily greeting the man who sat across from me.
“Better than your sorry ass.” He crossed his leg over the other and reclined back. “How long have you been staring at that computer?”
“I think you know the answer to that. Alex most likely wants to kick my ass, though.” I chuckled, resting my chin on my fist.
“Well, I’m only here to ensure this damn documentary for the neuroscience wing at Saint John’s is finally in my past, but if he wants to kick your ass, I might stay to watch that,” he joked. “What’s going on with you?”
“We lost a deal to fucking Brakken a week or so ago, and ever since, it’s had me thinking that we need to slow down. We’re turning into fucking sharks, feeding on chum in the water these days. I’m not going to lose my grip on this company by expanding too hard and too fast.”
“And so, he’s doing hard cutbacks.” Alex walked into the room, holding papers in his hand. I knew he was here to argue about what I’d emailed him. “What the hell is this, man?”
“That was faster than I imagined.” I grinned at him as he sat next to Collin across from my desk.
Collin laughed. “Here we go!”
“We’re not dropping anyone, but cutbacks, yes,” I said to Alex, ignoring Collin. “We’re just trimming the fat.”
“This is because you lost to Brakken, isn’t it?”
“Partially, but I couldn’t have won that battle no matter how hard I tried. We need to take a step back some.” I nodded at the spreadsheet he held in his hand from the data I’d sent him, “Those businesses are not developing as well as we thought they would. We’ll be throwing money away soon enough.”
“Kicking some businesses out of the nest and letting them learn to fly on their own, eh?” Collin chimed in.
Alex glanced up from the paper and looked at me, “Some of these poor little birdies won’t figure it out before they hit bottom.”
“I’m not that big of an asshole, despite what most might believe, Alex,” I said. “I’m not dropping anyone. We’ll cut back, and either they’ll work harder to increase growth, or they can find a new company that is more suited to help them.”
“I get it.” Alex nodded in agreement. “Some of these have lost buyers’ interest, and some are flat out bad with reviews.”
“The hotel chain with multiple bed bug complaints?” I sighed. “I’m not dying on that hill. This is why we need to either be more invested or pull back completely. We can only help so much. They need to be willing to do the rest.”
“It’s pretty much five o’clock,” Collin said. “I left the office early to ensure my shit was done and over.” He glanced over at the spreadsheets Alex held. “Unless I’m on your little blacklist and have to learn to fly on my own.”
“You’re good. When we go to launch, I have a feeling this will be the best introduction to medical science since Jake’s heart institute.”
“Having cameras in the room while he instructs on his surgeries—it’s Jakey’s dream come true.”
I smiled at Collin’s remark. “If we can get you to do the same, I have a feeling Saint John’s will officially be on the map.”
“Slow down, cowboy. I thought you were taking things slow.” Collin laughed, standing up and walking over to my office fridge and pulling out a bottle of water. “Speaking of which, now that we have your complete attention, you realize that if you back out on Saturday, Jake’s going to wipe the floor with your ass, right?”
“Fuck,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I had planned to go through more—”
“A man who despises excuses,” Alex leaned back in his chair across from me, “is about to drop one on his poor brother. It’s the only thing Jake wants to get out of his way before little junior gets here in two weeks.”
“Hasn’t he considered the fact that our lame-ass bike ride up to Big Sur is potentially dangerous for a soon-to-be father?”
“Oh, hell,” Collin said, taking another drink of his bottled water. “You know?” He looked over at Alex. “I’m confident Jake hasn’t considered the death rates of taking his street bike up the coast with his brother and friends.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “We did that shit before Jake was about to have a kid. I’m pretty sure Ash would like to—”
“Save it, Jim,” Alex said. “Don’t go into the dangers of taking out our street bikes. I think we should focus more on the dangers of you being glued to work and hardly even going out with us at all for over a month now. Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I said, not daring to allow the topic of Avery to come up. Everyone had left it alone, and that’s exactly how I wanted it. “What time and where are we meeting up?”
“Jake’s house at six in the morning tomorrow.” Collin stood. “I’ll see you there. I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks with all these lined-up surgeries and neurology consultations. It seems like I’ve been busier this month than I was during my entire residency.”
“You look like hell.” I smiled as I stood and started to pack my shit into my bag. “I just didn’t want to insult you after you drove all this way to make sure I wasn’t lying when I texted that your documentary was good.”
“I don’t trust texts.” He smirked. “A chick tried to dump me over a text, and when I went to see her, she said she didn’t mean it.”
“What the hell?” Alex laughed.
“Dead serious,” Collin said, turning to leave. “I told her that maybe she didn’t mean it then, but I meant it now. Anyway, I’m out,” he said, waving and leaving my office the way he’d waltzed in.
Cool as a cucumber. That was Collin.
“See ya, Coll,” I said, knowing my friend was probably exhausted from work. I felt bad that he had to drive here to confirm that he was good to go with his part on the new wing of the hospital. My work was hard, but I wasn’t saving and changing lives the way Collin was.
“You enjoy the guys tomorrow.” Alex sighed as he stood. “I’ve got to meet Collin’s worst enemy.”
I frowned. “You’re kidding. Tell me you’re making the mistake of hooking up with her, or otherwise I’m going to assume it’s because she’s a bitch who’s overstepped her bounds with my VP.”
“It was my idea, dip shit,” he said. “Since you and Avery split, I haven’t had time for jack-shit outside of this place. I have to go over the final numbers for the quarter with her. It’s not that big of a deal. I just didn’t want to drop it on Collin after he showed up tonight, looking tired as fuck.”
“Now, I’m definitely sucked into this bike ride.” I scratched my forehead.
“What are best friends for?” He laughed, then left my office.
I had been running hard, and so was almost everyone else around me these days. I knew precisely why Collin had driven up here, too. These guys hadn’t seen me as much because I’d been buried in work, and I knew what they were thinking—it was because of Avery.
Sadly, throwing myself into work was the best healing remedy for the pain in my chest. I was so madly in love with that woman. I still couldn’t imagine myself without her, but I couldn’t imagine myself with a woman like her either. Fucking lies and secrets? It’s all our relationship added up to be, and that was what cut me the deepest. If Avery had loved me as she said she did, I wouldn’t have been left in the dark with her past.
Maybe a fast and adrenaline-filled ride up the coast on my street bike would do me good.
We took off from Jake’s house bright and early, and the love for being on the bike, especially riding it up the coast, was coursing through me. There was something about controlling all this horsepower, bringing it and me through the turns, laying it over hard, and finding the apex to where I pulled smoothly out of the turns. It was fucking magical and made me return to my carefree days when I did this all the time with my brother, Collin, and Alex.
Pacific Coast Highway wound through the side of the cliffs above the ocean, and with the tight curves and the sea below us, it was my favorite place to be on the bike, especially on this particular ride farther north to Big Sur.
After arriving and having lunch at our favorite diner—all of us still acting like adrenaline junkies from the ride up the coast—we walked across the street and sat at a bench near a vista point, seeing the waves crash below us.
“Damn,” Collin said, leaning his elbows back to the table behind him and stretching out his legs, “it’s almost like you can appreciate the ocean more from this vantage point.”
“What, you’d rather be up here with waves violently rushing the shore instead of checking out the ladies on the shoreline?” I asked, sitting on the table and using the seat to prop up my feet. “You must’ve lost your mind somewhere back there.”
Jake sat on the far corner of the long picnic bench, sitting and leaning against the table with his legs stretched out and crossed. Being on a bike for hours made one’s body beg to stretch out after all that crouching.
My brother shook his head and pulled off his square aviator glasses. “You are kidding, right?” he asked me. “You do know what time of the year this is, don’t you?”
Collin laughed while I stared out at the ocean. “Right. My God, November came out of nowhere,” I said.
“You’re going to miss the birth of your nephew if you don’t get your head out of that company and come up for some air,” Jake said. “It’s fucking ridiculous. What is that place to you now, a hellish cocoon that you hide in since you and Avery called it quits?”
“Assume what you want about that, Jacob,” I said. “I knew your sorry ass would bring it up eventually, and how I’m the dick in the equation.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jake stood up. “This isn’t about Avery, Jim. It’s about my fucking brother. Before her, you were a control-freak workaholic.” He walked toward where he faced me, both of us escalating in our irritation. “And after her, you’re right back to the grind, huh?”
“You have no idea—”
“Right!” Jake snapped, cutting me off. “Let me guess. I have no fucking idea what it takes to run the goddamn company,” he mocked me in some fucked-up tone. “No, Dad, I don’t. I don’t want to fucking know, either. What I do know is that when you were with that woman, the whole damn place didn’t fall apart, did it? It still fucking ran like the well-oiled machine it is.”
“Why are you bringing this shit up?” I asked, pissed-off, and ready to blow up.
“Because we finally had you back. Fuck, we actually had you back better than we ever had you before, and now it’s this shit again.”
“Say what you want, Jake,” I answered. “Leave Avery out of it.”
“You’re the one who showed me—through Avery—that you could have a relationship outside of that fucking place. Now it’s over, and you’re buried in it again.”
“You’ll never understand.”
“You know what, fuck you, Jimmy,” he said, angrier than I’d ever seen my brother. “I can’t ever have a normal conversation with you. After all these years, you still use this fucking bullshit CEO tone with me? Fuck that. I don’t work for you. I want my goddamn brother, for fuck’s sake. I want my kid to have his uncle. You’re so buried in that place that I’m pretty fucking sure you’ll just have your secretary send cards.”
“Oh, calm down, Jake. Jesus Christ,” I said. “You make no sense.”
“Maybe not to you,” he answered.
“All right,” Collin interrupted. “Fucking enough between you two.” He exhaled while Jake threw his hands up and walked away in frustration.
“Fuck,” I said, annoyed with my brother, watching as he walked down the coastline from where we were, calming down. “Is he that wound up that I’m working again?” I leaned my elbows on my knees. “If I’d known Avery and our breakup would turn my brother against me, I would’ve never gone down that road in the first place.”
“It’s not that,” Collin said, turning some to face me. “What happened between you and Avery, exactly? Was she hiding shit from you? Did you even give her a chance to speak her side of the story of her background check? I haven’t been able to get past that: Jim and Avery split over a background check.”
“It’s more complicated than that. She made me look like a jackass for an entire month, shutting me down when I’d question why she wouldn’t take her ex to court. Poor Addy.” I exhaled, feeling the anger over the idea of it all again. “That little girl has no one to protect her from her loser of a father. I fucking hate addicts, and Avery was in his corner the entire time.” I glanced over at Collin. “All because she was just like him. It would’ve been nice if that part of her life had come up in conversation.”
“Would you have kicked her ass to the curb if it had?”
“Her charges were so fucking long ago, and she’s clearly pulled herself out of living that kind of life.” I ran my hand through my hair and looked out at the ocean. “I would have never broken it off over her past, Collin,” I said. “It wasn’t about that, not entirely, anyway. It was mainly the fact that she was still enabling this bullshit because of her past. I know all too well how fucked up it is to enable an addict like that, much less bringing an innocent kid around that shit and making excuses for doing so as if you aren’t hiding from your secrets. It fucking reminds me of our mom. Jake wants to stomp off like that after I’ve done nothing but carry the weight of what that woman did to us? I shielded him from everything, and then I took Dad’s seat in the company, so Jake didn’t feel the pressure. He has no idea how much I love his stupid ass, and I hate that work might do exactly what he said, and I end up having some weird, distant relationship with my nephew.”
“You do let that place swallow you up. Jake’s right about that. You also know you can run that company and still be present like you were when you were with Avery,” Collin said. “Listen, we’ve grown up together, and I know for a fact that you still struggle with hating your mom for what she did to you.”
“Don’t sit here and tell me I shouldn’t hate that bitch,” I said.
“Your hatred for the woman is being projected.” His voice was low and sympathetic. “No room for error,” he said with a smile. “It’s the rule Jacob and I live by as surgeons. We have to, or we lose a patient. You, however, live by that rule harder than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s all stemming from the bullshit you’re carrying with you because of what your mom did. You project all your shit onto something else. You can’t hold down a goddamn relationship—even when it’s a fucking stupid mistake like you made with Julia or Lillian, mostly a good one like you had with Avery.”
“No room for error?” I softened up some. “Well, in Julia or Lillian’s cases—”
“Those women were the epitome of the word error.” He laughed. “I’m not shitting you, though. You have deep-seated issues, and they’re fucking with you big time.”
“Even if I agreed that you might be correct that I don’t give anyone a chance—perhaps, in Avery’s case, specifically. I don’t know. It was like as soon as I found everything out, all I saw was my mom, someone who was okay to put her child in danger to cover her secrets. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s a lot.”
“That’s when therapy comes in, my man,” Collin said. “I work arm-in-arm with therapists, and I know they can help you get all this scarred-up shit out of your system. You need to talk to someone, though. You have to let go of this hatred for your mom.”
“And if I can’t?” I asked him, knowing he was right, even though I wished I could tell him he was full of shit. There was no denying what he was saying was accurate. “Then what?”
“You lose Avery for good, even after she was brave enough to get help and try to fix herself,” Jacob said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, pulling off my sunglasses and looking at him as he approached. “She went to rehab? Was she using?”
“This is what I’m fucking talking about,” Collin stood and stretched. “Look at you, jumping to accusations.” He snapped his fingers. “And just like that, too.”
“She didn’t go to rehab, you dick,” Jake answered. “She and Ash have gotten pretty close since you broke up. Carmen had a friend in nursing who went through a similar situation as Avery did, so she started going to AA meetings to be surrounded by people with similar experiences who could show their support and encourage her. They’ve been going to meetings every Friday for weeks, and Ash said that Avery’s done some intense work on herself as a result. She even decided to sell that Aston Martin to pay for lawyers so she can get custody of Addison. Say what you will, but she’s taking care of herself and doing the work that needs to be done, and she’s doing it for herself, which is more than I can say for most people in her situation.”
My lips were suddenly dry. It never even crossed my mind that she would change anything, let alone face her problems and fight to do what’s right. I’d slammed the door on her and our relationship the second I saw that report. I’d lumped her into my mom’s category and threw away the key. Collin’s revelation to me that I projected my issues onto others was slapping me in the face at this very moment.
“Wow.” I looked at Collin. “You were fucking right, both of you. I guess Mom took away my ability to believe people can be redeemed, huh?” I was half-joking, but if I was honest, part of me felt like I might spontaneously cry, and I think the guys could tell.
“That’s why you need therapy,” Jake said thoughtfully.
“That’s what you gotta fix, Jimmy,” Collin said. “I’ve got some friends that you can reach out to. You just need to learn to let the fucking hate go, man.”
“Once you get some help, maybe you won’t blow up your next relationship,” Jake said with a shrug.
“Well,” I smiled at both Collin and Jake. “Glad this bike ride turned into a Jim therapy session for us.”
“You’re lucky you have Collin.” Jake smiled. “I couldn’t give a fuck before he started talking sense into your stubborn ass.”
“Let’s go before I decide to throw you over the cliff as my therapy,” I said.
“Let’s do it,” Collin agreed.
I knew the work that I needed to do wasn’t going to be easy, but I needed to let go of the resentment I held toward my mother. She’d made horrible decisions, but she didn’t control my life anymore. As much as I hated her for what she’d done to my father, brother, and me, I needed to forgive her. Forgiving someone who never bothered to apologize is not the easiest thing to do, but I knew I was doing it for me, not her.
My therapist told me to write a letter to my mother, and when I was done, light it on fire and let my feelings go with my words. I didn’t feel some kind of a weight being lifted from my shoulders or anything by doing the deed, but I can say with certainty that I felt lighter somehow.
I guess it was put to the test when I came to the hospital for the birth of my nephew, and I saw Avery in passing. I didn’t see the addict, the liar, or the one who’d hurt me by keeping her secrets from me. I saw a woman whose face and bright blue eyes had always spoken to my soul. She looked healthier and happier than I’d ever seen her, and even though she was no longer mine, knowing she was in a good place made me feel extremely content.
I wanted to stop her and talk, but what would have come of that if I had? Would we have tried this thing again? I knew she was working on herself, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that. More than that, I knew I still had a lot of work to do on myself. I was still a fucking workaholic, and those issues almost had my therapist ready to put me in a straitjacket.
I had a long road to travel, unraveling years of issues, and there’s no way I’d bring Avery or Addy back into my life until I figured out how to live it better without needing Avery to be the one to help. This was all on me, and for the first time in my life, I was the one working on fixing myself.
