Brazen Bossman: A Hero Club Novel, стр. 61
I pause for a moment to look her way and she is watching me intently. “You can keep going. I’m just here to listen. I won’t say a thing unless you ask me to,” she whispers, reaching out to stroke my cheek with her hand.
“We didn’t have much of a relationship. He resented me for not wanting to take over the family business one day, but why would I want to when he chose that place over my mother and me for so long? I think even part of me wanted it to fail.” I sigh heavily. “When he was first diagnosed, we weren’t very surprised. You said yourself that even you could see changes in him. What we didn’t expect, however, was the rapid decline his health would take. When it came time to talk about him stepping down from Lennox, my mother called me in tears. She didn’t know what they could do because they didn’t have a plan in place for something like this. She was overwhelmed, so… I stepped up. When I came to their house to talk to my father about it, he wasn’t hearing it. He didn’t want me to have anything to do with it because I was a fuckup, in his eyes. Words were shared between the both of us that I don’t want to repeat. As I’m sure you can tell after the scene today, when he gets riled up now, he explodes. He exploded and shoved my mother down when she tried to intervene.”
I stare down at our interlocked fingers. “I hit my father. I balled up my fist and hit my own father in his face. I screamed at him and told him if he ever laid a hand on my mother again that I’d kill him.” Tears I’m not expecting fill my eyes and my throat burns. I swallow the pain away and continue, “He started crying and apologizing. My mother made me leave. It wasn’t until a few days later that my father’s attorney delivered the contracts over to my penthouse; making it official I would be taking over. I think my mother had a lot to do with getting that pushed through.”
She leans over and rests her head on my shoulder, and I see her reach up and swipe a tear from her cheek.
“And now that his health has gotten worse, every time I hear about him or see him, my father is disappearing right before my eyes.” I choke a bit, trying to hide a sob that wants desperately to escape my throat. “He’s leaving and I never had a chance to be his son… not in any true way. We both fucked so much of our relationship up that now it’s too late… it’s beyond fixing.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing the fingers of my free hand against them as tears begin to freely fall.
Piper moves so she is kneeling in the sand in front of me, and when I look at her, tears are staining her cheeks too.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“Shh,” she says as I wipe her tears away, and she does the same with mine. “Nothing is beyond repairing, Nathanial. He’s still here. Your father is in there, even if some days it seems like he isn’t. You can’t let that one mistake, or mistakes of the past, define your relationship with him forever. I don’t want you to have any regrets one day.” She leans forward, resting her forehead on mine. “Thank you for trusting me.”
I cup her face in my hands. “I trust you with everything.”
Her lips begin to tremble. “That’s why you want to sell Lennox. It’s too painful to be in your life.”
I nod. “Yes, but I have a bit of a problem with that now.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with someone who works there.”
She sits back on her heels as my admission sinks in for the both of us with her eyes wide.
“What?” she says again.
“I love you, Piper. I think I have for a while, but I didn’t know how to process it, but now I do. I’m in love with you.”
She sits quietly for so long that I think I’ve broken her, but when a small smile spreads over her lips, my heart bursts in a way I’ve never felt before.
“I love you too,” she says quietly, like it was some kind of realization she only just had.
At that, I can’t keep my hands off of her anymore.
I curl my fingers around her waist and pull her astride me, smashing my lips to hers in a kiss.
She gasps into my mouth, anchoring herself over me with her knees in the sand on either side of my hips and her arms wind tightly around my back.
I need her. I need her right now. Right here. I don’t care that anyone could see us should they decide on a midnight, ocean stroll.
It doesn’t take long for my hands to find their way underneath her top, tracing over each goosebump that erupts on the skin of her back.
I leave a trail of kisses from her lips, to her cheek, and higher.
“I need you, Piper,” I whisper against the shell of her ear. “Right here.”
“Yes,” she says softly. “Please.” She sends her fingers up the nape of my neck and into my hair, scratching my scalp with her dark red painted nails.
She makes me feel like I’m on fire, set ablaze in a way that makes me want to burn forever. I can feel her on every inch of me. She’s burrowed her way into me: mind, body, and soul.
“Arms