Page 14 of The Dom

“There was a news story a few years back where this old man had died in his house, and no one realized it for nearly two years because he didn’t have any family or friends, no one to realize that he was gone. If one of his automatic payments hadn’t been rejected due to lack of funds, who knows how long it would’ve been before someone would’ve noticed he was dead.” Nate released my hand and drained the last of his wine. “It hit Finley hard, the idea that this person had been so isolated, so alone, that his death hadn’t caused the slightest disturbance in the lives of others.”

I knew that feeling. Not the same circumstances, but that sudden realization that it was entirely possible for me to fall off the face of the earth and no one would care. It was what had driven me to find Finley in the first place, to have a connection to someone other than my mom.

“Trust me, Ashlee. Finley is going to be thrilled that you’re his daughter.”

Hope bloomed in my chest, and I quickly shut it down. “You don’t think it’s going to freak him out?”

One side of Nate’s mouth tipped up in a half-smile. “I think he’s going to be shocked, and I’d love to see the look on his face when it happens, but it’ll be a good surprise.”

The waiter returned to ask if we’d like dessert, and we both declined. The fact that neither of us really wanted to linger made me realize that neither of our heads were as much into this date as they should have been.

I still had one more question for Nate though.

“How do you think I should do it? I mean, should I just make an appointment, go into his office and announce ‘hey, remember that time you donated some DNA? Here I am?’ Or should I say it in a letter or card? I don’t think anyone makes those types of cards, do they?”

“Definitely face-to-face,” Nate said as he leaned back in his chair. “But other than that, I don’t know. Let me think on it.”

His gaze slid away from me but didn’t latch on to anything else. Nothing specific, anyway. He had this glazed sort of look in his eyes that told me I’d held as much of his attention as he could give for as long as he could manage.

I appreciated the fact that he’d helped me as much as he had, but I knew that even as he’d been listening to me and answering my questions, a good part of his mind had been elsewhere.

It hadn’t been a bad date, overall, but I’d have been lying to myself if I said I wasn’t at least a little disappointed that I hadn’t been able to distract him from his problems. Not out of a selfish desire where I wanted him entirely focused on me, but because he’d always managed to give my brain a break from my issues in one way or another, and I hadn’t been able to do that for him.

Maybe, no matter how much he wanted me, I would never be enough for him.

Nine

Nate

Most of the time when I felt like an ass, it didn’t bother me, but the fact that I’d only been half-present during last night’s first date annoyed the shit out of me. And it wasn’t like I’d done any of it intentionally either. I didn’t know if that made things better or worse.

One thing I did know that was worse was that I had two issues fighting with each other for dominance, and no matter which one I chose, I was going to feel guilty over the other one.

I hadn’t called my mom back about her voicemail, and I was tempted to continue to ignore it. If it’d been anyone else but her, I probably would have, but she was my mom. While she hadn’t exactly been okay with the decisions I’d made over the years, she at least hadn’t treated me like a complete pariah, and considering Joshua had always been her favorite, I knew what a big deal that was.

I put my elbows on my desk and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I’d had a headache since I’d gotten home last night, and the pills I’d been swallowing every few hours hadn’t done much of anything to put a dent in it. I could’ve blamed the headache for my indecision about what I wanted to do, but that would’ve been a lie.

Then there was Ashlee. She’d worked yesterday, but it hadn’t exactly been a normal day. And to make last night worse, we hadn’t even gotten around to the real reason we’d gone out in the first place.

She and I needed to figure out what we were to each other. The longer we went with things undefined, the more we risked misunderstandings. The last thing I wanted was for us to get into some sort of argument because we didn’t have an understanding. Communication was important, maybe now more than it was before.

I needed to take her out again, redo that mess of a date, and get the two of us on more solid footing. If I did it now, it’d give me one less thing to worry about too. She was right there, just down the hall. I swore I could almost feel her there. It was beyond tempting to reach out. I wouldn’t even have to go to her. I could just call. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to call her, tell her to come to me.

I remembered all too well how things had gone between the two of us here in my office. Not yesterday, of course, or when I’d fired her, but before that. My memories of her and me were the only ones I had of having sex in my office. I hadn’t been with anyone else here.

Except, I knew if I called her, I wouldn’t be able to resist having her again. We had to keep our work lives and our personal lives separate. I hadn’t done a good job of that before, but I hadn’t truly understood what I’d had with her then. I honestly wasn’t sure I understood it any better now, but at least I knew that we wouldn’t last if I kept mixing things up.

A thought struck me out of the blue. I was coming at this all wrong. Instead of bashing my head against the same hard wall over and over again, I should focus on something else that needed my attention.

Between all the good and bad that had happened over the last few days, I’d pushed aside the question of the missing flash drive. Even though Ashlee was back, I still needed to find out what’d happened to it. The drive didn’t hold nuclear launch codes, but what it did possess wasn’t anything I wanted available to just anyone.

I pulled up my email and sent a quick message off to Stu. I could’ve sent it directly to Ashlee, but it was better to go through Stu whenever possible. If anyone wanted to make an issue about Ashlee and me, we’d have a nice paper trail that went from me to Stu to her, with everything clearly documented. No hint of impropriety.

I supposed this was as good a test of our new normal as anything.

Speaking of normal…

I returned to sorting through my email, sending responses when necessary, moving others to specific folders. Deleting the junk that inevitably managed to make it through our firewalls no matter how often IT updated things.

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