Page 46 of Mending Our Chance

25 Felicity

I pushed the hair off my face and prepared to dive into the calm water of the hotel’s pool. A good swim, after a vigorous workout was the way to end the first day of my staycation. Today, I had spent the day taking in the city as a tourist. Hell, I even brought out an accent. Some people had thought I was Euro trash—little did they know I was born and raised in this magnificent city. And I even surprised myself with how much fun it could be to play the tourist. I’ll have to do this every so often. As I looked into the chlorinated water below, I vowed to make time for myself in the future.

The only rule of this staycation was not to think of work. I had buried my aunt who had been a traitor, I had dined with my father who was oily but didn’t hide what he was, and I had felt the devastation that came from a relationship where private agendas took precedence. It had been a busy week—and it was only Thursday night!

When I had shimmied into my tiny bikini after stripping out of my workout gear, all I could think of was Marcus. And once that flood gate was open, all the things I swore I wouldn’t think about came flooding back. How he was my boyfriend. How my business partner could make such an important decision without me. How I was now in a tangled web, and how I’d been wrong to think that the whole time we’d been in business together, I had been the spider.

“Fine. You want to think about all this, then go ahead,” I ordered my reflection in the pool’s surface.

You told Marcus to put the company first, remember? You first suggested the idea, and now you are mad at him for doing what YOU should have done? The internal accusation slammed into me.

In a fierce leap, I arched in the air before curling into the perfect descent. I penetrated the water’s surface and submerged myself into the depths of the pool. Placing my hands together, I moved my body as one, skimming along the floor of the pool until I found myself at the far wall. Only then did I come up for air. Now able to stand in the shallows, I pulled myself out of the pool, but I hesitated half out of the water, lost in my thoughts. When there was no clear answer, I began the walk back to the diving platform at the deep end.

More thoughts intruded, unable to be deterred. Private investors should have been brought in. It was a good call to make. And regardless of whether they’d been brought in or not, you still could have saved the day. You didn’t have to gamble everything to be the savior. But I did, and that was my flaw. Now that I was walking back to take another dive, I saw things differently. I had wanted to save Marcus. I had wanted to hold all the power. That is why I had fronted the money and insisted this business’ success be on me.

Marcus had seen a way out, either to free himself of me or to better the company by having more investors, I didn’t know which. I didn’t want to believe that he did that to get rid of me, but my insides were raw and I couldn’t help but think the worst of him. And now, here I was, pissed at him for doing exactly what I would have done in his shoes. But I would have done it to better the company.

Marcus’ words came unbidden back to my mind. “It’s like pulling out a sliver to prevent infection. It hurts at first, but it was for the long-term good.”

It didn’t mean I wasn’t hurt. I was in agony. Having got Marcus back—the one thing I didn’t know I had been missing—only to have him hide something like this from me completely wrecked me.

As I climbed onto the diving platform again, I reminded myself that I had only been brave enough to open the door to my father because I had managed to do so first with Marcus. It was all so gloriously fucked up.

“I just need this weekend,” I told myself, not bothering to speak quietly in the empty pool room. I could sort everything out, then go to work on Monday with a clear plan which would deal with both the professional and the personal.

Fuming, I jumped into the air and did a full front flip before diving into the pool again. I repeated my underwater swim, letting my frustration fuel my body’s movements, but when I surfaced at the other end of the pool, I found two pairs of Gucci loafers standing close to the pool’s edge.

“Careful,” I bit out. “You don’t want to get your pretty little outfits ruined with chlorine.”

“He’s worried about you,” Matteo responded without preamble.

“He contacted us. Wasn’t hard to find you,” Alonzo added as if on cue.

Matteo and Alonzo were looking down at me with carefully placed neutral expressions. I purposely splashed more than was necessary as I climbed out of the pool. I couldn’t help but think that it was smart of them to come themselves, rather than tell Marcus where I was.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said shortly. “At work. On Monday.” I then retreated to the other end of the pool again.

“We heard you talking to yourself,” Matteo called out. “You said you needed the weekend.”

“So leave!” I snapped.

“Could we join you?” Alonzo flashed me a sheepish grin. “Just spend quality time with our sister?”

I paused as I placed a hand on the ladder that led up to the diving platform and considered them from across the water. I had wanted this, hadn’t I? A relationship with them. I sighed. “Do you even have swim trunks?”

Without further ado, my brothers shimmied out of their clothes, not bothering to slip into a changing room. I couldn’t help smirking as I climbed onto the diving board’s slippery surface. My aunt had dared to call these twin flames of raw life, evil. Mischievous, devilishly handsome, and tricksy were perhaps fitting adjectives—but never demonic.

“No work talk, I’ve had enough of that,” I ordered to the pair who were sprinting toward me in their boxer briefs. “And you either sleep on the couches in my room or get another room if you pick up chicks.”

“We heard you,” Matteo yelled. “You need the weekend.”

“Fine,” Alonzo yelped as he took the corner too fast, slipped, and skidded into the pool.

Too shocked and frantic about my older brother’s physical wellbeing, I didn’t see his other half spring onto the diving board behind me. A moment later, Matteo had me around the waist and tackled me into the pool.

I came up choking and spluttering. Closing my eyes, I took one moment—extracting it as if pushing the pause button to life. This small snapshot was what I had been missing while I was in purgatory with my aunt. An unnecessary seclusion from my family was what all those years had been. Hitting resume, I came back into the present and squirmed away from one of them to pull at the feet of the other, dragging him down to the depths of the pool. Wrestling and chaos ensued for a long time afterward. Then, my brothers and I cleaned up, donned our most fly garments, and hit up the clubs.

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