Page 75 of Almost Paradise

“You want to be CEO? Take the job then. You think I want all this responsibility this soon? I thought I had another ten years. Dad dies. I’m left with keeping everyone and everything together. You get to drink yourself silly every day, and you think I have it good? You get to walk away from your job. From all your responsibilities. I’m the one who had to juggle everything while you sat around, drank, and moped, and you have the nerve to be jealous of me? Yeah, I was such the golden boy that he took the only woman I’ve ever loved from me. He kept mysonfrom me. You think he did that out of love? Fuck him and fuck you too.” Instead of looking at the spreadsheets, I decide to shut off my desktop and go home and wait for my wife and son. “The most pathetic thing of all is that I still miss our father. Despite the anger and resentment I have inside of me, I still love and miss him. That’s some fucked up shit.”

That’s the first time I’ve uttered those words out loud since I found out about my father’s duplicity. Langley puts a hand on my shoulder in quiet understanding.

“I know how you feel,” he says.

“He didn’t raise us this way, Lang. He didn’t run his business this way. I don’t understand. How could he do this to me? I’m his damn son, and because of him, I lost out on three years of my son’s life. All I have of that time are pictures that his mother reluctantly shares with me. Years I can never get back. And years I lost out on with Nia.”

We don’t speak for several minutes. For the first time in years, I’m grateful for my brother’s company. There are things I don’t have to explain to him like I would with Wyatt or anyone else.

“Here’s what I know,” he says. He plops himself down on my desk. “Fair warning, I don’t know much.” He chuckles and so do I. “Yes, you lost three years, but you have the rest of your life. Yes, Nia is angry at you, but let’s be real here. She had your baby when she didn’t have to. I’m sure she cares about you too. Tell her what you found out and apologize on Dad’s behalf. You might not think it will matter, but it will—and you have to be patient with her. Be patient with yourself too.”

Chapter 40

Drake

Be patient. Be patient. Langley’s words play in my head for the next couple of hours. After getting a text from Nia’s driver that they were on their way home, I decide to leave the office for the night. The place is eerily quiet when I get there. I know she’s home, but I don’t hear the television, Carter’s constant chatter, or the sound of his little feet as he runs around the house.

“Carter! Nia,” I yell, suddenly eager to see them both.

“Up here.” Nia’s voice lacks the usual hostility, but I’m immediately on alert. Carter is not home. If he was, he’d be here and climbing on top of me by now.

Resigned, I take off my coat and shoes ready to go upstairs for another confrontation, which is the last thing I want or need right now. I’m drained. I’m physically, emotionally, and mentally drained. I have nothing left to give in an argument, and if Carter is not home, there’s no one here to keep things from escalating. Before I can get to the steps, she comes down.

“Carter wanted to spend the night with Mason and Kyle, so I let him. Ray will drop him off at daycare tomorrow.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that she should have called me first before making that decision, but I swallow those words. Carter misses his cousins. I know it because he talks about them nonstop.

“Okay. I’ll call him later. Do you want to go somewhere and have dinner?” That question takes her by surprise. Her head snaps up and her mouth forms an O. “I want to talk to you.”

“I’ve already eaten, but I want to talk to you too.” Now that takes me by surprise. She’s not wanted anything to do with me since I barged my way back into her life.

She follows me into the kitchen where I open a bottle of white wine. I don’t want this on an empty stomach, but I need it to prepare myself for whatever she has to say, which I’m positive won’t be anything I want to hear. The only thing I won’t give her is a divorce. If she wants one, she’ll have to fight for one. She already knows I fight dirty.

She turns down my offer of a drink and says, “It’s been hard on me being angry with you all this time. I’m not like that. I don’t enjoy fighting with you. I hate feeling this way, so I’m done.”

I wait for her to call me toxic or some other name. I watch her, ready to grab her wrist if she tries to hit me, but she doesn’t say or do anything else.

“You’re done? Done what? Done being my wife?” I put the wine glass down, fully prepared to give her the fight of her life if that’s what she means.

“I’m done fighting with you. I don’t want it to affect Carter. That’s all. Look, I know this marriage is only because you want to be close to our son. I’ll never keep him from you, so you don’t have to worry about that. If you want out of it—”

I hold my hand up, and she stops talking. This marriage was never about Carter. Yes, I want access to my son, but there are ways to get that without marriage. She’s asking for a cease-fire. It sounds good, but does this mean I’m going to have a version of the Nia that showed up at my mother’s house for lunch? I’d rather she fight with me than walk around with a vacant look in her eyes.

So take the vacant look away, idiot.

“Okay. I appreciate that. I don’t want to fight anymore either.” I surprise her when I reach for her hands. This is the first time I’ve touched her like this in years, and she feels just like I remember. She’s warm and soft. As if I’m on autopilot, I lift her hands to my face like I used to and sniff them. She smells the same. Light and safe. She pulls her hands away before I can kiss them like I used to. “I don’t want you to be unhappy. I hate seeing you this way, and I hate knowing that I’m the cause. Can you please take down this wall? I hate it.”

“What wall?” she asks just before she gives me her back. I stand behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. I slowly turn her around and look into her eyes. She looks away almost immediately.

“This wall. This distance. This tension.” I grasp her chin and force her eyes back on me. “Once upon a time, there was nothing between us.”

“That’s not true and you know it. There were billions of things between us. There was family and obligations between us. There were people conspiring to keep us apart. There was class and wealth and race between us and neither one of us thought to address any of that. We were fooling ourselves back then. We were stupid.”

She’s not wrong. Even though we didn’t know about some of those things, they were all there. I should have known. I should have done more to protect what we had, but I was a fool. All I cared about then was that I had her in my corner. She made my responsibilities and obligations tolerable. Knowing that she was waiting for me was everything, but I failed to protect her.

“Do you remember how you were supposed to meet me in Berlin?” When she nods, I continue. “It was going to be our city. I was going to make it special and tell you how I feel about you. That was supposed to be the end of us being a secret. I wanted the world to know, but that was taken from us.” She searches my eyes as if she’s trying to decipher if I’m telling her the truth. “I believe you. My father did this, and I’m so damn sorry.” I rest my forehead on hers. She doesn’t move. She’s stopped breathing. “I know you don’t believe that I never got your messages or that I didn’t send those texts to you ending us."

She remains quiet, but I feel encouraged that she hasn’t called me a liar yet.

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