Page 92 of Work with Me

“He didn’t tell you how I fucked everything up? Again?”

A line formed between her delicate eyebrows. “It’s not fucked up. Look how happy everyone is. Customers are lining up to buy the new version.”

I clicked on the photo of Alicia with Tyler. Zoomed in until it was so pixelated I couldn’t resolve her features. But I remembered. I remembered the slope of her nose. The perfect curve of her barely-there blond eyebrows. Her eyes so blue and deep I could have drowned in them. The trusting, hopeful smile she gave me when I’d promised to text her.

“Her.” I jabbed my finger at the screen. “She’s the reason the project was successful. That everyone is so happy. That I was happy for a while.” I tried to swallow, but my throat closed.

Marlee dragged one of my guest chairs around to my side of the desk and plopped down into it. “Tell me.”

And I did. I let it all go. The good parts and the bad. And then the worst part where I let her down exactly like she’d expected.

When I finished, Marlee squinted at me. “And why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

Her lip curled. “Here, acting like a robot, and not at a race in Brazil or on a sailboat in the Mediterranean or surrounded by women in a hot tub at a ski chalet. You know, doing what you always do when you fuck something up.”

I blinked. “I—I thought about it. But I guess I’m not that guy anymore.”

Her eyes widened. “She did this. She changed you. Like in the novel I’m reading!”

She ran out of my office and returned with a battered paperback. On the cover was a bare-chested guy in a kilt. She waved it at me. “She completes you. And that makes you a better man.” She sighed and closed her eyes for a minute.

“So fucking what,” I snarled. “Did the dude in that book also happen to punch his love interest right where she was already hurting? I can’t hit control-Z on this and undo it.”

Marlee sat up. “No, you can’t. But you can make it right. You have to grovel. And then,thenyou’ll live happily ever after.” Her lips curled up in a smile, and her eyes went soft.

“No!” The word shot out of me like a Formula One car at the starting grid. “How long could we make it work? Two weeks? A month? And then I’d fuck it up like I do everything else. I can’t do that to her.”

“Why not, Jackson?” she asked. “She wanted to try.”

“Because I care about her too much. Because I love her.” I turned away from the screen and stared out my window at the ugly building across the street.

“She loves you, too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that. She’s a smart woman. She wouldn’t have jeopardized her testimonial for you if she didn’t love you.”

“She’ll get over it.” I never would, though. My own heart was shattered in pieces like my goddamn phone.

“Jackson Jones.” When she stood, the chair legs screeched across the wood floor. “I put up with a lot of your shit, but I will not put up with this. It’s time for you to stop hiding behind that I-don’t-give-a-fuck veneer. I know showing you care about something is hard. It opens you up to ridicule. And heartbreak. But if you care about Alicia, you need to man up. Believe in yourself. Believe that together, you can be stronger.”

In Austin, Alicia and I had been a team. We’d accomplished more together than we ever could have separately. But that’d been for only two months. Could we sustain it for longer, for—I gulped—forever? Because that’s what Alicia deserved. What she needed.

“She has a kid, you know. He’s ten. I don’t know anything about kids.”

“You practically raised Sam from the time she was only a little older than that. She turned out great. I think you’re smart enough to figure it out.”

Sam had never fit into Mother’s expectations, either, not like Andrew and Natalie had. So I’d spent a lot of time with her. Taught her to code. Maybe I could do the same for Noah. It’d be a start.

“You really think I could be a—a dad?”

Marlee smiled. “I bet Alicia’s got the parenting part covered. Aim for big-brotherly role model. At least to start.”

A tiny seed sprouted in my brain.Big brotherly role model.“Marlee, I need your help.”

She pulled out her phone. “Do you want the jet, or do you want to fly commercial to Austin?”

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