Page 79 of Cross To Bear

“He’d be terrible at it. You know it, and so do I.”

“I don’t know that.” Intense emotion throbbed in her voice, but I wasn’t sure where it came from. “I don’t know that at all. He’s a good boy—”

“The fact you’re referring to a man in his late twenties as a boy says everything.” I used my best ‘be reasonable’ tone with her. “That deep down you recognise what I do. That Jesse is the baby of the family. Will always be the baby until you cut the umbilical cord. He doesn’t learn from his mistakes. Why would he? You’re always there to clean up after him, and you force everyone who cares about you to be complicit in his infantilisation.” I pushed myself back, feeling my muscles relax in increments against the office chair. “He’ll never grow, never become the man he’s supposed to become until you let him go.”

I sucked in a breath then another, feeling a wave of fear, regret, but more than that, of pride. I’d said it, everything I’d been feeling for some time, and while the break-up process with Jesse had been relatively painless, anything residual that I was carrying was shucked off then, making me feel lighter.

Feeling free.

But right as my spirits started to soar, Nelly stepped in to drag me right back to earth.

“Really? And what will you do, trying to hold down a job in a place like this?” She looked around my bland little office with a baleful eye. “While you fuck one of my son’s sleuthmates on the table of a biker bar on your weekends?”

Her studied nonchalance, her hard gaze, made clear I might have struck the first blow, but it wouldn’t be the last.

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, my heart slamming in my chest as I thought about what the partners of my firm might have to say about my extracurricular antics.

She snorted. “I don’t have to. I don’t have to do a damn thing, because I’ll tell you what I told Jesse when he first brought you around our house. You’re not one of us.”

I felt cold then, so fucking cold.

“You dress up all fancy, work in a posh office in the city and think you’re better than us, so how’s that going to work?” A small bitter smile spread across her face. “When they find out you’re mated… no, married to four men? And how’s that going to work with those snooty parents of yours? They didn’t like Jesse at all, that was made real clear to him. So how’s Bjorn going to fare? What are you going to put my other son through?”

My mouth worked because it was my turn to say something vicious, hard, but nothing came out. My brain was processing everything she said, looking for the holes in her logic.

And not finding them.

My parents thought I was slumming it with Jesse, but had tolerated him because I’d made clear they needed to. A terse truce had been established, where they tried their best to ignore him, and I did everything I could to avoid him coming near them. And the partners of the firm… Most people brought their plus ones with them to office functions, their partner an extension of them and their suitability as an employee, but not me. After that disastrous Christmas party, where Jesse used the open bar as a challenge, smashing down drink after drink to deal with the discomfort of existing in my world.

What would people say? What would they think? I wanted to say it didn’t matter. Screw them and screw any judgement they might choose to bring down on our heads, but… My focus returned with a brutal snap, my office transforming before me.

Was it the beige-coloured cage I willingly went into every day, or the sign of my career success? Was this my future or my fate? While I got lost in a metaphysical doubt spiral, Nelly just nodded grimly.

“You’re not going to choose Bjorn. I’ve been picking up the pieces you left behind when you broke up with Jesse, but you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not keen to do the same with Bjorn.” Her lips thinned as her expression turned sad. “He’s always seemed so self-sufficient, but I’m realising now that he gets hurt just as deeply as Jesse does. Maybe deeper. The elders always say the bear gods have a plan, though I’m failing to see it right now. This just seems unnecessarily cruel. Bjorn thinks all I’m focussed on is Jesse? But I see him, see what he wants, what he needs. And you’re not it, Maddie.”

Her declaration made, she got to her feet, not needing to wait for a reply from me. There was no need to. My mouth was full of ashes, the fire inside me not tamped down, but utterly extinguished.

“You’re a good girl, Maddie, and that’s not what they need. Stay away from my family, that’s all the warning I’m willing to give.”

But she didn’t need to warn me off. My mind was putting two and two together and my calculations were coming out just like hers. I couldn’t run wild, do crazy things on the back of a motorcycle, or shit, face legal ramifications. I couldn’t allow Bjorn to tattoo me anywhere a client could see, despite the growing acceptance of body art. I heard Nelly’s words, Krystel and Tiffany’s, all of them racketing around in my head, but the loudest of all was my mother’s.

She sat me down early into the relationship with Jesse. My boyfriend was deliberately led off by Dad, distracted by a display of my great-grandfather’s war memorabilia.

“Is this the kind of life you want, Madeline?” she’d asked me, frowning as she looked down the hall at Jesse and Dad. “This isn’t the way we raised you. You need someone nice, secure, safe, not…” Her frown deepened. “Whatever Jesse is. That’s no life for a girl like you.”

And what the fuck was I? The girl who fucked a guy on a table in a biker bar, because she felt she needed to claim her man? Or the professional accountant who had work that was waiting to be done as I screwed around with this shit. I couldn’t ask Nelly. I didn’t want to know what she thought, and she swept out of the door of my office without further comment. Before I could sit down and try and work it out for myself, one of my line managers knocked on my door.

“Morning, Maddie,” he said with a warm smile. “Are you good to join us at the stand up meeting?”

“Ah… no.” He blinked as I refused a perfectly reasonable request, particularly as I could see this meeting was in my calendar. I tugged at the scarf around my neck. “My throat is feeling a little scratchy, and I’m not one hundred percent. I was thinking of taking a work from home day today. I don’t have any other in person meetings scheduled.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” he spluttered, backing away subtly. “If you’re not feeling well, then home’s the best place for you. Maybe touch base with a doctor and see what they think you should do for the next few days.”

“Will do.”

That was a lie, because no GP was going to be able to help me with the thoughts teeming inside my brain. I disconnected my laptop and slotted it into my computer bag, remembering my charger and mouse before slinging it over my shoulder. People looked up as I passed, but I kept on walking, out to my hire car.

Chapter 47

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