Page 41 of Cade

“It might not be the life you wanted for me, dad but it is my life.”

“Your life is here, Weston. With this company, with your family!” he yelled.

My mother sobbed into her martini glass.

“My life is with whoever I want it to be, wherever the fuck I want to be!” I yelled back as I threw my napkin down, rising from my seat. I’d had enough of this.

“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” I said as I stormed out of the dining room, my father’s angry voice bellowing beside me.

“One day you’ll have to grow up and be a fucking adult, Weston!”

His words hit me like a gong. The vibration sounded through every bone, every blood-filled vein in my body.

Walking away from a situation that brought me no peace was about the most adult thing I could think of.

And sure, before I’d come to Jasper Springs, before I met Cade, I would have risen to his bait. I would have bit back and yelled, and stirred the shit pot some more, but I was too tired to deal with it all that day.

So instead, I said nothing. I gave my father my back and walked out of the house, down the driveway feeling nothing but rage and frustration, and shame.

I’d never be what they wanted.

What my father wanted.

No amount of sitting in boardrooms and taking pictures would ever make me the businessman he wanted me to be.

I kept my pace quick as I turned down the road. I needed to clear my head of all this nonsense, this bullshit that my family loved to dig up every time I saw them.

I’d entertained the idea once. When I was seventeen.

I had come home from boarding school that summer, and I agreed to volunteer at the company, thinking I was going to be in those board meetings, helping to make decisions about the business. But instead, my father had assigned me to gopher status. Getting coffees, delivering lunches and mail, sending company emails and sorting paperwork.

Grunt work.

I’d expressed an interest, and my father treated me like it was Take Your Kid To Work day, telling me, “Everyone starts at the bottom, son.”

I quickly realized that if I was going to be stuck on the bottom of the Rhodes food chain, perhaps I didn’t have the stomach or drive to build myself up to the high standards my father had obviously set for me.

That was the summer I realized maybe there were other options for me.

Options that didn’t include working for my asshole father.

So I withdrew from the company, left home early and couch-surfed on my sort of gay fuck-buddy from school’s couch until the semester started. I’d made it my goal to stay as far away from Jasper Springs and Rhodes Enterprises since.

Step by step, I walked at high pace, relishing in the air against my heated skin, my emotions flourishing through me with every stride. Stuck in my head, I didn’t even see the man I’d crashed into, nearly taking us both down on the sidewalk in front of...

The Jasper Springs Pet Hospital.

Shit, how long have I been walking?

Warm palms steadied my arms, and a familiar voice pulled me from my dark thoughts.

“Wes, are you... okay?” Cade’s voice was like the sound of angels singing, soothing something in my tortured soul.

I eased in his grip as we both stood straighter, my heart catching in my throat. I looked down at him, into his pretty blue eyes. They reminded me of the ocean at night, when the waves calmly crash against the sand, smoothing the rough bits out and turning it to something softer, more pliable. Capable of building great sandcastles.

“I, uh... just needed to clear my head. Maybe, uh... grab a drink somewhere.”

I cleared my throat, every ounce of my being wanted to close the gap between us.

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