Page 2 of It's Never Not Been You

Raddix – ((One Year Later)~

“Quit acting like a goddamn amateur and just get it done,” I snapped into the phone, ready to fling it across the room.

“You really need to start smoking weed.” I closed my eyes, shaking my head at the ridiculous advice. “Seriously.”

Opening my eyes, I turned to see my brother walking into my office. “What do you want, Caspian?”

His head jerked in amusement. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“I saw you this morning at the budget meeting,” I reminded him. “What do you want now?”

My brother’s face softened, and there was nothing worse than seeing pity for you in someone’s eyes. A year later, and Caspian was still looking at me like he felt sorry for me, and Troy kept looking at me like I was a wounded tiger, ready to turn on its owner.

Regardless, if it hadn’t been for the clusterfuck that was my life, McKay Engineering wouldn’t be worth millions like it was now. In just a little under two years, I had turned my dream into a reality, and so what if I’d had to work twenty hours a day to accomplish my success? I’d done it, and with Caspian being the CFO, and with Troy being one of our corporate attorneys, they should be grateful for my self-inflicted punishment over these past twelve months. All three of us had enough commas in our bank accounts to leave our marks on the financial world now.

As for my parents, Ethan and Rosemary McKay, they’d also been great throughout this past year. Dad was a family attorney, and Mom was a supervisor for a communications company, so they’d been a fountain of information and help while I’d been trying to get the company up and running successfully. Unlike a lot of people, I’d been fortunate enough to be born to good humans, which had given me and Caspian a leg up in life, no matter what people believed about privilege. My parents were the type that loved their children even through their fuckups, and I had fucked up a lot in life. I had always teetered the line between good and bad, keeping them up at night many times. Granted, my sins hadn’t been quite as horrifying as my brother’s, but I’d still given my parents a few headaches during my lifetime.

Yeah, like last year.

I was also lucky that my brother and I had grown up close. Only a year apart-because Dad could never keep his hands off Mom-Caspian and I had really grown up the best of friends. Even when Troy had come into the picture, his friendship hadn’t changed how close Caspian and I had been and still were. All Troy’s presence had done was create The Three Musketeers.

Our closeness was another reason that Caspian had thrown caution to the wind and had joined McKay Engineering as my CFO. Even though McKay Engineering had originally been my brainchild, I couldn’t have done it without my parents, my brother, or my best friend. Determined to succeed, they still never would have thought less of me had I failed, and that kind of support could make all the difference in the world.

Nevertheless, for all of my success and appreciation for my family, nothing helped with the nothingness that continued to eat away at my chest. Nothing made me happy, and in all honesty, nothing should. While I might deserve to be successful, I didn’t deserve to be happy. I also knew that it was pointless to try. I’d had my happiness, and I had pissed it away because I was a stupid fuck, something that no one could convince me of otherwise.

I watched as my brother quietly stepped back to shut my office door, and the hairs on the back of my neck immediately stood up. While Caspian and I often had meetings behind closed doors, it was his deliberate motion that gave me pause.

After shutting the door, my brother looked back at me, and he was looking at me like I was a stranger. He was looking at me like he had no idea how to speak to me, and that was worrisome. Except for one other person, Caspian knew me best out of all the other people in the world.

“What’s going on?” I finally asked, not sure if I wanted him to answer.

“She’s back, Raddix,” he announced, and I could feel all the air in my lungs vanish in a painful suffocation of emotions.

“What?” I finally asked when my lungs begun working again.

“She’s back,” he repeated.

Even though I felt lightheaded, I stood up from my desk, my fists at my sides. “How…how do you know that?”

“I saw her,” he answered.

“Where?” I shook my head in shock. “When?”

Caspian stepped further into my office until he was leaning against the small conference table positioned to the right of the room, basked in the sunlight that shined through this side of the building. While my office was big, it wasn’t very fancy. I had chosen to go with the standard décor that had been chosen for the building, though I had paid a fortune for my desk chair since I spent so much time in it.

“I ran into River a couple of days ago, and she let it slip that Madison was back in town,” he explained. “Though she’d been quick to catch herself, it’d been too late to pretend as if she’d been about to say something different.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” I practically hissed.

“I wanted to be sure before I said something to you,” he replied. “I didn’t want to get you all worked up for nothing.”

While that was fair, it still didn’t help. “You said that you saw her.”

“After I spoke with River, I called Bernie, told him what I’d heard, then let him do his thing.”

When Madison had vanished on me, I had hired Bernie Kroger to hunt her down. He was a private investigator with years of police and military work under his belt, and I had spared no expense when I had hired him. With Madison’s parents, sister, and best friend refusing to help me, I’d had no choice but to hire a professional to find her. Nevertheless, even with all his resources, he hadn’t been able to find anything on her, which had driven me nearly insane those first few months.

“And he found her?” I asked, still not sure if my sanity could afford to believe my brother.

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