Page 100 of Slash & Burn

But I was done letting him have a say over any part of my life.

“No bodyguard today?”

Seeing him that day at the baseball game had brought on longing, but none of that remained. I knew what real longing felt like now, and nothing I’d felt for him had compared.

Gone too was the frustration from the boat tour, so when I went to walk away and he fell into step with me like a child who couldn’t stand being ignored, I let him.

“Come on, Jill. All I ever wanted was to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” I replied, my eyes on the entrance to the bank up the street. But then I stopped short, because that wasn’t true. “Actually, I do have one thing.”

He sat back on his heel, a sort of pleased smirk on his face that I knew Grady would have been inclined to forcibly remove.

“I’m glad you left.”

Given how far off the rails I’d gone, that might be hard to believe, but it was the truth.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Well, sure,” I admitted, giving him just as arrogant of a look. “It probably stroked your ego to hear how years of your manipulation had fucked with my head so badly I wanted my own abuser to take me back.” I leaned forward, because he wasn’t smirking anymore. “But I’m not her, Adam. And you’re still the same little man trying to intimidate and control me.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“Save it. We’re nothing to each other. I’m not doing this little dance anymore. Get over it. The next time you see me, just keep walking.”

I turned and carried on up the street, my pulse hammering in my ears. The fact that he wasn’t still walking with me gave me hope the message had finally sunk in. The days of him making me feel anything were over. I had other people to make me anxious and question my worth, namely Mrs. Carmichael at First Bank of Maine.

“Hello, Jill. Come on in,” she greeted me with a wide smile, which was not at all the welcome I’d gotten last time I’d met with one of her colleagues about this idea. “Can I get you some coffee? A water?”

“I’m okay, thank you,” I said, reaching into my purse for the folder I’d brought.

I’d revisited my earlier research, updating the numbers and getting some fresh case studies. The ladies who run Trope Trove in New York had been so kind as to give me a sense of their start-up costs and break-even timeline. I hadn’t been as well armed last time, so if I got denied again, at least it wouldn’t be because I’d failed to make my case.

“Oh, good. One sec,” she said, jumping up to open her office door. “Cash, come on in.”

I spun in my chair as my oldest brother sauntered in with a chuckle. “Good to see you, Sherry.”

Sherry? Since when was my brother on a first name basis with my banker?

“We were just getting started.” Mrs. Carmichael—Sherry—took a seat behind her desk, and opened up a folder of her own. “I took a look at the space in mind. It seems pretty perfect for a little bookstore.”

I wasn’t sure if I was having a fever dream or what, because I could have sworn that woman had just sounded optimistic about my request and my fuck-up brother was sitting beside me with a grin on his face like he’d expected her to say that.

“I think, based on the numbers you sent over Jill, we can make this work.” She paused, looking between us. “Assuming you and Cash are on the same page.”

On the same page?My head was spinning. I looked over at him, and he laughed harder. When he leaned toward me, I leaned closer, too, trying to hide just how far from ‘the same page’ we really were.

“It’s your call, and I won’t interfere. But I’m happy to co-sign with you.”

I sat back, staring at him. A million questions flooded in. When I couldn’t find the words to form any of them, Sherry stood up.

“I’ll give you a minute.” She saw herself out of her office and closed the door.

“Take a breath, Jilly.”

“But what is happening?” I scratched at my forehead, trying to mesh the two disparate images I had of my brother into the one sitting in front of me.

“My company does business here. That’s all.”

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