Page 131 of Last Chance Love

Three Years Later

“Look,” I began, laying my hands on the table and taking a deep breath. “You can’t expect everyone to operate how you want them to.”

“That’s not…” one of the newest mentors, Shane, began, but I cut him off.

“It is,” I told him, firmly but with a small smile to show I wasn’t trying to roast him. It didn’t require a lot of emotional intelligence to understand that someone who felt under attack wouldn’t hear a word you said. “I’ve made the same mistake time and time again.”

Shane scoffed, looking away. “Yeah? Like when?”

“All the time,” I told him, still smiling. “In fact, I’ve been dangerously close to doing it during this meeting.”

“Huh?”

“Getting frustrated because you’re not doing something as I think you should be. I don’t know about you, but that’s just a bunch of circular reacting and probably isn’t going to help us much.”

I watched him, trying not to look like I was evaluating him while I waited for him to react again. So, instead, I made a point to let my eyes drift around the room. Knowing this wasmyoffice never failed to send a flutter of nerves and excitement through me. I’d had it for almost a year, and it had lost its barren, lifeless quality and taken on qualities of me and my life.

There were pictures on the wall from the trips I’d taken with Reed over the past couple of years. There was a picture of us on a street corner in New York City and a picture of us in Vegas, but most of the photos from that trip were not fit for public consumption.

Thankfully, I had been able to use whatever I could buy, so the sterile office setup had been replaced. Reed had found the curved monitor unnecessary but hilarious, and Mona still wondered why I needed a keyboard and mouse that lit up in rainbow colors.

“Hey, most of my life was spent with washed-out, dirty colors, and fun was rare,” I’d told her, grinning as I wiggled the mouse to light it up sporadically. “And now I have the chance. So I’m getting goofy shit, and I’m going to like it.”

“To each their own,” she had said with a shake of her head, but even then, I was pretty sure that woman knew exactly what I meant and on a personal level. Ambition and dedication like hers were rarely born from an easy life. No one wanted to get to the top and stay there like people who’d sat at the bottom for too long.

My fun even extended to plants, though I hadn’t gone for anything typical, mostly because I was bad at remembering to take care of them, even when they sat behind me on the shelf under my window. Thankfully, the half dozen Venus fly traps thrived just fine. Then again, I tended to leave the windows open, and plenty of food loved to flit their way into the window after they were done feasting on animal shit.

The place was mine, all mine, and that was a feeling I’d never had before. I’d always had to share spaces, but this office? Mine. Well, nottotallymine. Mona was my boss and could come in at any time, but showed me the courtesy of warning me or at least knocking. Well, and in a great fit of irony, it was also the office Reed and I had snuck into, having officially ‘tainted it’ from that day.

And had tainted it more in the past few months.

Shane took a deep breath, and I saw the tension leave his shoulders. “I remember you telling me once to treat these guys like siblings, but…you even have siblings? All they do is drive you crazy.”

I laughed. “Probably even worse coming from me, of all people. I had two brothers. I was a brother and a father to them, so it’s a little messier for me.”

“Had?”

“One of them died a few years ago. It was the final push for me to plummet into a complete disaster, and, well, then, I got arrested, sent to prison, and ended up here.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, and I miss him all the time, but Ian wasn’t known for his temper. He was one of those guys who seemed to find the silver lining, no matter how thin and fragile it was, and clung to it.”

“Wow, that…no offense, but that sounds really annoying.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” I chuckled. “It could try your nerves sometimes, but he just…that was how he got through our childhood and all the shit we had to deal with. He never wanted to lose sight of hope because losing hope is the only time you ever really lose in life. Everything else is a setback, and you can always keep moving toward something better.”

There was an irony to Ian’s attitude when he never really got the chance to get to somewhere better. But that didn’t mean I needed to let my ass fall even further. I had lost hope. I had failed at the one lesson my brother had been adamant about. The funny thing I’d learned about hope was that it never had to stay dead. It could be brought back and remain at your side as long as you let it.

Shane took another breath, his shoulders slumping, and I had to fight the urge to laugh at his dramatic defeat. “So, show him patience and shit?”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, you already know that if you’retoonice to these guys, they’ll walk all over you and not feel the slightest bit sorry.”

“Yeah, exactly. So what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“You figure out what makes him tick. Figure out your ‘in’ with him.”

“How?”

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