Page 30 of Boss Me

I’d never worked a marionette in my life, but I’d watched The Sound of Music about a hundred times. In my dream, I held the puppet’s control bar and made it perform a complex dance on the stage below. The audience of small children cheered, and I grinned as I twitched the strings.

Then I noticed a string attached to the back of my own hand. I followed it up and saw that it was attached to a rod. The puppeteer leered down at me. “Dance, Mikey!”

He was my father.

I sat up, sweating, when the chime sounded again. Sobriety fucking sucked. So did talking to Dr. Pradhi. She’d known instantly why I’d run away from Synergy. She said smashing my desk didn’t make me my father. That it was an accident. That I needed to forgive myself the same as I’d forgiven Jackson all those times he’d hurt me. That I needed to talk to him, ask him if what Weston said was true, if he was looking for his own escape from Synergy.

I didn’t need to ask. What Weston said resonated with my own read of the situation. Jackson was a wealthy man. He didn’t need the income from Synergy. He was ready to focus on what was important to him, which wasn’t the company we’d built together. He’d turned his focus to his family, which he’d built all on his own. With a fence around it that kept me out.

Dr. Pradhi said running from my problems didn’t solve them. But the whiskey made me forget them.

Until Ben showed up, dumped the booze, and brought the memories back.

The chime rang once more, and this time I heard pounding from the front of the house. The door. Had Luis come to check on me?

Barefoot, I padded to the foyer. What time was it? I must have slept for a few hours after I’d sent Ben home and called my therapist. Through the back windows, the sun was setting over the water.

Just as the doorbell chimed again, I flung it open. Ben stood there, holding a brown paper shopping bag. His smile was tight, nervous. “Evening, Mr. Fallon.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Can I come in?”

“Why?” He always followed my orders perfectly. He should have been landing in San Francisco by now. Was there an issue with the jet?

“So we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.” I was still shaky and vulnerable after talking to Dr. Pradhi. After the nightmare. I might say something I didn’t mean.

“What do you want?” He cocked his head and pursed his full lips. The pink rays of the setting sun speared through the back windows and tinted his dark curls in fiery rose gold.

Not that. I could want it, but I couldn’t have it. “What do you mean?”

“Why’d you come here, to the island? From the clothes in your closet, it didn’t look like you’d planned on it. Why the last-minute change? What were you looking for? Or running from?”

My head spun with his questions and a few of my own. “You were in my closet?”

He rolled his eyes, just barely. “Ramón and I brought you back from the bar last night.”

“Oh.” I kept my face neutral, but self-disgust roiled just below the surface. He must have seen me at my worst. “I didn’t…um…take a swing at you, did I?”

His eyebrows scrunched together. “You don’t remember?”

“No, I—” I searched back, but the last week after arriving on the island, after calling Mamá, was a blur of sweat and the burn of whiskey and waking up on the floor more often than in my bed. “I don’t.”

“You said you’d give Ramón and me shares of Synergy.”

Oh. He’d asked about selling stock earlier. I was drunk when I’d placed the first sale order. I could’ve canceled it the next day, but I’d let it stand to see how it felt. So far, it didn’t feel like anything. Maybe I’d feel something once it executed. If not, I’d try another order in a few days. Giving away shares was the same as selling them. “I’m a man of my word. How much did I say I’d give you?”

Ben snorted and leaned against the doorframe. “You were plast—not thinking clearly. Neither of us took you seriously.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” If Weston or Jackson hadn’t sent him, why had Ben come? And why was he still on the island? Usually, I was the one with all the answers, but my head ached again, and my thoughts refused to knit together.

My legs were suddenly noodle-like. Leaving the door open, I turned toward the living room. “Need to sit down.”

Ben was there the next moment, wedged under my arm. Fuck, I’d been wearing the same clothes for two days, and I was rank, but I couldn’t muster the strength to push him away. He guided me to the sofa and urged me to sink into it. Gently, he pushed my head between my knees then rubbed circles on my back. It felt nice, like when Mamá used to tuck me into bed at night.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked from high above me.

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