Page 80 of Boss Me

The weight was back in my stomach. “What is it?”

“I hate to bother you while you’re on vacation. Especially after you took care of things while I was on paternity leave. And for our honeymoon before that. Fuck, I’m such an ass…”

I snorted. “Agreed. And?”

“Things aren’t good at the office. There’ve been people here. From Gurusoft.”

I winced. Not Gurusoft. And Jackson had faced it alone. Fifteen years ago, they’d badgered his father to sell his startup. Jasper Jones had worked himself to the point of exhaustion and refused to sell it until the day he’d died. Then his widow had sold the company, his pride and joy, to Gurusoft. Jackson harbored a lot of complicated feelings about the company.

He rushed on. “Weston thought I wouldn’t know them, but I do. I met one of the fuckers at that conference I went to last summer. Remember, I told you how he bought me drinks and tried to get me to take his assistant up to my room?”

Fuck, yeah, I remembered. Even though he’d been engaged, I’d been surprised the ploy hadn’t worked. I grunted.

“Anyway, now Weston’s called an emergency board meeting. I think they’ve offered to buy us out.”

“What?”

“I guess neither one of you has been checking your email.”

“Ah…no.” We’d been much more enjoyably engaged. I’d turned off work notifications on my phone.

“Weston mentioned you sold some of your shares.”

I bet he had, the asshole. Though who was a bigger asshole, Weston for spilling my secrets or me for not telling my friend? “Yeah, I—”

“Really? So it’s true?” His voice cracked.

“It is. I’ve had—I’ve been thinking about the company.” Ben moved his hand up my forearm and stroked it. I breathed a little easier at his touch. “About how much of myself I give to it. About whether I want to keep going.” He’d understand that. Especially given what had happened with his father.

“And you thought the best way to handle it was to divest without talking to me? We had an agreement, Coop.”

Even Ben’s touch couldn’t counterbalance the weight that spread from my belly to my chest. “I—I couldn’t talk to you. Not after—” My throat closed, and I struggled to swallow past it.

“Okay. Okay. But can you come back? The meeting’s the day after tomorrow. If you could get here before, you could talk some sense into Weston. Maybe you don’t give a fuck about Synergy anymore, but I do.”

“You do? Weston said you were considering getting out.”

“Goddammit. Weston would say fucking anything. Of course I care about Synergy. We built it together.”

All the reasons why I couldn’t—why I shouldn’t—crowded into my brain. Jackson hadn’t acted like he cared about our company. I shouldn’t care about it. Or about him.

Plus, if I went back, what would happen between Ben and me? Our relationship was so new. I’d wanted to solidify it on the island before we returned to the pressures of San Francisco.

What if the anger came back? What if the stressors of work turned on the part of me Mick Fallon had created? What if it wasn’t a desk or a table or a fence I hit but Ben?

I gazed into his eyes, full of steady support. Could I convince him to stay on the island, to wait for me to deal with this and return?

I tangled my fingers with his. I could ask.

And now my friend was asking for help. I never could tell him no.

“All right. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

His sigh crackled through the phone. “Thank you. And we’ll talk after? About you and Synergy?”

We both knew he didn’t mean Synergy and me. He meant we’d talk about the two of us.

“We will.”

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