Page 6 of Boss Me

That was just what Jackson needed, another dent in his already fragile reputation. “No, I’ll do it.”

“You’d do anything for him, wouldn’t you?” The words were light, but his stare was heavy with meaning.

I wished I could unburden myself to him. That I could tell him how I felt about Jackson Jones since almost the first moment he walked into our dorm room at Stanford. About keeping my ridiculous crush bottled up for years, knowing Jackson was straight and not wanting to ruin our friendship with a confession. About how my heart had ripped in two when he’d gotten engaged—my commitment-phobic friend who’d refused to sink money into anything that didn’t have wheels he could drive away in, engaged! And then it crumbled to dust completely when he told me his fiancée was pregnant.

I knew he’d never be mine, but that kidney bean on the ultrasound he waved in my face was the final buzzer on the game of delusions I’d played with myself.

The night she was born, I was the one left standing in the hospital hallway when the nurse barred my way and said, “Family only.”

Jackson was my best friend, but he’d never be my family.

I didn’t need Dr. Pradhi to psychoanalyze it for me. The reminder he’d given me earlier today—choosing his family over the company we’d built together—was what made me explode.

Like he could see my thoughts written on my forehead, Weston said, “I think you could use some time away.”

“But I—”

“Think about it. I’ll take care of things here. You should consider what you want. For yourself and for Synergy.”

What did I want? I’d wanted Jackson for so long, there was a void inside me where all that want used to live. Even Synergy felt empty. He’d abandoned it, just like he’d abandoned me.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He leaned his elbows on his knees, earnestness wrinkling his forehead. He looked like the father I wished I had when I was Phoebe’s age. Like one of my tíos back on the island.

I trusted Weston, ever since he saved Synergy when Jackson let me down. The night before we met with the investment bankers, Jackson and I went out for drinks to celebrate the fact that our seven-year partnership was finally about to pay off in a big way. After I went back to the hotel, Jackson got into it with a cop. He showed up to our meeting rumpled, a mouse under his eye, smelling like holy hell.

The bankers insisted we replace Jackson as CEO with Weston. And with Jackson looking like my father the mornings I’d gone to pick him up from the drunk tank, I agreed. Jackson, being Jackson, ditched me for a yacht full of bikini models, but Weston stayed. He guided Synergy—and me—through the process to become a publicly traded company. And helped grow it into the software powerhouse it became.

Even though we’d worked together for the past seven years, I never told Weston what I felt for Jackson. I hadn’t told anyone. Ever. Though my other best friend, Jamila, had guessed it on her own.

“No, I’m good.”

“Are you? I worry about you, Fallon.”

My last name, the one I shared with my father, made me blink. His name wasn’t the only thing I’d inherited. I proved that today.

Like I was replaying it from a video recording, I pictured myself, my face red, spit flying from my mouth as I smashed the glass of my desk. I hadn’t felt any of it, the impact or the cuts. When my father used to come home smelling of cheap whiskey, he never remembered why his knuckles were red until he saw the matching bruise on my cheek.

Despite the fact that Weston looked like a stock photo of an expensive psychiatrist with the gray hair sparkling at his temples and in his close-cropped beard, I couldn’t tell him what I’d done or why I’d done it. Those blue eyes would turn hard or, worse, soften with pity.

“I’m good,” I repeated. Cooper Fallon was always good. Reliable. Hardworking. “Ben’s moving my meetings. Can you keep an eye on things while I’m in Boston?”

“Of course. Is Ben going with you?”

“Ben…going with me?” I blinked. That was a terrible idea. When he’d joined the company right after Jackson’s wedding, I’d been vulnerable, cut-open. That was the only thing that could explain the zing I felt when I shook his hand for the first time. The warmth in my chest where my heart used to be before it went cold and dark. Traveling with Ben would be too much temptation. “No.”

“You could use the support. You don’t have to do everything yourself, you know.”

“Don’t I?” I bared my teeth in a grim smile.

He mirrored the expression. “You’re right. And it might get worse if Jones decides to get out and focus on his family.”

My muscles went as rigid as the leather chair. “Get out?”

“We both see the writing on the wall, Fallon. His heart isn’t in it anymore. He has other priorities.”

Priorities other than me and the company we’d built together. Why hadn’t I seen it? Maybe I had, subconsciously, and that was why I’d lost it in my office.

Fuck.

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