Page 25 of Bully's Second Chance
“Then, why didn’t you tell me? Why, Jax?”
I opened my eyes. “I just—too hard, I guess.”
She nodded softly. “Adelaide tells me it originally started out as kidney cancer?”
I puffed my cheeks out with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, stage four by the time we caught it. It wasn’t until further scans that we found it on his brain, and about four months ago, it started invading his spinal cord.”
The call fell silent, and my mind ran away with me.
“My own fucking mother left me when I was a child, and now I have to bury the only parent who raised me. I hate life so much sometimes.”
“I know you do,” Lily said.
I furrowed my brow. “Huh?”
“What you just said. Why you hate life so much. It’s understandable, you know.”
My face fell as I sat upright. “I said that out loud?”
She paused. “Yeah? Did you not know that?”
I ran my hand through my hair. “I really need to get over this jet lag.”
“It’s more than jet lag, and you know it.”
I shot her a look. “I don’t want your pity, or your sympathy, or your empathy. All I want is for you to do your job, got it?”
Frustration flooded her eyes. “Fine. You know I’ll do my job. You won’t have to worry about that. But, maybe check your attitude a bit before you start calling yourself a loner. Maybe there’s a reason you’ve been alone all of this time.”
I shot to my feet. “You have no right to speak with me that way. I put a great deal of faith in our working relationship—”
“And yet, you address me more as ‘Lily’ than anything else. Doesn’t seem very ‘working relationship’ to me.”
I felt my face flush with anger, and I bit down onto my tongue to keep from saying something I knew I’d regret—like “you’re fucking fired,” for instance.
“Look, Jax. If you want me to keep this job and help you out, then you have to stop fighting with me. I’m not the same little girl you can push around and bully. Whose pigtails you can pull whenever you’re feeling fucked over by the world. I won’t let you do it, either. I’ll quit before I let you railroad me the way you did when we were kids.”
I looked away from the screen. “Good, because I don’t like a pushover.”
“Funny, since you can’t say that to my face.”
I slowly looked back at my phone. “Lily, I—”
She placed the phone down, and I found myself staring at the ceiling of one of my guest rooms. “Call me if you need anything else. I’m going back to bed.”
And that was the last of her voice I heard before she hung up on me.
“Fucking hell,” I groaned.
I eased myself back down onto the mattress, but it felt empty. Worthless, almost. This was my third trip to Shanghai to try to seal this damned deal, but as I stared up at the ceiling of the penthouse suite I had all to myself, it all felt so empty.
None of this felt worth it any longer.
Just get some rest.
I turned over onto my side. “Like that’ll help.”
It might.
