Page 93 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“Well, I don’t know. You decide to be reasonable? You realize that Iambattling a crisis, and that I need you there? You realize that your sister needs you, and that you can’t just run away?”
“So…” I said slowly, “is that it?” The disappointment was a weight in my stomach.
He sighed. “And I should have told you about the article. I was putting out fires. You don’t stop to talk when you’re putting out fires. I’m still doing that, and yet I’ve come after you all the same.”
I studied him. My heart had been galloping since he’d showed up, the ridiculous dream insisting on springing to life. “Why, exactly, are you here?”
“To take you home. Why do you think?”
“And then what?”
“And then we forget this happened. You come back to work, and everyone sees that it’s business as usual, that it’s Anika trying to stir the pot and nothing more.”
“I quit,” I managed to say.
He gestured impatiently with one bronzed hand. “I rescinded it. Simon knows you weren’t yourself. I explained. And yes,” he added when I stared at him, because I’d apparently lost the power of speech, “he wants you back. I told him you need more feedback, and he promised he’d give it to you, and higher-level assignments as well. So you’re all good.” He got to his feet and put a hand out to me. “Time to come home.”
“No,” I said.
He stared down at me. “What d’you mean, no? You told me what the problem was. I listened, and I heard. I fixed it. You want to be a member of the team? He’ll make you a member of the team.”
“What if I want to work for somebody else?”
“Say who,” he answered promptly, “and I’ll make it happen.”
“No. What if I want to work for somebody outside Te Mana? I can’t, right? Because the word’s out not to hire me.”
He sighed. “How would that look? It would look bad to the industry, and bad to everybody in the company, too. It would look bad—or it would look good—to Anika. It would be letting her think she’d win. We’d be as much as admitting there’s something wrong with your employment, when we know there isn’t. The only way to face things like this is head on. Ride them out, and that’s what we’re going to do. You want to help me? This is how you help me.”
“For how long? For a month, six months, until you work this out with her? Until you win, or you settle?”
“I’m not settling. There’s a year to work it out, and that’s it. It has to be done in a year. Until I win.”
“So you need me to be there to give you…face…for a year?”
He hesitated for a damning moment, then said, “You said you needed skills. In a year, you’ll have them, and there’ll be no problem.”
“You said in our agreement that I could quit if it didn’t work for me. You said you wouldn’t give me a hard time. You signed it.”
“We weren’t in this situation then.”
“We weren’t in this situation when you told everybody not to hire me.” I was getting agitated again. My hands were in my hair, tugging at it. “That thing Karen said. If you love something, let it go. If it was meant to be yours, it’ll come back to you. You’ve got to trust me to come back. If you don’t, why would you want me?”
“I told her,” he said, “and I’ll tell you. That’s rubbish. If you love something, hold on. Hold hard.”
I looked at him. At the face that could look so emotionless, but hid a soul as deep and complex as the sea. At the man who’d held me while I cried to leave this apartment, and had cared enough to give it back to me. At the lover who’d infuriated me and enflamed me and overwhelmed me since the day I’d met him. At the heart I’d thought was mine.
“I can’t,” I said, and felt the pain of it like somebody had severed some vital part from my body. “Not now. I can’t stand to say that, not to help you, if thatwouldreally help you. I can’t stand not to be there for you. But you won’t let me help you in therealway. You won’t talk to me about what’s going on with Anika, or with the company. You just want me to be window dressing, and somebody to…to have sex with, and you don’t want me to do anything else.”
“Because those are the things I need from you,” he said. “I want you to do what I need.”
The moment stretched out as he looked at me. So sure I would say yes. So sure I would agree.
“No,” I finally said. “I’m sorry, Hemi. No. Not until I’ve found a way to have something else. Something I can do myself. I can’t do it like this. You hold too hard.”
Hemi
When Eugene came into the gym on Tuesday afternoon, my fourth day without Hope, he asked, “We waitin’ on Miss Little Bit?”
