Page 96 of Easy Reunion
Eli nods down to the drink in my hand. “It was the same night you told me about Kelsey. I asked one question that night. Why? I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t fly out to apologize to the girl who held your heart back then. And in your inebriated state, you told me why you didn’t feel worthy enough of doing just that.” He lowers his lashes, not giving me any chance to read him until he pulls the rug out from beneath my feet. “I suppose now I can thank you though. Knowing what you’d been through, the kind of man you turned out to be, helped me in several ways.” He turns the tumbler over and over in his hands.
I open my mouth to again ask him what he means, but intuitively, his head snaps up. “That’s not just my story to tell. It involves Kate’s past.” His smile is a bit crooked.
I nod because he’s right. As he so often is, much to my annoyance. “So, you understand why I have to resign.” The words are ripped from my soul. I don’t want to leave, but I need to do what’s best for the company, and leaving it without its lead counsel for an indeterminate amount of time leaves them vulnerable.
Eli’s face gets hard. “Fuck no. If you need time off to do something, I’ll rely on your team, but I expect your ass back in the chair when you’re ready to return.” Turning, he stalks over to his desk. Slamming the tumbler down, he snatches up my letter of resignation. “Do you want to destroy this, or should I?”
“Jesus, Eli,” I mutter. “It’s not that easy.” But I feel myself caving.
A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Nothing worth having ever is. But Ry, you’ve earned the life you have now: your family, your job, Kelsey. Don’t throw it away because you think you’re a victim of anything.”
Putting my glass aside, I push myself to my feet. I hold out my hand. Eli slaps the letter into it. Tearing it in half, and in half again, I ask him curiously, “What would you have done if I’d have insisted?”
The corners of his lips tip up. Picking up his drink, he knocks half of it back before turning to reach for a file on his desk. Lifting it, he faces me with a wicked smile on his face. A face, I think with some amusement, I’ve heard more than one legal assistant sigh over when they believe they are not being overheard. “What’s that?”
“Your contract. I figured you needed a reminder that unless I fire your ass or you’re leaving for medical reasons, you’re under one hell of a noncompete for the next decade. By the way, I asked Kate to pull this up for me since I didn’t want to trip any alarms. When she did, she did a little snooping in your drive.” Eli shrugs as my shoulders begin to shake with suppressed laughter. “What the fuck is going on with the terms on the Enclave deal? Did you forget we like to make money in this company?” Yanking out sheaves of paper, he waves them in my face.
I grab them right out of his hand and point to the words at the top. “You and Kate need to look at the headers and footers more carefully, my friend. D-R-A-F-T—it’s there for a reason. This is a template, you ass.”
Eli mutters, “I knew that.”
Sobering, I whisper, “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I tell her.”
He tosses the file back onto his desk. His hand comes up to clasp me on my shoulder. “If she’s half the woman I already know she is, she’s going to have your back, Ry. She’s in too deep not to.”
Eli’s reassurance goes a long way, but it still doesn’t altogether remove the fears that when I tell Kelsey the truth about the kind of man I am, the kind of person who hid from his own pain and fears rather than stand up for what was wrong before it was too late, that she’s going to turn away.
And there’s a part of me that understands if she does because isn’t that what I’ve been doing since it happened?
