Page 86 of Boss Agreement

Every little memory we made over the course of two months comes pouring through me like a river that can’t be stopped. Sometimes I laugh, and sometimes I cry. The wine and sprite turns into wine as I purposefully relive the moments that made me fall in love with Phillip Loughton.

My apartment is silent as I stare at the wall in front of me while ghosts of the past dance through my mind.

Then it’s done. The memory of tonight is the last. The last terrible moment of a relationship that I thought would last forever. That nothing could break. A man that was perfect in every way. A man I thought loved me more than anything.

There’s nothing I can do to change him, though. Or myself, for that matter. I’ve lived my life having another person’s decisions decide my fate. I love my mom for all her flaws, but I’ve spent so much of my life feeling powerless because of her decisions. I can’t do it again. Maybe if I were different, I could be happy in that kind of relationship. Maybe I could be like his mother, but I can’t.

I pour the last cup of wine into my mug and pull the afghan tighter against me, my fingers slipping into the holes in the yarn. Like it’s triggering something inside me, a memory from my childhood rolls through me.

I was sitting on Nana’s couch while she crocheted like so many afternoons when my mom was at work. We’d just finished an old romance movie, and Nana said, “Addy, you listen to me. There’s no such thing as a perfect man. They’re all going to have their little holes, but that’s what makes them special. You’ll never fix those holes, Addy. Trust me on this.”

She turned to me and held her crochet hook at me. Her arm shook just a little as you’d expect a white-haired, seventy-year-old woman to do. “I was married to Grandpa George for forty-five years, and I loved that man to the moon and back. But he never learned how to take those damned muddy boots off at the door. Never. I yelled and I screamed more times than I can count. Finally, after your mama had already grown up and moved away, I gave up. I just woke up in the morning and swept the same path from the door to the bedroom every day before he even got out of bed. It became a part of my life, like making a pot of coffee or cooking dinner.”

She smiled then and let her hand drop. “Then we didn’t fight any more about those muddy boots. For more than twenty years, we didn’t fight about much. I’d accepted that nothing would change that old man, and I stopped trying to change him. Then Grandpa George got the cancer, and there weren’t no more muddy boots to worry about. You know what? I sure do miss sweeping up that mud cause that was part of the man I loved. Don’t ever forget that, Addy. You can’t love a man without loving the holes in him.”

I lean back in my chair, remembering that moment as though it had just happened. Just as fresh as any of the memories I’ve mourned tonight, and just as painful.

Because I can’t love Phillip’s holes. I can’t be the woman that changes for the man she loves. “I’m sorry, Nana,” I whisper to the ghosts of the past that seem to swirl around me tonight. “I can’t do it. I can’t be like you.”

There aren’t any responses, though. No whispers of acceptance. “I love him, but I can’t love his holes.”

There’s an ache in my chest that I’m not sure will ever heal. But I can’t let my life center on Phillip’s business. I cannot be his second wife.

The pain doesn’t go away, but the tears do. I cannot be Nana because Phillip’s holes aren’t muddy boots. They’re bigger than that. They’re the kind of holes that you fall through and are forgotten in. I love him, but I cannot love his holes.

Tomorrow, I will wake up, and I will be the woman who came to New York City ready to tackle the world. I have a great job and an agent who swears I’ll be published soon. I have good friends.

My life is better than it’s ever been. Better than I’d ever really believed was possible.

And yet, at the edge of my thoughts, the doubts already begin to creep in.Is there anything that could make me happier than that month with Phillip?

Fifty-Six

PHILLIP

“No. That’s fucking insane.”Andrew’s sitting across from me at our conference table with a look of pure confusion.

“You’re right. It is. Absolutely insane. And we’re going to do it, anyway. Don’t worry, you’ll get to play with plenty of things soon enough, but right now, I’m still the one making the calls.”

He leans back in the chair and looks up at the ceiling. “Dad would set you on fire if he were here. You know that, right?”

“I don’t think he would,” I say as I smile. Thinking back on that conversation with him at Sera’s promotion celebration seems to happen a lot more lately. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for the way he treated us, but I think I understand him more now. Maybe even empathize with him.

“What about you, Mason? Do you have opinions?” I turn to look at him, a grin on his face as he listens to us.

“You know that I’m just here because I couldn’t turn down the paycheck. I have no fucking idea what’s going on, and even I think it’s a little crazy. Then again, I’ve been living on a beach in the Mediterranean for the past decade, so even wearing this suit is a little crazy to me.”

I met up with Mason the day after Sera’s party. We haven’t seen each other since Father disowned him, but it was like no time at all had passed. I convinced him to work for Loughton House that very night, and he’s been spending his days scratching at his slacks since then.

Two weeks have passed since Addison walked away from me, and Loughton House has seen the biggest changes in its history in that time. But the changes are only beginning.

I’m going to do every possible thing to prove to Addison that I won’t be the man my father was. And it all starts with Loughton House. If I’m to change who I am, then the company that I own has to change alongside me.

“Well, those are the plans. I need you two to get things moving, and once everything is finished up here, I’m going to need you to go to the London office and do the same thing. Rebuild it how you feel is in line with the new vision of Loughton House Publishing.”

Andrew and Mason glance at each other. I feel like I’m being left out of something.

Andrew sighs. “I don’t want to go to London for the same reason you don’t.”

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