: Chapter 36

If time heals all wounds, I would very much like time to speed the hell up and do its job.

“You have two choices, Romeo,” Keisha says to me as she lounges on the couch in my office. “You can remove your foot from your mouth, go apologize, and beg her to take you back, or you can finish the job and retire with all of your investments and go live as a hermit on top of a mountain in the Andes.”

“Satellite phones still work in the Andes,” Jonas says. He’s lounging on my floor. On my floor. Just lying there on his back like it’s a damn bed, scrolling his phone. I hope it lands on his perfect nose and he has to have stitches. “But here’s some good news—some dude named Andreas who’s been trading artwork with non-fungible tokens just became the world’s newest billionaire. Congrats, Hayes. You’re off the hook.”

“He’s engaged,” Keisha says. “To a dude.”

“Oh. Ah. Yeah, I see that now. Correction. Sorry, Hayes, you’re still the world’s most eligible male billionaire.”

“But Hayes can’t date anyone for like another six days without getting called a playboy, and god knows your family won’t tolerate that. So he has almost another week before he’s truly in danger.”

“They’re your family too.”

“Only on good days. Hey, what do you think of this statue? I’m thinking Millie needs it for her birthday.” She flips her phone around and flashes us.

“Are those breasts?” Jonas asks.

“It’s like what would happen if you mashed breasts with ass and added three vaginas.”

“Why’s it mint green?”

“Would you two shut up and go away?” I snap. “Some of us have actual work to do.”

“I’m on the clock,” Jonas says. “Next role is a broken-hearted miser hiding from the world in a cabin in the woods. This is character study. I’m absorbing your aura.”

“I’m on the clock too,” Keisha says. “Your dad’s afraid you’ll bury your grief in one of your executive assistants, and yes, that’s a euphemism, and apparently everyone likes them too much for us to have another situation like the one with Thomas.”

I hit the buzzer to call Winnie.

“Yes, Mr. Rutherford?” her tinny voice answers.

“Throw these yahoos out of my office and change the locks.”

“They’re worried about you, Mr. Rutherford. Although their concerns that either of us would cross professional lines with you are unfounded. Also, tell Keisha that Millie would hate that statue.”

“Are you trying to convince me to quit?”

“My brother is a professor of computational physics at this little college in Vermont, and he says he could use a mathematician on his team.”

“Once again, are you trying to convince me to quit?”

“No, merely making random conversation since there’s not much that makes you happy these days. Excuse me, Mr. Rutherford, but if there’s nothing else I can do for you immediately, I have another stack of work from you that needs attention.”

Jonas is smothering a grin.

Keisha’s flipped herself upside down so that she’s dangling off my couch with her feet on my wall. “I could be a CFO. This seems so easy.”

I shove up from my seat. “I’m going for a walk.”

Jonas also leaps to his feet. “Need a bodyguard? I need to prep for one of those roles too. But hold two seconds. Head rush. Got up too fast.”

“Don’t you have something else to do?” I mutter.

Keisha wiggles her eyebrows. “Like your wife?”

“Not until her plane touches down from LA tonight.”

“I do not need you to play bodyguard. I need—”

“Begonia,” the two of them answer for me.

Fuck.

I woke up this morning to the realization that it’s been ten days since I couldn’t tell her I love her back.

Ten.

Days.

Double-digits.

I fell for Begonia in four days. Spent another eight days with her feeling like the very center of her world, and now, we’ve been apart almost as long, and it’s ridiculous to think that I could’ve found the love of my life in under two weeks, yet the acceptance that it’s over won’t come.

The conviction that she wanted me for my money, for my family, for my connections, for my friends—it hasn’t come.

Even with the details of our arrangement leaking to the press, I cannot stay angry with the woman.

I merely have this overwhelming fear that if I go find her, if I tell her how I feel, she will have moved on.

And I’ll have let the fear that’s ruled my private life for fifteen years destroy the best thing to have ever happened to me.

I glower at my brother and my cousin. “She told the tabloids that we were fake.”

Keisha’s still lounging upside down like a four-year-old. “I bet Millie six million dollars that Marshmallow had more to do with that than Begonia did.”

“Did she seriously take that bet?” Jonas asks.

“No, because she’s not a sucker. Also, she called up someone she used to know—don’t ask—and they went out riding last night—again, don’t ask—and apparently found the ‘reporter’ who broke the story, and he swore up and down that he was lurking at the edges of Sagewood House’s property when a miracle dog appeared and handed him the contract.”

“Stop making shit up.”

“I’m not making it up. That’s what Millie told me.”

Jonas makes his I’m thinking face. “Do you think Begonia would let us borrow Marshmallow on-set? That would be horrific for filming, but can you imagine the end result?”

I leave them in my office, shutting the door behind me and telling my assistants to lock them inside. When I hit the ground floor of the City Hall office building, three women look at me wrong, I realize the odds of the dog being the source for the tabloids is unnaturally high, given who the dog is, and I turn around and get right back in the elevator.

I cannot go on like this.

I don’t want to work for Razzle Dazzle.

I don’t want to be miserable.

I don’t want to be alone.

I want—

I want to fucking live.

Exactly like Begonia said she was trying to do in Maine.

I stroll back into my office foyer and look between my assistants.

The two of them exchange their own knowing glances, and then everything turns into a flurry of motion.

Winnie leaps up and shoves a chair under the door handle to block the door of my private office from opening, where I can still hear Jonas and Keisha’s muted, unintelligible voices coming through.

Merriweather moves to the small coffee station.

“I don’t need coffee,” I tell her.

“This is for me.”

“What on earth do you—” I start.

Winnie makes an impatient noise. “Mr. Rutherford, you’re walking around like a kicked puppy, and it doesn’t take geniuses to figure out why. We’re having an intervention, or we’re both quitting. I probably need a coffee for this too. And I don’t drink coffee.”

“An intervention?” I repeat.

Merriweather nods. “An intervention. You need your head removed from your nether regions, and we have nothing else left to lose.”

“Excuse you—” I start, but once again, Winnie steamrolls me.

“You miss Begonia, because she’s Begonia, but you won’t do anything about it, because you’re you, which is literally the only thing standing between you and Begonia being happy together.”

I bristle. “You have not known me nearly long enough to—”

“Do you honestly think Begonia would reject you?” Merriweather follows the question by downing a shot of espresso like a champ, then peers at me as if she has nothing better to do than badger me about my personal life.

And I have nothing better to do than answer her, because I fucking miss Begonia. “No, but she wouldn’t reject anyone.”

Winnie snorts. “She divorced her husband. I’d say the woman knows what she doesn’t want.”

“And what she does,” Merriweather agrees.

The door to my office jiggles. “Hey! Are you having an intervention without us?” Keisha calls.

Winnie leans back in her chair and props her feet on her desk. She’s not wearing shoes, and I should say something, but instead, I’m hanging on her every word. “Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Rutherford, that Begonia is just as afraid of not being loved as you are of not being loved enough by her? Do you realize, to even the smallest degree, how unfair that is to her? And how much she’s probably hurting right now?”

“Love’s a leap.” Merriweather pulls a second espresso shot off the coffee maker and lifts it, offering it to me.

I shake my head.

I don’t need coffee.

“Begonia is Begonia, and she probably has more men vying for her attention now than I have women,” I say.

“Probably not, because men are dumb,” Merriweather says.

They both peer at me, silently calling me dumb.

I growl.

“Also,” Merriweather continues over the hum of the coffee machine, “any man who wants her because of the tabloid coverage will be the kind of man she can see through, and if he’s smoother than that, she needs you.”

“Which would you rather have,” Winnie continues as Merriweather takes her second shot, “a safe life without love, or a risky life with it?”

“We’re basically pulling our hair out over how dense you’re being,” Merriweather tells me. “It’s Begonia. One, she clearly adores you. Two, all she really asks in return is that you adore her back. Three, she didn’t want to fall in love at all, yet here you both are.”

“She flew across the country to rescue the world’s worst dog. If she can love Marshmallow, surely, she can stay loyal to you too.”

“Excuse you—” I start again.

Winnie snaps and makes a zip it noise. “No, no, you don’t get to talk yet. Do you know anyone in this world more loyal than Begonia?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone in this world who’s a bigger dick than her ex-husband?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a bigger dick than her ex-husband?”

“Only to people who are not Begonia. Probably to people sitting here in my office who should be biting their tongues right now, and who are only still employed because you’ve clearly been talking to her behind my back, and I want to know what you know, and I want to know now.”

Neither of them is fazed by my glare.

“We haven’t talked to her,” Winnie says.

“We’ve talked to other people who know her better.”

“They’re making suppositions.”

“But based on what we know about her—”

“And the way she looked at you—”

“We’re assuming we’re right.”

“So what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks are you doing here instead of chasing her down and getting her back?”

“I—”

“She got fired from her teaching job,” Keisha yells through my door. “That blow job was a bad look for her.”

“Mom said she looked like crap when she tracked her down somewhere in North Carolina too,” Jonas adds.

I cross the room in three strides, wrench the chair away, and almost take the door off its hinges. “Our mother went to see Begonia.”

It’s not a question.

It’s an order for him to fill in more information.

My brother shrugs. “She was worried.”

I stare at him.

Then stare more.

“She hated Begonia.”

“She knew it was fake,” Keisha says. “Marshmallow traded her vibrator for Begonia’s copy of your signed contract.”

Jonas makes a noise I’ve never heard him make in his life, on- or off-set. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“What? The part where your mother has a—mmph!”

“When?” I ask.

“You want details, talk to her. Pretty sure she was trying to clean up the mess and do what we do best, but it wasn’t enough to keep Begonia from getting fired from her job. Sucks too. I heard she’s a great art teacher. World needs more of those.”

The world needs more Begonia.

Period.

And Begonia needs more of knowing that she’s loved for exactly who she is.

Not from my mother.

Not from her ex-husband.

Not from any random dickwad who won’t appreciate her for exactly what she is.

But from someone like me.

Someone who won’t take her for granted. Who knows how wrong relationships can go.

Who’s still terrified.

But who might finally be ready to look that old fear in the eye and decide that love is a risk worth taking.

And if I’m wrong—if she’s already moved on—if she doesn’t want me after all of my fuck-ups—then that’s a consequence I’ll have to deal with.

Even if I don’t have the first clue how.