Of course, after it was me who crushed you, broke you in a way that even Tom couldn’t fix, which was why, when Tom broke you, you wouldn’t allow him to fix you both.
Where else would I be?
She studied his face, saw something there she shouldn’t, and misinterpreted it.
“I’ll be okay, Corey. Promise. I always am. You know that.”
It was his turn to nod.
“Still, it means the world you’d fly out, be here.” She shook him lovingly with her arms. “To listen to me. Look after me. You’re a pretty busy guy.”
That last was a tease, but the pride in her words ran deep.
Pride in him.
All he’d done.
What he’d become.
Guilt.
His chest flooded.
Was this what drowning felt like?
Suddenly very serious, her arms around him tightened. “It means the world, Corey, that you’d be here for me.”
“Always, Gen,” he murmured.
She forced a smile.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Shadows clouded her eyes.
But she forced her smile to broaden.
And her lie was nonverbal when she nodded.
Therefore, Corey took her out to eat.
It would be the last meal they shared alone together.
But even if Corey didn’t know that at the time, he remembered every moment of that meal for months to come.
It was the most important, most treasured two hours of his life.
Corey, with his best friend Genny.
Precious.
Even if the pall was there, as it always was.
Because someone was missing.
It took months for Corey to be driven to silence the voices in his head.
And when he did, he was at his home.
Corey had learned a few things very well in his life, and one of them was how to be like Duncan always had been.
Decisive.
Therefore, when he decided to silence those voices, he didn’t fuck around.
He went to the wall safe, opened it, and took out the file.
Except to tuck it away after adding to it, he’d never touched it. Never opened that ever-growing file.
Not a single page read.
Not one picture viewed.
But right then, he took it out, full to bursting, chronological with every new report shoved on top.
Twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years of a man’s life.
Twenty-five years of his best friend’s life.
Corey sat in a room with no view, a difficult thing to find in his sprawling oceanside home.
He opened the file.
And he started at the top, taking hours to do it, doing it thoroughly, studying every picture, and reading every word of what his investigators reported to him on the life of Duncan Holloway.
Seeing the risks Duncan took.
And the payoffs.
The friends he’d made, who had not fucked him over.
Garnering a deep understanding that even Duncan did not have a handle on how truly troubled his ex-wife was.
And an understanding Corey was utterly certain Duncan did have about how exceptional his two sons were.
Corey learned it all, and the way his mind worked, as he did, he fit them together along the way like a puzzle that had been put together, but was blown apart, some of the pieces still holding true, but other big, important chunks had been torn away.
And once the last piece was clicked back into place and that totality came into view, he saw with a clarity that obliterated him that they would have fit.
If Duncan had not been urged by Corey to falter in the understanding he was a good man, an ambitious one, a loving one, a loyal one, and one who knew not only who he was and what he wanted, but how to get it…
Yes, if Corey had not done that, and when that wasn’t working fast enough, told him a lie that Duncan’s love for Corey, his trust in him would make it the truth, they would have fit.
Genny and Duncan would have worked.
They would have built a life together.
But Corey took it away.
However, somehow, even with all of that, all he’d done, what haunted him the most was, if they had been as they should have been—together—they might have had a girl.
Duncan would have had a girl…
To teach how not to be afraid of frogs.
Corey, too, would have liked to have had a daughter.
Or two.
But he would have taught them about much more than frogs.
At least Corey got his chance, even if they weren’t his girls.
Duncan…
Corey closed his eyes on that thought, images of Chloe and Sasha rushing his mind, and his heavy heart grew immensely heavier.
So he opened his eyes.
They would not have existed if he had not intervened.
Matt…
Duncan’s boys…
But the bottom line, they weren’t what was meant to be.
He’d altered what was meant to be.
Corey Szabo had it within his power to manipulate what man, or woman, was next elected president.
As such, he could fix this.
He had proved through his life that he could do anything.
And this was something he was going to do.
To that end, he destroyed that file.
However, the other ones he’d he personally placed in capable hands, and then he gave very specific, exhaustive, meticulous instructions.