I stopped her. “I don’t.” I was falling but I wasn’t there yet. Or so I kept telling myself.
“You may think that now. But you’ll see. You will if you don’t already. You’re worried that you’ll never get the love you put in returned, and I’m here telling you I honestly don’t know that you will. I wish I could say differently because I really, really want grandkids.”
A sad laugh burst out of me. I let it overtake me so it could suppress the sudden need to cry.
Nancy grabbed and held my hand the rest of the way home.
Dinner with the Stonewoods didn’t make me feel any better. We sat at a small table in a brightly lit room, everyone shoved together so close our legs touched the person next to us. Jett took advantage and held my thigh through most of the dinner. The crackling fire added to the cozy ambience. I drank extra liquor and tried to immerse myself in the comfort of a close family that loved one another.
Jett left the window open that night and we snuggled close, keeping warm with just our body heat.
I stayed up much later than anyone else in that house. I’d smiled through dinner and enjoyed everyone’s company, but Nancy’s words echoed through me; they played on repeat over and over again.
As Jett held me close, I wondered if it was better to risk the time I wasn’t sure I had on a man who made me feel like life could be firework after firework, each time with him a flash of sparkling color. Or was that time a waste? Would it be better spent on a man sure to deliver my dream of marriage and what I thought was ultimate happiness?
My mind spun a web of possibilities.
Jett and I drove home late Friday. I sent him off with the excuse that my parents were coming to town the next morning.
Yet, that weekend I cocooned myself away from the world. I didn’t answer Jett’s call, and I didn’t invite him over. I ignored every one of my mother’s calls and didn’t text her my address. I retreated into myself, swallowed up by the what ifs and the angry voice inside that said maybe I had no time to waste, maybe that terrible enemy that was cancer would take me quicker than I had anticipated.
The fear overcame me and I let it.
I let the dread and the anxiety and the depression creep back in. I dug through my closet, pulled out the old photos and hospital papers and proof of the wreckage that had been my life. I shed ugly tears, drowning myself in the tragedy. I wanted to be happy. I should have been happy. Yet, I let the cancer I was supposed to have beaten consume me and dictate my life.
I was to blame for the days that came after, no matter what anyone says. I was responsible for the devastation that found me.
33
Jett
Something had shaken Victory Blakely.
I didn’t navigate shaken women well. I didn’t navigate them at all.
Work always came first. But somehow, over the course of the past few months, Victory had become more important than work.
Thanksgiving with her solidified it.
Yet, over the weekend, my doubts crept back in. She was avoiding me, and I couldn’t figure out why. I didn't know if I wanted to, if this was the shit I was going to have to go through. Women were difficult. Business, I’d learned. I’d wrestled with it and won, I knew how to handle it.
Victory wasn’t business.
And even in my business, she’d taken what I thought I’d known, put it in a jar, added her freaking pixie dust, and shaken it all up. My team ran better with her. They practically ran for her.
I got to work early Monday.
Bastian called to let me know the head of Levvetor wanted a meeting with us that morning, and of course a board member of the FDA wanted in on it since I’d threatened their dairy trade. Cards fell fast when the strings you pulled had money attached to them.
When I walked through the lobby doors, I was surprised to see Vick. She normally arrived early, but today, she’d shown up at the same time I did—hours before anyone else got there.
“You’re early,” I said to her back when I reached the elevator.
She didn’t turn around. Her long blonde hair fell from a high ponytail, straight down her back to a pink point. I knew better than most that hair felt like silk, moved like liquid, and was easy to wrap around my knuckles before I fisted it.
Today she dressed in a muted gray, but her shoes popped bright orange and matched the band she always wore on her wrist.
“Victory,” I growled out her name, wanting her attention as the elevator made its way down toward us.