Damn. I was rapidly running out of arguments.
“Give up your seat on the board, give up the management position, and you can stay without the board’s vote.”
I stared at Judith in disbelief. “No.”
“Then give up Link.”
I let out a barking laugh. “Fuck no. Give me another option.”
“There are no other options.” She sounded tired. Stressed. “You pick or we’ll pick for you. Don’t make me do that.” Was she pleading?
Was this about more than me? “I can’t pick either of those things. Or rather, I can’t give them up. AcesPlayed is my baby as much as it is yours. This game… It’s everything.”
“But it’s not, or you wouldn’t have a problem giving up Link. Not that I’m saying you should. We’re getting older, and we’ve given up a lot. If you have the perfect guy, that’s longer term than a game. Let me ask you—why did you sign on for this?”
For the game? For AcesPlayed? “To build something incredible. To be a part of it. To shape this thing the world had never seen, that no one else could make the way we did.”
“You’re right, no one else could’ve pulled this off. And we did do it. Past tense. Not that the game is going away, but it exists now. We breathed life into it.” The passion that tinged Judith’s voice was familiar. Personal. Relatable. “How much will its shape change as we move forward?”
“As much as it needs to.”
She nodded. “But it’s unlikely we’ll ever completely reshapethisagain. Any changes will be built on what exists.”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure where she was going with this. “It’s still in its infancy though. And I’m not interested in going to another company to do this again. I like it here. I love what we all have here.” That was hard to say, but it felt good.
Judith was silent for a moment. She tapped the tip of her pen against her bottom lip and furrowed her brow. “What if…”
“Yes?” Anything that kept me from having to give up something I loved.
“I don’t know.”
Fuck. One of us was supposed to have the answer. Always. It was one reason we made a great team. She had her strengths, I had mine. There had to be something. “What if I moved into a consulting position? More like a part time contractor? Put someone else in charge, but let me have a say. Let me keep my stake.” As the words rushed out, they seemed so obvious.
Judith almost smiled—not something she did often. “Would you do that?Couldyou do that?”
“I don’t know. I’d be willing to try. But only if you replaced me with someone who could do my old job.” More inspiration, of the most brilliant sort. “Link.”
And now her frown was back. At least that was predictable. “If I promote Link, it looks like I’m rewarding him for breaking the rules.”
“But it doesn’t.” I’d talked to him at length yesterday, and I knew what he’d been doing while I was gone. “He’s stepping into a position that needs filling, after taking those reins and doing the job without being asked. Tell me he hasn’t owned this crisis. No one here sees him as anything but amazing and competent.” The longer I thought about this, the more acceptable it was.
Not that I liked the overall idea of stepping down, but if there was one person I trusted to take my place… And it wasn’t as if I was leaving my family behind.
Judith grabbed the phone and dialed.
“Hello?” Link’s voice over the speaker made my pulse race.
Yes, even with such a simple response.
“We need to talk to you,” Judith said. “Can you come to my office?”
“We?” Link asked.
Judith shot me akeep your mouth shutlook. “Yes.”
Not the solution I wanted, but the solution that would work. I needed this to not be a mistake, and maybe if I could work this out, I could make things right with Fallyn, too.
Talk about wanting the world.