“What, you don’t like making all those dollar bills?” Jeremy teased.
“It’s not that. It’s just hard to focus on anything else,” I said with a little laugh.
“You like your job, you make great money, you know the owners.” I could practically see my pops ticking off his fat, stubby fingers. “What else ya want? You got it all, Jessa. It ain’t so bad to put some things on the back burner when you find a job like this.”
His words jarred a cold resentment into me. I knew what he was talking about. It was the same thing everyone else thought I should put on the back burner.
“Well…” I began.
“Nobody would blame you if your end goal changed while you were there,” Jeremy rushed to add, always the mediator. “You should keep going. See how far this takes you. After all, one of us kids has to be the breakout success, right?”
I laughed, but it came out weak. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m proud of you, sissy.” Emotion wrenched my father’s voice. My throat went tight, and for a moment I had no air inside me. “Making six figures a year. Fuckin’ incredible.”
“Thanks, Pops,” I finally squeaked out.
I couldn’t deny how good it felt to hear that he was proud of me—thatanyonewas proud of me. But that feeling came only on the heels of the thing I didn’t fully want to do.
Would anyone be proud of me for going after my goals?
The question weighed heavily inside me as we chatted more. By the time we hung up, I couldn’t even distinguish the voice in my head from my father’s.
Was it so wrong to follow the smart, practical thing?
It didn’t have to mean that I was a failure. Maybe the smart thing would be to recognize a great opportunity and stick with it.
So why couldn’t I do it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DAMIAN
Jessa was allowed to have a personal day.
It didn’t mean I had to like it.
Shit wasn’t the same without her around. I tried to ignore the odd atmosphere, but it was impossible.
Even without her here, I was still humming. At least Axel wasn’t around to give me shit. He and Cora were off doing some goodwill PR. We needed all the positive PR we could get, especially since that very-public protest outside of our fundraiser on Saturday.
We had to be careful. Any wrong step could be magnified and multiplied. Which was why we needed to tread more carefully than ever before.
We were walking on the most fragile and unforgiving of eggshells.
Most of the workday passed uneventfully, since I didn’t have the combination assistance/distraction of Jessa outside my door and Axel wasn’t there to interrupt me every half hour with some new idea or complaint. I thought I’d make it through the day unscathed and was plotting my best strategy for convincing Jessa to come to my penthouse that night when Felicia at the front desk called my office.
“Damian…” There was a bloated pause. “Ian is back, and he’s asking for Trace.”
My gut wrenched. “Did you tell him Trace isn’t available?”
“I did. But he seems…I don’t know. I thought maybe you should talk to him.”
I did want to talk to him, but the questions I had in mind weren’t the kind most people would be eager to answer honestly. Indecision roiled around inside me. On the one hand, I knew Axel would send him away without a second thought. But something told me Trace would have reached out, started a dialogue.
“Show him in,” I forced out. My heart pounded as I awaited the inevitable knock on the door. This felt wrong somehow, like a breach of a contract I had with Axel. But my curiosity overrode all that. This counted as research.
A light tap sounded on my door a moment later. “Come in,” I called out.