Mark walks over a couple of minutes after Aaron leaves. He takes Aaron’s stool.
“Were you scared to come over while my friends were here?” I ask, finishing my second mojito.
“I didn’t want them hearing what I need to tell you,” he says. I brace myself—he could be firing me, he could tell me to go fuck myself for accusing him of having it easier than everybody else, or he could lay out all of our past histories like a chronicle of unforgiven sins and I’d see my own guilt in front of me. “I’ve arranged for you to have a position at Trident Bank.”
“What?” I blurt.
“The bank that my parents work at. If you want it, there is a position open for you.”
“I don’t want to work at a bank,” I say, my tone coming across as much more vicious than I mean it to. “And I don’t want to take a job that I didn’t earn.”
He lets out a slow breath. “Things might be going to shit at 2Resonance. I just wanted you to have another option. You don’t need to take it. You won’t owe me anything. This situation is my fault and I’m simply trying to remedy what I can.”
He starts to stand up, but his hands remain on the bar. “I also wanted to tell you that I had broken up with Alina. We still are broken up. She’d just been adamant about staying together,” he says. “That is my fault as well. I should have told you I’d recently gone through a break-up and that she’d been texting me. For the former, I’d honestly forgotten about her after I saw you. And for the latter, I thought I could clean up the mess before you found out about it. I’m sorry.” He pushes away from the bar, walking away.
I watch him walk out.
I should hate him. I want to hate him so badly and cut him out of my life forever, but I can’t quite get to that point. If anything, I only want him more.
Chapter 14:
Mark
“It’s not going to work,” Rick Thomas says, his voice crackling over the intercom. He sounds more aggravated than usual, but I’d feel the same way if I was avoiding the accusations he’s trying to dodge. His priority is to kill this news story before everyone associates his name with prejudice and discrimination. My priority is to not kill anything that isn’t malignant.
“Mark, we know how much this means to you,” Keegan says, her voice coming out hollow, but that could be because her call is coming through her car’s Bluetooth. “But it’s better that we sell it for a higher price now than having to sell it for pennies.”
I sit at my desk, tired of talking and tired of trying to justify the existence of a project I’d been working on for nearly three years. It’s nearly midnight and it would be so easy to give in. I know my only chance to save the company is to sell it. Even before this news cycle, once people discovered that I came from a wealthy family, my ownership of 2Resonance became a detriment to the company. This issue has only exacerbated the public’s mistrust in me. When the whole world wants you to burn and you’ve been choking on the smoke, you might as well light yourself on fire.
“Mark?” Keegan asks.
“I’ll contact my lawyers and form a decision with their input,” I say. I end the call. Staring at the chair across from my desk, I know what Zandra would say. She’d make a passionate demand that I stay at the head of my company. I created it and I fought for it, so I should go down with the ship. She believes in those simple solutions. She’s a militant for passion and work ethic. She’s the patron saint of how the world should work.
I rub my eyes with the heel of my palms. I need to stop thinking about Zandra. I need to focus on finding a solution to save my company without losing my position.
But there is nothing. And, unlike in Zandra’s ideal world, things don’t end up perfect just because we’re passionate about it. She’s the one who taught me that, first in Paris and again when she left me in this building.
I see a woman’s arm push open the door. My heart bursts into action, but as I see it’s Alina’s arm, it falters back to a lethargic pace.
“Alina,” I say evenly as she walks up to my desk. She sits down in the chair across from my desk. She’s wearing a short, red dress. It’s much more revealing than her usual style. I never saw her as the type of woman to fall apart after a break-up, but I’ve never seen her fail to get what she wants.
It’s the same as what Zandra said: Alina and I have safety nets. We’ve rarely had to worry about the consequences of our actions.
“I need your full attention for a moment,” she says. Her demand gets under my skin, but I know I owe her at least a few minutes of my time. It’s not her fault that my relationship with Zandra is burning away.
She traces the faint curves of her body but stops when she sees I’m not interested.
“We belong together,” she says. “I don’t mean like soulmates. We belong together because we worked hard to build a good relationship. We are compatible in a way that’s difficult to find. We’ve loved each other for two years without letting the chaos of our schedules interfere with it. When I think of a perfect mate, you are pretty damn close to it and I’m not about to go back into the dating pool in the hope of finding someone better because it won’t happen. Our love has stood the test of time. It has worked in a way that doesn’t interfere with our individual lives. We live the same way that we did while we were single, but we still have each other to rely on.”
I stare at her. It’s true that Alina and I have developed our relationship in the last couple of years, but I know her in a superficial way. I could tell you her preferred wine, that she takes at least an hour and a half to get ready, and about her fear of centipedes. But with Zandra, I know all the smaller, more intimate details. I know that when she’s nervous, she touches her hair. I know that when she smiles, it starts on the left side of her face. I know she’s never quite felt like she belonged, which reinforces her fear of getting attached to anyone and finding out that their love for her was temporary.
With Alina, I was fine with living on the opposite side of the world from her, but I don’t think I could do that with Zandra. I want Zandra to interfere with my individual life. I don’t want my life to be the same after she’s in it. I want her to change me into a better man.
“Alina, you should go back to Italy,” I say.
Her face starts to crumple, but she quickly recovers, putting on a half-hearted smile. “Are you finally happy?” she asks, a hint of doubt in her voice.
“I’m not,” I admit. “But I know the choices I have to make to be happy.”
