I don't answer. He's right, and I hate that he's right. It's my fatal flaw. Maddy saves stray cats; I save disasters.
"Why are you awake, Brooks?" I ask, changing the subject. "And don't say 'Asian markets.' You were staring at that email from your father for five minutes without typing a word."
He sighs, the sound rattling deep in his chest. He finally takes the ice pack from me, holding it in place himself, which allows me to step back. I sit on the edge of the bed, on his side, giving up the pretense of the wall for a moment.
"He's coming tomorrow," Brooks says.
"Your dad? We saw him at lunch."
"He was present at lunch," Brooks corrects. "He wasn't there. Tomorrow he wants to do a site walk of the estate grounds. Just him and me. To 'assess the stability of the foundation.'"
"He means your foundation," I guess.
"He means my sanity," Brooks says bitterly. "He thinks I'm reckless. He thinks I'm impulsive. He's been waiting for me to screw up for ten years so he can justify bringing in an outside CEO."
"Why?" I ask. "You're good at what you do. I looked you up. You tripled the firm's portfolio in five years."
He looks at me, surprised. "You did your homework."
"I always research the venue," I say. "The numbers are there. Why doesn't he trust you?"
Brooks looks away, staring at the unlit fireplace. "Because I'm not him. Preston Taylor believes in slow, conservative growth. He believes in zero risk. I take risks. I bet on startups. I bet on tech. I bet on things that haven't happened yet. He calls it gambling. I call it vision."
He shifts the ice pack.
"This deal. The Holloway Group. It's mine. I sourced it. I built it. If it closes, it modernizes the entire firm. It secures our future for the next twenty years. But if I stumble, if I look, even for a second, like a liability, he kills it. And he hands the company to a board of sixty-year-old men who still think the internet is a fad."
I watch him. I see the tension in his jaw, the white-knuckle grip he has on the duvet.
I understand him.
It hits me suddenly, forcefully. I know that feeling. The need to build something that's yours. The fear that one wrong move will send it all back where you started.
Ever After, Inc.began in River Bend, with people who knew exactly where they came from and exactly what the world expected of them. We weren't outsiders to each other. We were outsiders to everyone else. So we built something together.Fought for every contract. Earned our place in rooms that assumed we didn't belong there.
Brooks was born into those rooms.
But staying in them takes work.
And I recognize that fight immediately.
"He's wrong."
Brooks looks back at me. "What?"
"Your father. He's wrong. You're not reckless."
Brooks raises an eyebrow. "I seem to recall you calling me 'impulsive' regarding the wedding interruption."
"That was calculated." I meet his gaze. "Stupid but calculated. You assessed the bride, decided she was a risk, and moved to mitigate. That's not recklessness, Brooks. That's risk management. You just had bad data."
A small, genuine smile touches the corner of his mouth. "Bad data?"
"Laurie isn't a gold digger. But your instinct to protect the firm? That wasn't wrong."
He studies me. The silence in the room shifts. It stops being tense and starts being... comfortable. Intimate.
"You're good at this," he says quietly. "The pep talk thing."
