I finish showering and dry off.
I remember what my brother said when we were leaving his apartment.
“Don’t fuck this up, Brooks. Don’t mess with her.”
I know they’re right. I know that would be textbook Brooks: Brooks sees hot girl. Brooks gets in her pants.
They’re not wrong to expect it of me.
But there is something about her that makes everything and everyone else feel like a distant memory, blurry and faded likean old photo. But Wren is vibrant and full of shades of colors. She’s not overly friendly or fawning over me like so many other women. But she’s interested in me in other ways.
And what’s more is that she doesn’t seem to give a shit about my last name. She’s not trying to mooch off of it—she’s trying to take it down.
And I’m going to help her do it.
There is still so much more I want to know about her. What her childhood was like. What her parents do. Where she went to school.
What she sounds like when I taste her.
I shiver at the thought and put a fresh pair of boxers on, then hop into my California king bed.
I close my eyes, but all I see is her.
I wakeup to my phone buzzing incessantly on my nightstand.
6:52 in the morning.
I got an interview.
Hello?
They already sent me a request. They want me to go down TOMORROW.
Hello? Brooks??
I swipea sleepy hand down my face and press call.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Get ready,” I tell her. “I’ll be there in a half hour. Take a breath. You’re not alone.”
I get dressed in a hurry, put on a dab of my cologne, and then call Eddie to get the car ready.
But just as I get to the penthouse elevator, my phone rings again. I expect to see her name, but I freeze when I see my dad’s flash on my screen. I swallow. My brothers and I didn’ttalk about this part. About how to navigate our relationship with Cato until everything is said and done. Guess it’s time to improvise.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Wow. Awake before ten? What’s the occasion? Or have you not gone to bed yet?” Cato answers, his tone oozing with sarcasm and condescension, per usual. I chuckle on the other end. I’ve never really talked back to Cato. Not the way my brothers have.
I was always too afraid to.
He spent my entire childhood reminding me that I was the bastard, separating me from my brothers like I wasn’t just as much his son as they were. And he never misses an opportunity to chastise me. Remind me that I’m worthless. That I have wasted my name and my potential.
“I’m in the office every morning by nine, Dad,” I say quietly. I decided a long time ago to let him believe the narrative he’d been spinning for my whole life. It was easier that way than to try to make him see me in another light. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice so early?”
“I need you to run a meeting for me tomorrow at the Boston office.”
I swallow.
