“Hi, Chase,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
Chase
After seeing Maryellen with that tool bag of a guy touching her, I wished it wasn’t a weeknight. Well, at least not so early in the week. Because maybe I would have been drunk otherwise. I only had two drinks in me when I ran into them, not nearly enough to handle what I saw. And the chick I was with became such a bitch afterward.
She was full of questions.Who was that? Was she an ex?
I literally just picked her up in the bar we were at and hoped to have a good time with her. But after the inquisition, I knew she’d be the clingy type, so I took her home instead.
Plus, I promised Gage I’d be in early today to discuss a few details about my new office. It likely wouldn’t have happened if I had gone home with Corinne. Or was it Cora? I don’t even know what her name was.
I was excited to be getting a new, palatial office. There were some concerns, though. Being so close to him would eventually make my skin crawl, I knew that.
And I would be right down the hall fromher.
Gage decided he wanted the two of us to be on the main floor as the co-CEOs of the company. Whatever. I didn’t care muchabout that at the moment. I just didn’t want to see Maryellen, because if I did, I wasn’t sure I could keep my mouth shut.
The other side of the floor from Gage’s office was now fully under construction and more than halfway done to becoming mine. It was not what I’d expected him to do for me. The space seemed to mirror my brother’s in size and layout. There was still plastic hanging along the windows. Ladders and paint cans littered the floor. It was early enough that work had not resumed for the day.
“Morning,” Gage said from the doorway. “What do you think? I know it looks like there is still a ton of work to do, but they assure me it will be done by month’s end.”
As I surveyed the room, observing the view from the windows, my mind tossed around so many ways to answer him. My first instinct was to say I didn’t want to be anywhere near Maryellen.
That was a lie.
Or I could tell him I was content in the position I currently held.
That was also a lie.
Bottom line, I was a twenty-four-year-old heir to a company who really had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Did I want to head up a sales team and travel the world to do it? Maybe.
But I had this itch. An itch that kept gnawing at me…
“Chase?” Gage interrupted my thoughts.
“Oh, yeah, it’s looking great, man. I really appreciate it.”
Last night, at the bar, it was amazing up on that stage, singing and forgetting about all of this shit. I hid behind the microphone and made it seem as though it was something we did for fun when we went out and drank. But no one knew what it actually did for me.
It was my escape.
My friends got tired of going there all the time. I seemed to need it more and more.
“…would go over here,” Gage said. “Hey, you’re really not listening, man. What’s going on?”
“You remember when Mom used to play her guitar for us on the back porch, on that swing chair, and sing to us all the time? She had such an amazing voice.”
A gentle smile took over Gage’s face when he shifted his head in my direction. “I hadn’t thought of that in a long time.” The smile was short-lived. “There aren’t many good memories when it comes to her, are there?”
“I don’t know.” My opinion was vastly different from my brother’s, but it might be because I was so young when she left. I remembered bedtime stories and making cookies. She always kept us up late in the summer to catch fireflies, even when our father would be yelling to put us to bed. Plus, the house was always filled with music. Whether it was hers or on the radio, there was always music. “My only bad memory is of her leaving us. Before she did, everything was fine. More than fine, I thought it was great with Mom, why didn’t you?”
“She left us, Chase. She abandoned her children. We were eight and ten years old. What mother does that?”
I didn’t want to rehash the argument we’ve always had. He and our father had a similar view about it. But they were more alike. I think I was more like my mom.
Could be why my father favored Gage.
