Ash turns his body so that he is facing me as well. He takes my hands and gently holds them. “It was about six months ago. I had a little thing, a heart thing that crept up. They said it was aminor heart attack-like event. I took some time off of work and eventually, I went back. It happened again.”
The tears form in my eyes. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why am I just finding out about this now?”
He sighs. “Because I didn’t want to worry you. They decided that it wasn’t a full-on heart attack. It was something that was similar. It was a stress-induced myocardial ischemia, which just means that I was undera lotof stress and it caused some problems with my heart. The blood flow to the heart was reduced, it caused some chest pain and shortness of breath. For a while there, while I was lying on the floor in my conference room, I thought to was going to die. But my people got me to the hospital, and they took excellent care of me.”
Ash takes a break from what he’s telling me to pull me into a long hug. “Your big brother is just fine. Please hear me when I say that. It was stress. I was in a very stressful position. I was responsible for the livelihoods of almost seventy people, and it was exhausting. It drove me to barely sleep and eat. It was all too much. That moment on the conference room floor was a wake-up call. So, I decided that I was going to sell the business and retire.”
“You’re retired?” I ask him, confused and horrified that my brother had something so momentous happen to him and I had no idea. “Why did no one tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he says again like I shouldn’t be so worried about trivial things that almost cost me my brother.
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to sit there and judge me for who I decide to sleep with one night,” I fire at him.
He nods and hold his hands up. “I know I know. It wasn’t fair to you, and I should have called you. But you had just started with the Blaze. I didn’t want you to come running back to Phillyand screw things up in your new job, because that was your dream.”
“You’re my brother!” I shout. “That means so much more to me than this job does.”
“I appreciate that. But it’s fine. I’mfine.I have amazing,had,” he corrects himself, “amazing stock options. That I was able to sell out, and because I was so busy working, I never had to spend any money. So, I have plenty of it. I don’t need to work anymore. For right now, I am not.”
I stare at him for a moment. “So, you are moving to Tampa, with me?”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m not saying that. I just wanted to come and hang out with you for a bit. Spend some time with my sister now that I actually can. Why not enjoy life for a change?”
“So that’s what you are doing?” I ask him slowly, carefully studying him. “And you’re okay now? You would tell me if you weren’t?”
He nods. “Yes, I would tell you if I wasn’t. I wanted to tell you about all the things that happened to me in person. This is hardly the stuff you send through a text message. Or the things you say on the phone. So that’s why I did it this way.”
“Do Mom and Dad know?”
“Yes, they know. Dad was all about me coming to work for him in the office,” he says, shaking his head and laughing. “He doesn’t realize that I wasn’t going to give up one stress for another.”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Sounds like Dad.”
I look at him with a feeling of worry growing in my chest. “So, what are you going to do? How are you going to spend the rest of your life? Ash, you’re not going to jump back into your old life are you?”
He laughs and raising his hands. “No, I have enough connections in Pennsylvania, I could consult part-time.”
“You really sold your company?”
He nods. “Yes, I did. I sold the whole damn thing. It went for a pretty penny. So now, I’m going to spend time with my baby sister. Because right now she seems like she needs me. And she has a pretty kick-ass social life where we hang out in bars with friends all hours of the evening.”
“Yeah, well, it’s fun,” I admit, shrugging. “And we don’t drink that much or make bad decisions when we have practice the next day, you will see.”
“Speaking of bad decisions, I should stay here to make sure you don’t make any more bad decisions with August,” he says, shaking his head. “You can’t do that again.”
“Yeah, well, I know that,” I say, trying to convince him that I know what I’m doing.
“Good. I’m gotta go take a shower now. I feel gross from my run,” he announces, standing. “I’m also glad that I finally got to tell you. That’s been eating at me.”
I get up and walk over and hug him again. “I’m glad that you are doing so much better now. While I get why you didn’t tell me, you better not do that again because next time you might not be so lucky.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, saluting me and heading down the hallway for his shower.
I sigh and watch him go. I can’t believe that I almost lost my brother, and no one told me. Thank god he’s alright and he’s here now. Ash is the only one who has ever really taken care of me.
Chapter Fourteen
~AUGUST~
