To My Arrogant Boss (The Inappropriate Bachelors #2) - J. S. Cooper Page 0,52
in my life could have been different if I’d been born into a different family.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and looked down.
“What, what is it?” I asked her, wondering what she was thinking.
“Just how life can be really unfair at times.” She picked up her Diet Coke but didn’t drink it. “I couldn’t imagine having to escape in the underground to get my freedom.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t imagine someone telling me when I had to wake up, when I could go to sleep. There are a lot of ways to kill a man and a lot of ways to die, but I couldn’t imagine my entire existence killing me one day at a time. I couldn’t imagine someone buying me and thinking they owned me.” Her voice caught tears glistened in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, are you okay?” I stood up and walked over to her. “I didn’t mean to trigger you. I suppose you think that I’m not even in a position to write such a piece. That I’m the pinnacle of white male privilege?”
“No, I don’t think that.” She shook her head. “It’s great for you to try and see life and history from a different perspective, especially if your family and ancestors weren’t necessarily on the right side of that history.”
“I don’t want to paint my family in an evil light.” I could feel the tension rising in my shoulders. “Nothing’s black and white, eh? But yeah, I’m trying to bring change and make amends. I want to do things with my money. Good things. I want to effect change. I want to acknowledge that my family’s riches were built on the backs of other people.”
“Oh, Tate.” She rubbed my shoulder and I could see a different light in her eyes. It was a light I hadn’t seen before, a light of admiration and respect. And it made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a really long time. It made me feel proud of myself. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You can and are making a change. Small steps still count.”
“Thank you, Jane.” I wiped a tear from her cheek. “That means a lot to me.”
“So tell me more about where you grew up,” she suggested.
Studying Jane, I realized that I’d only seen her on a surface level. I had been unfair and disrespectful to her. I’d judged her on her looks, just as I knew that she’d judged me on my money and her assumption that life had to be easier for me because I’d been blessed with riches growing up.
“What do you want to know?”
“You obviously have a complicated family life. We all do.” She leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder. “I don’t need to hear about your family. I’ll meet them. I can see for myself. I want to know about your life as a child. What did you love about your childhood?”
“What did I love about my childhood?” I leaned back in the couch next to her and really tried to think hard. “Well, I told you about my granddaddy’s farm. That was always fun.”
“So you went there all the time?”
“Until the summer I was fifteen.” All of a sudden I felt drained. Opening up took a lot of energy. “I stopped going after that.”
“Too many women to date?” She teased me, but I didn’t laugh in response. “Or another reason?” she asked softly.
“Another reason.” I nodded, suddenly bleak. “I had an argument with my granddaddy that summer, and I left the farm two weeks early and went home. I never went back. I ignored his calls. And then he died.” I pursed my lips. “He died three months after that. We never spoke after that argument. I never got a chance to talk to him about how I felt about everything.”
“Oh, Tate, I’m so sorry. I’m sure he forgave you for leaving.”
“Maybe.” I stared at the coffee table. “Maybe he forgave me. I never forgave him.”
“What did he do?” Her eyes studied me intently, and I didn’t know that I could bring myself to tell her.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I was embarrassed to tell her what had gone down. Embarrassed that I had family members that still lived in the past. I didn’t want her to hate my family so much that she wouldn’t come home with me. And I really wanted her to come. A lot more than I had realized. “We can choose many things in life, but we can’t choose our family.”