“You’re supposed to act like you love him!” she shouted.
“Dammit! I just want peace and quiet.”
My dad walked by the stairs. I knew he was going to his office. “Go to your room,” Mom said as she followed behind him.
I heard a loud bang and more things breaking. I ran all the way back upstairs and into my room. I closed the door and flopped on my bed. I could hear them yelling and more stuff breaking. I covered my ears with my pillow.
When I grew up, I was never going to be like him. He was a mean man. I heard footsteps on the stairs and hoped they weren’t coming to talk to me. I didn’t want them to talk to me. I wanted to disappear. I knew it was my mom. I could hear her crying as she walked to their bedroom.
He was a mean man. I was never, ever going to have kids. I never wanted to be like him.
Chapter 53
Saige
I ran through the drive thru at Dutch Brothers and ordered two coffees. Nash wasn’t calling me back. He was pissed at me. The more I thought about the incident, the more I could understand why he was mad. I overreacted, and I was prepared to apologize for that, but I would not encourage him to teach him to fight.
When I got to the office, the environment was very different than it had been the last few weeks. Things were much calmer. The damn walls were still up, but I was getting used to them. I didn’t like them, but I didn’t see them anymore. They were just walls. I walked to Nash’s office with the coffees in hand. The door was closed and the lights off.
Just to make sure, I knocked once and then opened it. As I suspected, he wasn’t in. I went to my own office and sat down. He was probably running late. That was the perk of being the boss. He could come and go as he pleased.
It was about twenty minutes later when I realized he still wasn’t in. I walked back up to reception to see if he’d called in to say he was running late. “Hey, has Mr. Aarons called?” I asked.
“Yes, he isn’t coming in today. Or tomorrow. He said to let you know he was going to be out of the office for a while.”
“Did he say why?” I asked.
“Just said he had to take care of some other business.” She looked around and leaned forward. “I think it will be nice to have a little bit of normalcy. It isn’t like we are going to miss him around here.”
“He’s been very kind to everyone here all last week,” I reminded her.
“An anomaly,” she said with a smirk.
“Remember, he’s the boss,” I said. “We should give him the respect he deserves.”
I walked back to my office. I had a feeling I really pissed him off. I pushed him too far. I couldn’t believe he was that upset about me telling him he couldn’t see Jace. He didn’t even know my son. Could there really be some kind of genetic connection?
I shook my head. “No,” I muttered. “Impossible.”
I started my usual Monday morning routine. It really was nice to have a reprieve from the tax deadline. We still had plenty of clients that needed extensions. We were ironing out their tax issues, but the crazy hectic nature of tax season was behind us. This was the lull. We would take a few weeks doing silly things that didn’t matter. Then we’d make promises to ourselves that we were going to get our clients shit in order long before tax season rolled around.
We wouldn’t, but we would keep saying we were going to. It was like a New Year’s resolution. Every year, it was the same damn thing. As I was going through files, I tried to remember I wasn’t going to be here for tax season next year. I didn’t want to leave my clients hanging or the person who took over my clients.
I spent hours writing up notes for what I had planned for the clients. It was the equivalent of writing a report. “Knock, knock,” I heard.
I looked up to find Lana standing in my door. “Hey, come in.”
She sat down with a huge smile on her face. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”
“What feels good?”
“Being able to breathe without the ghoul staring over my shoulder.”