with promises of flying her out to visit soon.
“Who was that?” Hudson asks, half asleep once I hang up the call.
“My mom. She can’t wait to meet you.”
“I can’t wait to meet her either,” he says. “Should we get back inside?” he asks, not bothering to open his eyes. I set my phone down and drag my fingers up and down the smooth skin of his spine.
“In a little bit. It’s nice out here.”
“Okay,” he agrees, pressing a kiss to my chest.
Chapter 30
Hudson
I knock on my dad’s office door, my heart hammering and my hands sweating.
“Come in,” he calls out. “Did we have an appointment?” he asks as soon as I open the door.
“No, I wanted to talk to you about something, if you have a minute?”
He checks his expensive watch and then gives me a skeptical look that I’m sure is meant to make me back-pedal, tell him I’ll schedule an appointment with his assistant. But it took me long enough to work up the courage to come up here, and if I don’t do this now, I might chicken out altogether.
“You’ll have to make it quick.”
I nod, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. I hold my head high, keeping my shoulders squared with false confidence as I cross his office and settle myself into the chair in front of his desk.
“What’s this about?”
I swallow around the lump in my throat and look him directly in the eyes. He’s never been a cruel man, but certainly a commanding one. When I was a kid, I didn’t dare cross him, and I guess I never quite grew out of that habit. I’ve bent to everything he wanted, because it was easier to accept the comfortable, boring life he was offering than to push for something else. Bishop isn’t the only one Riot taught about bravery.
“I’m quitting.”
He stares at me for several seconds, and then he laughs. It’s sort of a rusty, choked sound, and it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve ever heard him laugh. I’m sure he finds it to be just as frivolous as all other leisure activities. After all, you can’t get rich from laughing.
“I’m serious. Consider this my two weeks’ notice,” I say more firmly this time.
His eyes bulge. “What do you want? A higher salary? A bigger office?”
“I want…” I gaze over his shoulder, out the large window I remember looking out as a kid when he would bring me in to watch him work. “I want to be happy.”
“Of course, you do,” he agrees. “Money goes a long way in that endeavor.”
I shake my head. “It hasn’t so far.”
“What’s all this about?” he barks, standing up and adjusting his suit jacket, not meeting my eye.
“I just told you,” I huff with exasperation, keeping my chair. If I stand to match him, it’ll feel like I’m trying to counter his intimidation tactics. I’m done with trying to be the man he wanted me to be. I’m not trying to fight or posture, I’m just done. “I’m not happy, and I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“All of the sudden you’re not happy?” He scoffs.
“No, not all of the sudden. I’ve never been happy, I’ve never wanted to work here,” I confess.
A flash of hurt crosses his face before he schools it back into the confident mask I’m used to seeing. “When you were a kid, you loved when I brought you here. You said you wanted an office just like mine.”
I scrunch my eyebrows together, trying to remember such a scenario. “I don’t remember that.”
He tightens his tie and clears his throat and for the first time it doesn’t look like he’s preening; it looks like he’s unsure of himself. “I’ve worked my whole life to provide for you, to grow this company that your grandfather built so that you’d never have to worry about money.”
“I know,” I say, my throat going dry. It’s the same thing he told me over and over again when I was a teenager, the thing that kept me from ever telling him how I really felt about it.
“And now none of this is good enough for you?”
“It’s not that it’s not good enough,” I answer weakly, my resolve quaking inside me. He’s right. He’s sacrificed a lot to hand me a successful company on a silver platter. Who am I to turn my nose up at it?
When I don’t respond, he sits back down and looks at me with a sort of weariness