He chuckled, an unamused sound. “Oh, don’t underestimate how deep my wounds go. But you’re probably right on why I chose to come back here. I could have gone anywhere, gotten a job somewhere my uncle doesn’t work. Sometimes I think the greatest gift my mother ever gave me was this weird family she married into. Oh, I will swear it’s the opposite after a long talk with Big Tag, but they took us in, made us theirs. It’s important to belong to someone. I know that sounds…old fashioned, but for me, it’s true.”
“My own sister didn’t want me to take care of her.” She’d managed to forget that fun fact for a while, but it had crept back in, that truth sliding over her soul.
“Or she was scared you wouldn’t want to at all. You can’t know what she was thinking.”
Oh, but she was fairly certain. Her sister had found a life she loved, and there wasn’t room in it for anyone from her old life. “I think she had her new family. I think she loved them.”
“And what did she leave you?” Kyle asked.
“She left me her house.”
“And her job,” Kyle pointed out.
“She couldn’t know that I would take over her job.”
“And yet it happened. She knew you would likely need a place to live. She knew Dani would need help. She might not have known for sure what would happen, but she set up those dominoes knowing how they could fall. What she truly gave you was a chance at finding your place in the family she loved.”
“Well, that family she loved decided I was a thief.” Her sister hadn’t wanted her around, and there was a chance she’d been right.
“No, a very paranoid dude figured out something was wrong, and you were the best suspect,” Kyle pointed out. “And you were doing something shady. So was Dani. Maybe Julian should have handled it differently, but this is who Julian is, and the minute he realized you weren’t what he thought you were, he told you the truth. He offered a way to fix many of your problems. You should understand that Michael had already decided he didn’t care if you stole that money. He was going to pay it back and ensure Julian didn’t prosecute you. I know he didn’t tell you why he was fucking you. I think he didn’t know, but he does now. He was fucking you because he couldn’t not fuck you.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It should. You could make it matter,” Kyle insisted. “You do understand that it would be far easier for Michael to walk away at this point. He could have foisted you right back at Julian and not worried about you again. Ask yourself why he didn’t do that. Why he put his own family in harm’s way for you.”
The answer was clear to her. “Because he feels bad.”
“Because at some point in all of this madness, you became part of his family. It’s the only reason he would ever do this. So you get to make the decision. Are you going to listen to your mother? Are you going to finally admit she was right? Or are you going to do what I think you’ve been doing for a long time—look for another one. Look for a whole other family, one that loves you. You got dealt a shit hand, Jones. Several of them. I’ve found there are two types of people. The ones who get out of the game and never play again. Or the ones who ask for a new hand and start the fuck over again. I’m trying to be the second one.”
“This isn’t my second time around, Kyle. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been tossed to the ground?”
“A lot. And you had to do a whole lot of it in front of a camera with the whole world watching. It sucks. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to never even try again. But there’s this thing my dad used to say. It’s stuck with me even during the bad times. It’s the little things, you know. When everything seems dark and you don’t think you can pull through, it’s always the little things that give you something to hold on to. He used to say the tragedy isn’t in getting your ass kicked. That’s life. The tragedy is when you don’t get back up. You couldn’t control the ass kicking. That was going to happen no matter what you did. But you control whether or not you let it kill a piece of you.” He pushed back from the railing. “I’m going to hit the sack. I’ll escort you and Michael to work in the morning. You’re safe at Lodge Corp, but if you need to leave for any reason, you call me. You don’t leave that building without me or Michael. And don’t forget to have that talk with MaeBe. You don’t have to forgive her in your heart, but if you want me to help your friend, you better do it with your mouth. And make her believe.”