“It wasn’t just about the money.” Trey set his hands on the tabletop. Strong hands. Beautiful hands. With lean, strong fingers.
Ambi couldn’t look at his hands so she looked at hers, pressing down on her thighs, instead. She couldn’t think about what his hands had done to her. How at first, they’d twined through hers and she’d felt a flurry of butterflies just from that brief contact. How they’d rested on the small of her back, brushed her tears away, massaged her temples and her shoulders when she was stressed. How they’d brought her pleasure. So. Much. Pleasure.
“My dad- he…” Trey swiped at his wet hair again. He brushed the back of his hand over his forehead like he was sweating, even though when Ambi looked up, he wasn’t shiny and there wasn’t sweat beaded there. “He used my mom against me. Said she’d always wanted me to take over the family business. Focus on it. Grow it. Advance everything we have now. He said she would have wanted me to focus on that and keep my options open, not tie myself down young and regret it for the rest of my life.”
“Oh really? Tie yourself down and regret it? Give me a break. If your mom really thought that, then it was only because she married an asshole and she regretted the hell out of it.”
“My dad might be an asshole sometimes, but my parents had a happy marriage.”
“Right.” Ambi dropped her eyes at about the same time the bottom of her stomach dropped out. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Trey sighed. Hard. “Look, Ambi. I’m sorry too. I loved my mom. You know that. You know that her death when I was sixteen fucked me up. She didn’t get to see me graduate high school. She didn’t get to see me go to college. I knew the company was her and my dad’s life. They built it from scratch. They were happily married. No one expected her to have a fucking brain aneurysm and die. My dad is an asshole partly because he still doesn’t know how to deal with that, even though it’s been a really long fucking time.”
“What did he have against me?” Ambi folded her arms over her chest again. She felt safer that way. “Why did he tell you that you had to pick?”
“He wanted me to be focused. He wanted me to work hard, to earn everything. He wanted me to be hungry and want it. It’s why he paid for me to go into business and nothing else. I could have gone to school for something of my choice, but he wouldn’t have footed the bill. I- he- the company really is his life. It’s all he has left of my mom other than me. In a way, and it might be a fucked-up way, I think he needs to control both because he’s grasping at straws. He didn’t want to lose me. He wanted to see the company go to me and the only way to ensure that was to threaten to disinherit me if I didn’t choose that path.”
“That’s a really shitty way. Almost a sure way to make you hate all of it.”
“Yeah,” Trey agreed readily. “It really was. Is. I hate working there. It took me a few years to finally admit that to myself. If it was up to me, I’d see it go in a different direction completely. This Christmas party was my idea. We’ve never had one. I wanted it to be good as a thank you to everyone who puts in long hours for us. I had to fight my dad tooth and nail to get it to happen.”
“And of course, you chose me. As a big fuck you to him.”
“Actually, I chose you because I thought you’d do a good job and I figured that if I was going to give the money to anyone, it should be you. My dad doesn’t know anything about it. I said I’d take it on. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to know.”
“Yes, well, here we are.” Ambi couldn’t keep the bitterness from leaching into her voice. “No matter what reason you did it, you still didn’t stand up to him. You could have proven to him that you could do both. Be with me and be a part of the company.”
Trey laughed, but it wasn’t happy sounding. It was sad and lost and pathetic, and it made her want to look up at him, but she refused. She couldn’t. It would be dangerous. She might crumple under the weight of the pain swimming in his jade eyes.
“That’s the thing. My dad was perfectly right. If I’d have been with you, I wouldn’t have worked for the company. I would not have spent years doing things that made me unhappy. I wouldn’t live in a soulless shell of a house that doesn’t feel like home at all. I wouldn’t go on the road half a year to business meetings I don’t believe in. I wouldn’t have thrown away the last five years of my life. I wouldn’t have a big house or the fancy cars or any of it, because I wouldn’t have tried to make myself feel whole.”