The Boss (47 page)

"Emma called me." I looked up at her with a
grateful smile.

"You should put her on your emergency
contacts," Emma told him. "If I had been in London- "

"Thank god you were still here." My relief
was so acute, I could cry. Neil was... alive. I had honestly
thought, from the way Emma had looked when I arrived, that he might
have been dying. "What do they think is wrong with you?"

Neil squeezed my hand. He was coming around a
bit, but his speech was halting. "They… don't know. I am most
definitely anemic. The headache had them worried, until they found
out I wasn't having a stroke."

"Okay. Okay, those all sound fixable. I'm
just thankful that you're all right." And that I wasn't carrying a
recently deceased billionaire's heir. But I wasn't going to tell
him that now, or he really would have a stroke.

"I'm going to go get some coffee," Emma said
quietly, excusing herself from the room.

Once she was gone, Neil lifted our entwined
hands to his lips and kissed the backs of my fingers. "I'm so glad
she called you. I've been medicated out of my head since I got
here."

"I just feel bad I didn't get here until now.
You had all these painful things done to you - "

"And you weren't here to get queasy and throw
up while they were happening?" he asked with a wry chuckle. I
remembered the morning he'd cut his hand, and now I couldn't
remember if I'd been sick over the blood, or because I was
pregnant.

I rubbed my hand up and down his arm. I
wasn't sure what I was supposed to do to comfort him. "Was it
awful?"

"Truthfully, it wasn't that bad. They do hand
out painkillers like candy here. But I was thinking, on the ride
home..." He paused, his gaze flicking briefly to my face, then down
again. "I want you to consider Gabriella's offer."

"I couldn't work with them. They're a bunch
of assholes." I tried to laugh, but my stomach was still in knots.
Every time I finished a sentence, I had a moment of panic,
thinking,
Did I just tell him I'm pregnant?

If he knew right now, he would want to give
me money or some other job in his company. I didn't want either.
Besides, the man was already hospitalized, he didn't need more
stress.

"Those assholes are going to build an empire.
You can't miss out on this chance." His quiet intensity set me on
alert. He might have been drugged, but he'd obviously put some
clearheaded thought into this.

"Well..." I began cautiously. "Gabriella told
me I don't get the job if I'm involved with you, so..."

He still couldn't meet my eyes. "Then it
might be for the best if we're not involved with each other."

The pain and disappointment hit me first,
starting as a squeezing ache in my chest and ringing in my ears. I
seriously wondered if it were possible I was having some
pregnancy-related heart condition. And even though I'd heard him, I
still uttered a hoarse, shocked, "What?"

"I don't want to be the man who ruins your
life." His voice was thick with held back emotion. "I love you too
much to let something so important pass you by."

"You're on drugs. Maybe we shouldn't have
this conversation right now," I said, pulling my hand back.

"I'm not that drugged." He made a noise of
disgust. "Well, I am that drugged, but truth be told, I made this
decision before I ever came to the restaurant, before I knew about
Gabriella's stupid proclamation. Being with me while working for
her is only going to complicate things for you."

“Neil, I’m not going to work for Gabriella. I
don’t even want to - “

He cut me off. “Listen to yourself. This is
Tokyo all over again. You have a life changing opportunity in front
of you, but you’re making the easy choice.”

“This is
nothing
like Tokyo,” I
whispered, the vise grip feeling in my chest tightening down hard.
“I was a stupid kid then, making a dumb choice for emotional
reasons.”

He didn’t say anything.

Oh god.
That was how Neil saw me: a
stupid twenty-something who was making a bad, emotionally driven
choice without thinking of the consequences.

He didn’t trust me enough to make up my own
mind.

“You told me that working for Gabriella was
unhealthy,” I reminded him through my painfully tight jaw. “You
were furious at the thought I would throw you over to work for
her.”

“That was when I thought you were going to be
offered a job as an assistant. Assistant creative director is… you
might have worked at
Porteras
for fifteen years without
reaching that position.” His voice broke a little as he continued,
“Your career matters too much to you. I can’t stand by while you
miss this chance.”

I stared at him, willing him to look up, to
see the tears already spilling down my cheeks. "I can't believe
this."

"Sophie, please- "

"I can't believe you're doing this to me
again!" I knew I probably shouldn't raise my voice because of the
other patients, but I couldn't help it. What the fuck was going to
happen now? Did I tell him about the pregnancy? Did I just go on my
merry way and deal with it all on my own? Here he was, basically
telling me to break up with him over a job, and I was incubating a
fetus he helped make. So much for not being in this alone. "What is
wrong with you?"

"Everything is exactly the same as it was six
years ago." He was so calm, so maddeningly calm. "I'm watching you,
about to make a huge mistake, and what can I do besides leave to
prevent you from making it?"

"You've never prevented me from doing a damn
thing. You just don't want to feel responsible for my choices." I
shook my head in disgust. "And you talk about me having a problem
admitting things. You're willing to run away because you don't want
to feel guilty."

"That's not fair!" he snapped. "Look at me,
Sophie. I'm a middle-aged man in a fucking hospital bed. What if
I'd had a heart attack and died? What if I'd had a stroke and been
paralyzed? Would you really want to be tied to me for the rest of
my life? Caring for me while I was sick or dying?"

"Oh for fucks sake, you're not ninety. You're
in your forties!" Had they given him a handful of overreaction
pills along with the painkillers? "What 'rest of your life?’ We're
not married, we're dating."

"And maybe I'm at the point in my life where
that isn't enough anymore. I love you more than I reasonably
should. I've tried, Sophie, I have really tried not to push for too
much, too fast, but that seems to be the path we're on. If it isn't
what you want, then we need to let each other go now, before we
wind up bitter and unhappy!"

I don't know that I'd ever seen Neil so...
angry. And hurt. My god, he was hurt. Because he thought I didn't
want him.

What a fucking idiot.

Even though I was furious with him, even
though I knew I shouldn't want him if he was willing to do this to
me, I did. I knew I should be happy to be rid of him.

And even though I knew it was hopeless, even
though I knew now that we wanted polar opposites from this
relationship, I had to try. "I love you."

Finally, he held my gaze for longer than a
few seconds. His eyes - god, his eyes... I’d never really stood a
chance - were glazed with unshed tears. Maybe it should have made
me feel vindictively better to see that he was miserable, but it
was hard to hate someone lying in a hospital bed. "And I love you.
Don't ever doubt that."

"I don't." I wiped at my cheek with my
fingertips. I didn't doubt that he loved me. Not for a moment. He
loved me enough to let me go, to not ruin my life when we knew we
wanted different things. And that almost made me love him more.
"But you're really an asshole."

I stood up and walked away. I didn't look
back at him.

"Take a few days to think it over," he said,
sounding far more tired than before. I felt so guilty, that we had
argued in the hospital. I was a terrible girlfriend.

"I won't be angry if you decide to take the
job," he continued. "But you said you weren't looking for a
commitment from me. Letting this opportunity pass you by, choosing
me over this job... that's a commitment. You should be honest with
yourself, and with me. Don't pass up this job expecting that it
won't change anything between us. It will."

I turned, wiping my eyes quickly. "Fine. Give
me a few days."

"I'll call you. When all of... this is over."
He gestured to the bed. "I just want you to be happy, Sophie."

"You have no idea what would make me happy,"
I sniffed miserably.

"Neither do you," he pointed out gently. "You
told me that you just got your life, and you weren't ready to share
it with anyone. I don't want to lose you. But I will let you go, if
it's what you need."

When I left the room, Emma was standing
outside the door. She'd heard every word, goddammit.

She tried to say something, then stopped, and
shook her head. "I suppose I might see you... again? I'm not
entirely sure what to say, after all that."

I didn't have the time or the energy to
engage her. "Just make sure he doesn't do anything stupid while
he's in here."

Everything I needed to know was all laid out
in her expression. She thought he'd already done something stupid.
Maybe she could talk some sense into him.

I got a cab home, despite my unemployed
status and dwindling bank account. I just couldn't bring myself to
cry on the subway in front of strangers.

* * * *

Places look
different when you're sad. I stepped into the apartment and hung my
coat up on the same peg I hang it on every night, but it looked
wrong there.

I heard laughter from Holli's room. I
tip-toed to my bedroom. They were having a good time, there was no
reason for them to come running out to console me. I would still be
emotionally shattered in the morning.

I didn't bother to turn on my bedroom light.
I didn't want to see myself in the mirror. As silly as it sounded,
I was afraid I would look pregnant. I knew my tummy was still
mostly flat, and the little curve at the bottom would be there,
fetus or not, so there was no reason to scrutinize my body quite
yet.

Because the metaphorical human heart is a
cruel son of a bitch, when I lay in bed, all I could think about
was that day six years ago.

"First time going to Tokyo?"

"No, but I'll bet it's yours."

A tear slid from my eye and dripped into my
hair.

"So what, are you like, from England or
something?"

"No, this is the accent I use when I try to
pick up women in airports."

Not only had he broken my heart, but he'd
ruined one of my favorite memories. Great.

For a bitter moment, I wished that Neil had
never come to
Porteras
. That he had remained Leif, the
mysterious stranger from my one unbelievable night. I could have
held onto him then, at a safe distance. I could have just kept on
being myself - or whoever I’d thought I was before he’d come back
into my life.

If our flight had never been delayed, if I'd
just gone to NYU right off the bat, I would never have met him. I
wouldn't be in the predicament I was in right now. That filled me
with so much panic, I could barely breathe. One rash decision, and
I had really fucked things up for myself this far down the road?
How could I ever make a serious choice again, knowing that?

And now I had to make a really big
decision.

There was no way I was having this baby. I
knew Neil well enough to know that he would want to be a part of
its life, whether he'd planned to have another child or not. And
while that was admirable, I didn't want to be tied to him like
that. I couldn't imagine trying to get over loving him while
parenting a child together, apart.

And I didn't want a kid. I didn't care that
people said, "it's different when they're yours." The thought of
spending hours on a park bench, watching some grubby toddler play
in a sandbox... my skin crawled at the notion. It would be
different when it was mine? Yeah, it would be real, and I would be
miserable and trapped in a life I’d never wanted. That wasn’t fair
for a child, and I wasn't about to go through what my mother had
gone through when she'd chosen to keep me.

Adoption was... not an option. I didn't want
to be pregnant. I really didn't want to give birth, no thank you
very much. I'd have to explain to everyone I knew that I was having
a baby and giving it up, and they'd all want to weigh in with their
opinions or try to get me to change my mind. Would I have second
thoughts every time a well-meaning stranger touched my belly? Maybe
a stronger person could withstand all of that, but not me.

Then there was the other really big decision.
Did I let Neil go?

He was right. If I turned down this job to be
with him, I was making a commitment. It would be stupid of me to
see it any other way. No one passed up the opportunity of a
lifetime to casually date someone. If I didn’t take the job, I
could end up resenting Neil and destroying everything we had
together, anyway.

But I couldn't work for Gabriella. Not when
she thought she could freely make ridiculous demands over my
personal life.

And yes, fine, I did feel more for Neil than
just your usual casual relationship stuff. Holli was right, I was
never planning to do the happy-family thing... but if I ever
were
to do it, it would be with Neil. I didn't want to break
up with him. I couldn't imagine my life without him. He'd become my
closest friend and the only lover I'd ever actually, well...
loved.

I picked up the phone then remembered the
time. Then I decided I didn't care. It didn't matter if Gabriella
had some amazing place for me in her amazing company where I would
be amazingly successful. She would micromanage my life more than
Neil would. And at least I could reason with him and get him to
back off.