Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
“Is Deacon considered nice?”
I felt a tightness in my chest when I had to think about him. “Honestly, he’s probably my favorite client.”
“Really?” he asked, completely dumbfounded by the statement. “My brother? Deacon Hamilton? Super nerd?”
“He’s not a nerd…” He was nothing of the sort. Yes, he was brilliant, a genius, but he wasn’t some stereotypical nerd.
“I think anyone who graduates from medical school before they’re twenty is a nerd.”
“Well…he doesn’t act like one.”
“He’s really your favorite? You don’t have any celebrities or musicians?”
“I have a lot of them, actually.”
“Ooh, like who?”
I kept my mouth shut. “I can’t say.”
He nodded slowly. “I get it. Privacy.”
“But yes, I represent people who are household names.”
“Why is he your favorite?”
I shrugged. “He’s just…interesting.”
“Interesting?” he asked blankly.
“He’s definitely the most brilliant client I’ve ever had. When we first met, he was a bit difficult, but once I got to know him better, I started to understand him. He’s just a gifted person who doesn’t operate the same way everyone else does. But he loves his son…so deeply I could never explain it into words. And he’s passionate about his work because of his contribution to humankind, not money. That makes him drastically different from my other clients, who care about money and fame above all else. Deacon is indifferent to those sorts of things.”
He swirled his wine as he studied me.
“What was it like to grow up with someone like that?”
“Well…” He rubbed his chin as he considered the question. “When he was twelve, he built solar panels and placed them on the roof and managed to power our house completely with it.”
Both of my eyebrows shot up. “When he was twelve?”
He nodded. “My parents weren’t too happy about it, but they let him do whatever he wanted.”
“It sounds like he saved them some money.”
“Yeah, but all the parts cost a lot.”
“Ooh…that makes sense.”
“But he did raise half the funds on his own, working on cars, repairing people’s broken machinery, stuff like that.”
That didn’t surprise me at all.
“He didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Every time he would skip a grade, he would be younger than the rest of the kids, so naturally, they bullied him. But he never responded to the taunts because he argued he would be there for such a short period of time, it wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Did he ever have any girlfriends?”
“No. Just admirers.”
“Being that smart must have made him a huge babe magnet when he became an adult.”
He shrugged. “He doesn’t really tell me stuff like that.”
I guess that didn’t surprise me.
“But enough about Deacon, the man who still casts a shadow over me everywhere I go… What about you?”
I hadn’t meant to talk about his brother so much. He was the one common person between us, and he was an easy subject to discuss. “I don’t have much of a story, honestly. I’m a workaholic who eats a lot of frozen burritos. My apartment is a pigsty right now because I haven’t cleaned it in months…literally. I have some friends I try to see when I have time, and I love everyone who works with me in the office. But other than that, I’m pretty simple.”
“So, it’s been a long time since your last long-term relationship?”
I didn’t count Jake, because that’d been a secret since our first kiss. But the relationship before that…I remembered clearly. “A year.”
“Were you guys living together?”
“Yes.”
“When I was in LA, I saw a few women but nothing really serious, except this one woman. But just when things started to go somewhere, she got transferred for her job. We tried long-distance for a while, but that went to shit…because it always goes to shit.”
“Yeah…”
He stared at me like he expected me to elaborate further.
It was hard for me to open up to people because I was used to taking care of everyone else, not unburdening myself. “Actually, I was married…”
He stilled as if he hadn’t expected me to say that.
“We were married for a few years, but he got fed up with my long hours…met someone else…and then that was it.” I relayed the story without emotion, as if we were talking about something insignificant, but it had really hurt me at the time. It still hurt me…because I knew I would never have a real relationship as long as I continued this job.
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It was my fault. I worked too much.”
He stared at his glass for a few seconds as if he didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sure it’ll work out when it’s meant to work out. And maybe that was just the wrong time.”
“Yeah…maybe.”
Fifteen
Deacon
When I got home, Natalie was still there.
Why the fuck was she still there?
I shut the door behind me and saw her on the couch, wearing one of my shirts with her feet on the couch. I stared at her blankly, unsure how to process what I was looking at. I didn’t kick a woman out the second I woke up because that felt overbearing and rude, but her lingering in my apartment was much ruder.