Snowflakes in Seattle

Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

WYATT

T he daydreams started the day Olive left.

Scratch that: the moment she left.

Driving away, I saw myself turning around. Sprinting through crowds. Hauling her over my shoulder caveman style and carrying her out to my truck.

Or, you know, just telling her how I felt about her. How she’d brightened my holidays and my whole damn life. How she danced through my mind with her bad rhythm and good heart.

Olive was driven and sexy and bossy and brave. Everything I’d wanted and thought I’d never have. But telling Olive that I loved her would have required words , and all parts of speech seemed to have abandoned me.

Two weeks after she left, I could still only communicate when forced.

I missed her. Her absence would sneak up on me, like a papercut I’d forgotten about until I moved my finger again. It stung. Sometimes it ached.

With Olive, there had been video games that led to sex. There’d been fireworks and snowball fights. She liked my crumbling houseboat and my cooking. She liked me .

With her, there had been magic. Now, only silence. My only company was a jumbled mess of daydreams of me ditching my job and my home for a woman I’d spent eight days with.

She’d scrambled my mind like a Boggle game.

A knock on the open office door drew my attention away from the computer screen. Would have been dumb to actually hit “search” on jobs in Phoenix, anyway.

My dad sauntered in, moving with too much pep for a Monday morning. We almost matched in our chinos and blue-checked shirts, though my pants today were navy and his tan. He sat across from me, his brown eyes sweeping my cluttered desk. The surface matched my thoughts. His smile didn’t falter, despite the mess.

I raised my brows in question.

“May 31st,” he announced.

I shrugged. Not a birthday or anniversary, as far as I could recall.

His smile gentled. “The day of my retirement,” he clarified. “The day you take over this company.”

All the blood in my body turned to ice. Somehow, though, I started to sweat. He looked so proud . So hopeful.

My father had turned Vertex into a multimillion-dollar construction company with a stellar portfolio and even better reputation. He had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to local charities. He had seeded careers for dozens of people, built homes, workspaces, and community treasures all over Seattle.

He wanted me to do the same. Do more.

But I was not my father. Vertex was his dream. I liked delivering other people’s dreams. Doing was what I loved most about construction.

“Wyatt?”

His forehead frown let me know he’d been trying to get my attention.

“Yeah?” I croaked out.

“I asked if taking over is still what you wanted.”

A hurricane blew through my mind, a whirlwind of images and emotions. My brain locked onto Tate and his Rosy Row charity. I had put those magenta tiny homes together with my hands. I had watched people move into them. Saw their lives begin to change. It was a level of pride, of connection, I hadn’t felt before, even within my own company.

Damn, this was my chance. My out.

I did not want to run this company. I wanted to build. Do something different. And I wanted Olive.

But I had no plan. No other offers. Only wishes and fragments. It wasn’t like Olive had said she wanted a relationship. Tate had always hinted that he’d like more of my time, but he’d never asked me to leave my company.

And my dad. How ungrateful would it be to say no? How could I disappoint the loving man who’d given me a good job and a great life?

I met his expectant gaze. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m in.”

I guess I did have dreams. As soon as the words passed my lips, I felt every one of them crushed to dust inside my chest.

I was eight pounds lighter when I trudged into the Vertex office, an old, converted brick warehouse in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, three weeks later. Stress. I couldn’t eat. Even beer tasted gross.

Not even my favorite games helped. I couldn’t play for more than a few minutes at a time. Work obviously wasn’t much of a distraction.

If I’d thought Olive had pulled a Boggle on my mind, accepting a role I didn’t want was like chucking that Boggle ball into a tornado.

Olive. Her presence would make this storm go away; I just knew it.

We’d texted a few times, but it wasn’t the same. She didn’t call me “old man.” I couldn’t hear her singing off-key or see her picking popcorn out of her boobs. I couldn’t feel her.

I just want to feel her again.

“You look like shit.” Holly flopped into the chair across from my desk, apparently having followed me into my office. “You’ve looked like shit for weeks. New game you suck at? Gambling addiction? Drugs?”

I shook my head, taking more time than necessary to hang up my coat and laptop bag.

“Bruh, I’m gonna require something more than head movements. I’m your friend, Wyatt. You’ll get no judgment here. I’m just worried about you.” She brandished her phone, waving it my way. “Anita’s worried, too. Look at this email she sent me.”

I moved closer. The subject line of Anita’s email read, “WTF is wrong with Wyatt?”

“You don’t want to know what her guesses included.”

Dropping into my task chair, I scrubbed my hands over my face.

“The keto diet or a broken heart,” she supplied.

My hands stilled. Sherlock Anita.

“And the fact that you don’t want to run this company.”

I let my hands fall away from my face. “Anita said that?”

Holly shook her head. “That’s my real guess. Skinny and sullen don’t suit you. Neither does running Vertex. That’s never been you. Why did you agree to take over?”

The guilt, the disappointment, sat like a wrecking ball on my chest.

“You need to use your voice. This isn’t asking Tessa out or telling Anita to quit buying you and your dad matching work shirts. This is your life, Wy.”

“I know.” My tone was harsher than intended, unused and angry. “I know .”

Holly just stared at me. She was right. I did not see judgment on her face, only concern.

“I screwed up.”

“Duh,” she replied.

“I’m afraid I can’t fix it,” I continued.

The announcements had been made internally. A press release had gone out to the public. I’d gotten a congratulatory email from Ross Blake, Olive’s dad, and from Tate, which meant a company newsletter had gone out, too.

In less than three months, I would become president of Vertex. The train had left the station. And I was secretly hoping to meet a landslide.

“You can fix it,” Holly argued. “And you know how.”

Sure, I could dig myself out of this hole, using my voice, as she had said, but not without making a big mess.

But my mind was a mess. So was my body. My whole life had been knocked off-kilter by a few words unspoken.

Twice.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Holly warned. Her expression looked unusually grave. “It costs too much.”

She was right about that, too.

But I could lose my relationship with my dad. All of my credibility in the industry.

“This hole I’ve dug is deep,” I replied, wallowing in the what-ifs.

“It’ll only get deeper. Think of it this way: How well can you run this company if your heart isn’t in it? How much will you disappoint your dad if you do a shit job with his legacy? Instead of affecting one relationship, you’ll impact hundreds. Think about what will happen if you don’t say anything.”

My stomach turned on itself. There were no easy choices here.

But one of those scenarios was worse than the other. And that same scenario might have epic happiness on the other side.

I sighed. “You’re right. I have to tell him.”

“You do,” Holly agreed. “I bet the hole isn’t as deep as you think it is. It’s only been two weeks since he made the announcement. You can fix this. Look at what this lie has already done to you.”

I knew what she meant. My cheeks were hollow, the dark circles under my eyes permanent. I did look like shit, a reflection of the storm inside.

“He’s a good man. So are you. You’ll find a way through.”

I raised my eyes to my friend. I hoped she was right, because I had a lot to lose. “Thank you, Holly.”

“Anytime, chicken shit. Do this. For you.”

A strange mix of emotions filled me as she left my office. For the first time in weeks, hope was among them.

Somehow, I made it through my work day. Gathering every ounce of courage, I packed up my stuff and headed toward my dad’s office, smiling vaguely at Tessa as I passed by her desk.

“Wyatt?”

My name on her lips could barely be classified as a whisper.

I was close enough to my dad’s office now to see that his lights were off. He was gone for the day. Now I’d have to wait until tomorrow, or track him down at home.

Fighting disappointment, I turned to face Tessa. “Yeah?”

Red crept up her neck and cheeks. For once, her attention, her proximity, had no effect on me. The sweet receptionist had been fully supplanted by a beautiful, brazen piece of my past.

Her gaze was focused on the dish of conversation hearts she’d set out on her counter for Valentine’s Day, which was just a week away.

“Are you…do you…um, do you…dinner?”

Three full seconds went by until I grasped her meaning. Tessa was asking me out.

Months we’d been dancing around each other, blushing and stumbling. It should have been me asking, but I’d been chicken, like I’d always been chicken, and now poor Tessa would have to pay the price. Because despite the distance and the lack of anything present or future tense, there was only one woman for me.

The maelstrom in my mind settled a bit. This brave woman had put herself out there. I needed to do the same. I could do the same. I needed to be more like the women around me.

“Man, I appreciate you, Tessa.” I grasped the counter, the words bursting forth like a broken dam. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for forever. I should have, but Holly calls me ‘chicken shit’ for a reason, ya know? Anyway, you’re so lovely and I enjoy your company, but if we get dinner it’ll have to be as friends because I’m madly in love with a girl named Olive.”

Well. Hopefully I’d be more coherent when talking with my dad later.

Tessa just blinked at me. “Okay. Sure. Cool.”

I didn’t know which part of my verbal diarrhea she was responding to.

“I just saw an email about a woman named Olive.”

Now it was my turn to blink. “Huh?”

“I’m monitoring Anita’s emails while she’s out at that career fair. One came through about an event honoring someone named Olive. But it’s in Arizona.”

Something fate-like fluttered in my stomach. “Can I see?”

“Of course.”

Tessa tipped her head toward her computer monitor. Her cheeks were losing their brilliant color, I noticed. My confession must have removed me as a threat—or a temptation.

I rounded the counter to join her behind the monitor. She hit a few buttons and brought the email to full-screen. I read quickly. Feeling. Wishing. A “Thirty Under Thirty” luncheon honoring Phoenix-area business leaders, with Olive Blake as the recipient of the Community Impact Award.

“Look at my girl,” I murmured. “Doing the damn thing.”

“You should go.”

Again, Tessa’s words took time to sink in. Bursting with pride and lust, I’d been busy staring at a hot-as-hell pic of my dream girl, daydreaming about getting her out of that little pantsuit.

“Huh?” I said again.

“You should definitely attend an event honoring your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She doesn’t even know how I feel about her,” I replied.

Tessa pivoted her chair toward me. When I tore my eyes from the screen, I noticed she was grinning.

“Even better,” she said. “Did you see the date?”

Uh, no. I didn’t see anything other than a woman all fucking mine and too damn far away.

“Valentine’s Day. How romantic would that be?”

Her smile grew. Tessa had dimples up high in her cheeks when she really smiled. I had never seen them before, despite our bumbling attempts at flirting. Without a doubt, I was not for her. She needed someone who made her smile for real.

The butterflies in my belly had formed an army and were on the offensive. “God, can I do this?”

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until Tessa answered.

“You can. You should. I don’t think you understand how little effort people put into romance anymore. This is life-changing stuff, Wyatt. Olive will love it.”

I stared at her. A life change was just what I needed. “I hope you find someone who’ll do the same for you, Tessa.”

She shrugged. “One thing at a time. I’ve got a copy of your company card. Want a ticket to this lunch?”

I nodded.

Like shadows, ideas had begun flitting between the corners of my mind. I saw lake days and desert nights. Miles of magenta tiny homes. Lots of sturdy Christmas ribbons.

A dream world—a real world—made just for me and Olive “Holy Fuck” Blake.