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Cutting Ties
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Getting Lucky Why Did She Lie?
KadenSwiping the card over the reader, I took the stairs two at a time and cradled the flowers in my arm to protect them. Once I reached the top, I opened the door with a bang and contemplated hiding from Ember around the corner—all in the name of the game.I was so deep in thought I almost missed the broad pair of shoulders turning so their owner could see who had caused such a racket bursting through the door. Even if he never completed that turn, I would have known it was my dad.My heart smacked angrily against the inside of my chest, my blood running cold in shock and then hot with rage all in the space of the few seconds it took me to comprehend who I was looking at.Ember was wrong. My dad wasn’t on a trip. His car wasn’t here because he’d been driven to the airport from here. It was here because he was. Which begged the question: was she wrong, or had she lied to me?I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I really did, but there were several irrefutable facts I had to
Getting Lucky Talk to Me
EMBERAfter a night of tossing and turning, I arrived at the office on Friday morning wearing sunglasses almost as big as my head and carrying a coffee even bigger. I got the biggest, strongest cup I could find, but I was still running on fumes.Two nights of little sleep in a row made Ember a very dull girl. A very dull girl who still hadn’t heard from her boyfriend, even though it’d been more than twelve hours since he had arrived at the office and hopefully found and talked to his dad on the roof.Twelve hours, forty-seven minutes to be exact. I asked security discreetly this morning at what time he’d entered the parking lot and was now counting. I figured if I still hadn’t heard from him when we hit the fourteen-hour mark, I was calling him.I also checked the logs with security to see if Mr. Marx had been up on the roof last night, and they confirmed he was. Under the circumstances, I was fairly certain Kaden and his dad would have run into each other.The question was whether th
Getting Lucky Upset
EmberThanking my lucky stars for having a best friend like Gracie, I jumped in and told her everything. Once I had spilled my guts and was lying broken and bleeding on the floor, Gracie cleared her throat. “So let me get this straight. You find out your boyfriend’s dad is dying, but your boyfriend doesn’t know, and you don’t tell him. Instead, you orchestrate a meeting for them in a place they both hold sacred when you know he’s not talking to his dad, and now you’re hoping they haven’t killed each other?”“Pretty much.” I sat back in my chair, spinning it around to face the city skyline and wishing phones still had cords so I would have something to wrap around my finger. Or my neck. “When you say it that way, it sounds really bad. I should have just encouraged him to return his dad’s calls, huh?”“Probably,” she said. “But on the other hand, news like that has to be delivered face to face, so they would have had to end up in the same room at some point. Also, maybe Kaden hasn’t cal
Getting Lucky Going Away
KADENSlamming down the lid on my medium-sized suitcase, I wheeled it to my front door while scrolling through flights on my phone. Ryan was right. I needed a vacation. I needed to get away. I thought I wanted to get away with Ember, but right now, I needed to get away from her. From her, from my dad, from New York. I just needed to get away.I barely slept a wink after getting home from the office last night. The conversation with my dad played over and over in my head. Well, calling it a conversation was probably a stretch since I hadn’t let him get a word in edgewise.But I couldn’t stop thinking about everything I said to him, almost wishing I’d let him reply so I would know what he had to say for himself. Although it was highly unlikely he would say anything other than how my outburst proved his point about me. That I was immature and should’ve been able to bury all those feelings I had like a man.Burying it all, my ass. In my opinion, men were allowed to feel things too. We you
Getting Lucky He's Proud
KadenI shrugged. “I don’t know. To be honest, probably not.”Ember lifted her eyes to mine. Up until this very moment, she hadn’t been planning on giving an inch. I saw it as soon as she got out of car, just like I saw it the second she changed her mind. “Just hear me out, please? I promise I can explain.”“You lied to me,” I gritted out, feeling the same stab of betrayal twisting in my heart I felt when I saw my dad on the roof last night. “That’s all I need to know.”“I understand why you feel that way. I really do. But there are things you don’t know. Extenuating circumstances, if you will.” She was as close to begging as the word damn was to being a cuss word, but she was hanging in there. “I had to get you to him. He talked to me about you the other day in his office. You weren’t taking his calls, and he really needs to speak to you.”I laughed humorlessly. “I don’t believe you. If he talked about me, you’d know he only needed to speak to me to remind me of what a disappointment
Getting Lucky Oncologist
EMBERThe look on Kaden’s face as he listened to whatever he was being told on the phone was unlike any I’d ever seen him wear, which was saying something since I’d been carefully studying his reactions since I was a preteen and only just starting to realize that boys didn’t really have cooties.It shifted from anger, annoyance, and suspicion about what else I might have been hiding from him, to shock, dread, and, worst of all, fear. The combination left a blank mask in its place that scared the crap out of me.It was almost like he felt so many things in such a short space of time that he just switched off. And that, more than anything, made me connect the dots.Hank. Something had happened, and that call was to let Kaden know. My heart sputtered, its sporadic beats pounding in my ears. I suddenly felt like someone had a vise grip around my neck, choking me and cutting off my air supply.No matter how hard I tried or how deep I gulped, it felt like my lungs refused to expand. I was f
Getting Lucky It Means More
Ember“What’s his prognosis?” He all but whispered, looking the doctor right in the eyes. If Dr. Christie had noticed the size of the bomb he had just inadvertently dropped on Kaden, he didn’t let on.He ran a hand through his graying hair, but there was nothing casual about the gesture. I didn’t know the man, but I recognized the signs when I saw them. In front of me was a man who was about to deliver really bad news. The lines on his face seemed to deepen right before my eyes, a ragged exhale and a soft shake of his head confirming my fears.“Your dad is on life support,” he said. At least he had the decency and probably the years of experience that allowed his voice to remain steady and to keep his gaze firm on Kaden’s. He wasn’t going to give him any false hope or make any promises he knew he wasn’t going to be able to keep. “At the moment, these machines are the only thing keeping him alive.”This time, I definitely felt him sway. He was holding my hand so tightly it felt like it
Getting Lucky Pull the Plug
KADENMy dad’s hand was ice cold in mine. His chest rose and fell in simulated breaths, his skin a sickly gray under the lights in his room. Machines hummed and beeped, but I was barely aware of the sounds.For twenty-seven years, the man lying on the bed in front of me had been my tormentor. Apart from brief moments in time, a day here and week or two there, he had been brutal.He pushed me every second of every day, and he never took “no” or “I’m tired” as an answer. If I got eighty percent on a test, he’d asked where the other twenty went. If I came in second place in debate, he told me to bother with preparation next time. It was the same with everything else.No matter what I did or how well I did, I just never did quite well enough. I never quite satisfied his expectations. He just kept pushing and pushing, and eventually, I started pushing back. It’d been that way for years now. Since way before I went to Harvard or came to New York to work for him. In many ways, it felt like
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