CHAPTER 26

EMERY

Since Estelle had damage control to do at the shop, I’d offered to pick Peter up from the hospital. Knowing how cantankerous he could be, I told Christine I didn’t mind retrieving him from his cage.

“He’s actually been quite docile since coming out of surgery,” she said as she led me to the back of the clinic.

“Docile? Really?” I asked and she nodded.

“Kinda sweet too.”

Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by a pleasant cat. Not just pleasant, but downright friendly. He rubbed his head against the metal bars and meowed.

Shocked, I glanced around, making sure I didn’t have the wrong animal. I opened the cage and ran my hand down his back. Once. Twice. Three times, ending at his tail. Still a happy cat.

“We’ll see how you feel about me after this.” I picked him up, being careful of his surgical site.

He purred. Actually purred.

“What, no witty comeback? No ‘fuck you, Emery?’”

He answered with a pathetic meow.

“Yeah. I guess almost getting your dick chopped off can change a guy. Tough luck, buddy.”

The reconstructive penis surgery the doctor had mentioned as a last resort was cringe-worthy for any male, no matter the species. But given the vast improvement in Peter, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t come to that. His new owner would just need to be diligent about keeping him on the right diet.

I gently tied the plastic cone around Peter’s neck, then placed him in his carrier.

After getting his go-home instructions, medications, and a new prescription food, I left with a brand-new cat. I brought him back to Estelle’s, using the key she gave me to get in.

He got odd looks from Alice and Bobby because of the cone, but after several minutes of sniffing, they finally accepted him as family.

I looked at the time on my phone. Almost 10 a.m. I needed to get moving because I had an appointment with my lawyer. I hadn’t mentioned it to Estelle since the day of the ‘dildo debacle’, but I had plans to follow through on getting her contract checked out.

I just hoped I’d have good news for her.

“You can’t air it.” I dropped the contract onto the dining table in Steve’s hotel room, unable to keep the smug grin off my face.

“Excuse me?” he sneered.

“The dildo footage,” I clarified, victoriously pointing at the papers. “Page five. Estelle is a business owner and you can’t air anything that could be seen as defamation of character that might impact her financially.”

Satisfaction flowed through me when he sputtered, “You took it to a lawyer?”

“You bet your ass I did. If you put that on the show, she would have every right to sue us. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Whose side are you on here?”

“The right one. We’re here to make people’s lives better, not drag them through the mud.”

He let out a humorless laugh. “We’re here to make good television. To get good ratings. To get people to sit their asses on the couch and watch the fucking show. That is the only purpose.”

I shook my head at his callous claim, but he wasn’t done yet.

“Oh, you thought it was about making a difference?” he went on. “The sooner you get your head out of the clouds, the better.” Taking one more look at the contract, he tossed it down on the table. “Fine. I won’t air the footage. Happy now?”

Not exactly, but Estelle would be—that was the most important thing. “Yes.”

“Good. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, could you get one last interview with Estelle today?” He looked at his Rolex. “I’ve got a flight to catch at five.”

“Last interview?” I asked, confused. “What flight?”

“Rhonda didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Today is the last day of filming here. Our next shoot starts on Tuesday. This one’s gonna be a doozy. A divorced couple is going through a nasty custody battle over their three cats.”

He couldn’t be serious.

“Peter just got out of the hospital today.” Now it was my turn to sputter. “He needs time to heal and we haven’t found him a home yet.”

“So?”

“So we haven’t finished the job.”

Seeming bored, he waved a hand. “We’ll do a wrap-up segment where we say Peter found a home and all is well.”

Anger bubbled up. “You mean we lie.”

He sighed. “Nothing of significance has been filmed in days. We’ve just been sitting around, waiting for him to find a home. We can’t fix them all, okay? We tried. But now we have a new shoot. Deadlines and all that.”

“No.”

“No? No what?”

“No, I’m not leaving until we’re done. I can’t let Estelle down.”

Steve set his coffee mug down a little harder than necessary and liquid splashed onto the table. “You stay behind, and you’re breeching the contract. You’re really going to throw this all away for some fling? Come on, Emery. Be smart about this.”

“It’s not like that.”

How could I explain that Estelle wasn’t just some fling? That it wasn’t just about fucking a hot client? That she’d come to mean so much to me in such a short amount of time?

Most people wouldn’t understand. And Steve, of all people, certainly wouldn’t be able to grasp such a concept of falling in love so quickly. My dad used to talk about love at first sight all the time, but as I got older, I thought he was just romanticizing the whirlwind romance he’d had with my mom.

Love that easy couldn’t exist.

But it did for me.

I had no idea how Estelle felt. Sometimes she looked at me like I hung the moon, but it was safe to say after I failed and got her evicted, she might not think so highly of me anymore.

Oblivious to how close I was to knocking his lights out, Steve continued, “Listen, I don’t care who you bang, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the show. In four days, we begin filming the next episode. Which means I need you back in Chicago in two. Everyone else is packing up tomorrow. You had your fun and now it’s time to move on.”

“Fuck you,” I spat the words, slamming my hand on the table. “Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?”

“Aha!” Grinning, he leaned back in his chair. “There’s the attitude you need to have. Why do you always have to be so fucking polite? That good ole boy act you’ve got going on? It’s great for the show. But behind the scenes, you need to have a little more grit.”

Grit? Being a spineless prick was what he called grit?

I didn’t have anything left to say, so I walked out of the room before I did something I’d regret.

For a long time, constantly butting heads with Steve had been tiresome and annoying. But I always wanted to believe that deep down, there was a good person under the suits and the rude remarks. That maybe he was just jaded by the business or life in general.

But I was wrong. He was just a selfish, narcissistic asshole.

There were a lot of things I could look past, but leaving Estelle high and dry wasn’t one of them.

Maybe I should’ve had my lawyer look into my contract too. Because right then, I wanted to say to hell with it and quit.

Legally, I was locked in with the network until next summer, and the execs had already mentioned renewing it for another three years. I had always assumed I’d stay on with the show, but maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have a plan. And I felt completely lost.

I climbed into the van, but I didn’t start it up.

Resting my head in my hands, I thought about the conundrum I’d gotten myself into. It was partly my fault we hadn’t found homes for all the cats. I’d purposely delayed the process for my own selfish reasons.

And now Estelle might get kicked out of her apartment.

I couldn’t let that happen. I’d made her a promise and I intended to keep it.

There was only one solution. Only one way to make things right.

I was going to have to adopt Peter. Not that I was complaining. Sure, we’d had our conflicts, but he seemed pretty loveable now that he felt better.

A text from Estelle let me know she was still at the shop, and this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have on the phone or in public. So, I decided to kill some time at Windsor Lakes.

When I got there, the receptionist told me my dad was resting in his room and I was surprised to find him awake and alert.

Looking up from the encyclopedia—Edition K—he smiled. I smiled back. One of my favorite quirks about my dad was his unusual reading habits. If you asked me, encyclopedias and the dictionary weren’t entertainment, but Dad used to tell me he always learned something new, and that was exciting to him.

“Hi,” he said, his face lighting up with clear recognition in his eyes.

Good day.

“Hey, Pops.” I pulled the chair closer to the bed.

The ballcap he almost always wore was on the bedside table. His salt and pepper hair had been trimmed recently, reminding me of how well he was taken care of.

Closing the book, he set it down next to his hat. “I’m feeling like myself today. They started me on a new medication and I’ve been told it’s working well.”

I let out a relieved sigh. “That’s great.”

“How are things going with your girlfriend?” He didn’t waste any time getting right to the good stuff.

“Ah…” I let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I don’t know if she’ll be my girlfriend for much longer.”

The look of tragedy on my dad’s face might’ve been comical if I wasn’t so damn upset. “Well, why the hell not?”

“I’m not sure it was ever going to work out,” I told him, trying to hide my sadness but failing. “She’s not really into traveling and my job doesn’t allow me to stay in one place for long. This will probably be my last visit for a while. My time here is getting cut short.”

His frown deepened. “You work too hard.”

“It’s necessary,” I replied cryptically.

He speared me with his ‘dad look’—the one I remembered from when I was a kid.

“You think I don’t know what you’ve sacrificed for me? I don’t always know what’s going on, but I know you.” He pointed to his chest. “In here. I know you, Emery. All those years you should’ve been in college. You were working so I could be here.”

I wasn’t about to apologize. “Best decision I ever made.”

“It’s not your responsibility to take care of me.”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “It’s an honor. You did a great job raising me, and I’m returning the favor.”

“When you were a kid, no one could stop you from doing anything you wanted to do. Once your mind was made up, that was it,” he said, smiling. “Always admired that about you. But it made me worry, too.”

“Why?” My eyebrows furrowed.

“Don’t let your determination be your downfall. Don’t let it cloud your judgement and blind you from the end goal. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing, that we forget why we’re doing it in the first place.”

“And what’s the end goal?” I asked, feeling desperate for the wisdom he once possessed all the time.

Shrugging his shoulders like it was the easiest answer in the world, he said, “Happiness.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sometimes it is.” A small smile played on his lips before a frown took over. “Some days it feels so hopeless for me—knowing I’m losing my mind, but there’s nothing I can do about it. But you know what the best part of all this is? I get the opportunity to see what my kids are really made of. And you?” His eyes got misty. “You’re my greatest something.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I whispered, overwhelmed by emotion. I needed to change the subject before I lost it. “How about you tell me a story.”

He smiled. “Which one?”

“Anything.”

Glancing down at his hands, he said, “You were six pounds and eleven ounces. Tiny little thing. I could hold your entire body with these hands.”

Following his line of sight, I looked at the width of his spread-out fingers, the wrinkles and age spots on his weathered skin, the place where he once cradled my body.

Suddenly, I felt like crying and laughing all at once. I couldn’t remember the last time he was able to tell me something specific about my life. About our life.

“But this was where you wanted to be,” he continued, holding his palms up. “Right here, in my hands. Boy, you gave your mother hell when I had to leave the hospital. Nikki was home sick with strep throat, so your mom had to brave it alone. Said you screamed bloody murder for the whole eight hours I was gone. I wish you could’ve seen how offended she was when you quieted down as soon as you were in my arms.”

Then I really did cry. Just let the tears fall down my face because there was no stopping it.

We both chuckled as I wiped the wetness off my cheeks.

“My boy.” He lovingly patted my hand.

“It’s so good to see you, Pops.”

“You too, Son.”

If I’d ever doubted my decision to pay out the ass for his topnotch care, any uncertainty I might’ve had vanished. I truly believed the reason he was still alive was because of Windsor Lakes.

And that meant one thing.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t quit the show. Not now and maybe not even next summer. If I did, the medical bills would drain my college fund again in just a few short years.

I’d come full-circle to where I was two years ago—forced to choose between my dad’s health and my dream. There was no contest between the two.

Only this time, there was more at stake—my happiness.