“The reason you should go with my company is because we can do all of it in-house. The second you walk through those doors, you have everything at your disposal. Everyone from content creators to programmers and coders to storyboard leaders to an entire final optimization team are here. My company provides all of it, and we provide it better than any competitor out there,” I said.

“What about overtime? How do you bill overtime? Every video game requires overtime, but some companies gouge more than others.”

“We don’t gouge. I also give my teams creative breaks. They don’t work weekends because they need that time to think, rest, and recuperate. The creative mind is a finicky thing, and the second you overwork it or starve it, it collapses. And so does your project. Money doesn’t fix that issue. Rest does. Relaxation does. That’s why my building also has a spa for everyone in my company to use, free of charge. Massages, quiet rooms, anything they need to creatively get away and decompress before giving you the best product possible.”

“That means it’ll take the most time for us to produce our game with you, Mr. Tucker.”

“But that also means you’ll get the best quality product. All the games we have produced over the past twenty years have two things over every other competitor’s products. One, we have the lowest individual game return rate, so you keep more of your profit as it flows in. And two, we are consistently ranked as the number one company for customer service. That’s out of all the Fortune 500 companies this nation has to offer. We’re the best. So, if a customer is dissatisfied, they’re filtered through the best customer service this nation—no, this globe—has to offer. And they end up happy every single time,” I said.

I’d been sitting with a potentially new client for over two hours. And while they would be very lucrative in the long run for my company, I was getting tired of the back and forth. My company was the best in the business, not simply because we treated our clients to the best, but because we treated our employees to the best as well. I had actually learned how to treat a creative mind from my own son. I had watched his struggles and figured out the best ways to help him decompress and work at his optimal creative level throughout the week, then implemented those tactics into my company as a whole.

I needed this negotiation to be over. I needed them to sign the contract. Because the longer I sat in that restaurant with them, the more I thought about Kylie.

I saw her in so much. I saw her in the faces of the people around me. I heard her voice in the crowds when she wasn’t there. I was worried about her. She had called in sick Monday afternoon and called in sick again today. I didn’t know if she was really sick or simply avoiding me, but I did know she was remoting in to work. And I had no way of checking in on her without pushing her further away from my grasp.

I didn’t want that to happen.

I didn’t enjoy having her out of reach now, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to enjoy it if my actions pushed her away from me altogether. But the longer I sat there and watched my prospective clients whisper among themselves, the more my mind wandered. And the more I worried about her. And the more I thought about her, the more desperate I became to see her.

Shit.

This wasn’t good.

“Mr. Tucker.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“My colleagues and I will need a couple days to think on this contract. Can we take it with us?” they asked.

That was business speak for “we want to look it over with our lawyer and change things to match our due date.” But I wasn’t going to compromise the well-being of my entire staff because they dragged ass on negotiations.

“Of course,” I said. “Take however long you want.”

We all shook hands before I footed the bill. Then I stood there and watched them leave. Doug stood beside me, his hands in his pockets, and I knew exactly what he was about to ask.

“Before you say it, we need drinks,” I said.

“My thoughts exactly,” he said with a sigh.

The two of us moved over to the bar and sat at the corner of it. I leaned back as I swirled the amber liquid around my glass, my mind wandering off again. If Kylie was really sick, she didn’t need to be working. Her job would be there for her when she got back. But if she wasn't sick, I wanted to know why she was avoiding the office. She was keeping up with everything, so I couldn’t call her as an angry boss. If anything, she was making strides to make sure nothing that was happening impeded on her work.

It only showed me the value of having her as a corporate employee.

“Can I ask now?”

I sighed and nodded my head before taking a long pull from my glass.

“What’s going on with you and Kylie?” Doug asked.

“Honestly? I don’t fucking know,” I said.

“What’s got you all tied up? You were hanging on in that meeting by a damn thread.”

“I did it just fine. But I’m not too sure about taking them on as clients any longer.”

“Trust me, we won’t at this point. They’ll push that date some more, we’ll decline, and they’ll go elsewhere and pump out a subpar game. It’s fine. We’re still on top. And we’ve got two more prospective clients to wine and dine next week.”

“Oh goody,” I said flatly.

“So spill on Kylie. What’s going on and why hasn’t she been in the office?”

“I really like her, Doug.”

“I know you do, which is why I’m trying to figure out what you did.”

“Why do you think it’s something I’ve done?” I asked.

“Because you’re a very direct man. It makes you a great businessman but shit at romance.”

“This coming from the man who won’t even take a woman out to a proper dinner.”

Doug just stared at me without a word, and I sighed.

“All I did was ask Kylie how she felt about me. Then I told her I needed an answer by the end of the week so I could stop hanging on her string.”

“Yeah, probably not what you should have done,” he said.

“I really do like her. And I know she’s struggling. But I’ve got better things to do in my life than sit around and wait for a twenty-something-year-old girl to figure out whether she wants me or my son.”

“Is that really what she’s doing? Or is that what you think she’s doing?”

“I don’t know what she’s doing, and this is the frustration with younger women. They don’t open up. They don’t talk. They coop everything up and try to be strong all the damn time because they think that’s what being an adult is all about.”

“Have you asked her how she’s doing?” he asked.

“Of course I have.”

“Without the context of you.”

“What?”

“Have you asked her how she’s doing without bringing yourself into the mix?” he asked.

I took another sip of my drink as a grin slid across Doug’s cheeks.

“I hate to admit it, but Adam is your son—which means he has picked up some of your traits.”

“I’m nothing like Adam. That boy treated that woman with so much disrespect.”

“It comes in different forms. They yelled and fought. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t coming at this with your own selfish motives. You’re pinning this woman to a wall, trying to force an answer from her she doesn’t have. And instead of asking her what she’s thinking and reassuring her that what she tells you has no bearing whatsoever on the two of you—or even her job—you give her a damn ultimatum. A deadline, for emotions.”

“I’m not playing her games, Doug.”

“I’m not telling you to. But I am telling you to turn off the business mind and tap into the protector mind for a second. You know, the family-man mind. The good-man mind. The one that isn’t so preoccupied with whether a woman is about to screw you over and is a little more in tune with the emotions of the people around him.”

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” I said flatly.

“You’re not,” Doug said. “And neither am I. You want an answer she can’t give you because she’s hurting.”

“Why? What’s the point in grieving over a relationship that was dead in the water for months?”

“Why did you grieve the loss of Adam’s mother even though that had been dead in the water from the start?”

I clenched my jaw and polished off my drink before I signaled for another.

“Kylie is wrestling with a lot of things right now, and since you’re not doing anything but giving her an idiotic ultimatum, she no longer feels she has someone she can talk to. Remember all of that opening up she did with you when she and Adam were spiraling?”

“I remember it fondly.”

“All you have to do is be that open and willing to receive what she has to say in regard to you. Because it might not make sense at the time, and it might take her a few months to sift through it.”

“I don’t have a few months,” I said.

“You’ve had forty-nine years. You go to the gym twice a day. You've got plenty of months. What you don’t have is patience. And for a good reason.”

“Because I’m getting too old for this shit?”

“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Because you watched the slow demise of her in a relationship that was unhealthy for her, and you want to fix it. You want to fix her. You want to make her smile. You want to make her happy. And she isn’t allowing you that because she’s trying to plant her feet after her breakup. How long did it take you to plant yourself after your divorce?”

“Not the same. I was married for an obscene number of years.”

“And she dated your son for an obscene number of years. It’s Adam we’re talking about. He’s not easy on a weekly basis,” he said.

“I was decimated after my divorce,” I said.

“And she’s decimated right now. So, what was the number one thing anyone gave you during that time?”

I looked over at him as a smug grin crossed his cheeks.

“Exactly,” he said. “Space. Time to think. Time to process. And then? You came out of the woodworks and spoke your own truth. And you did it with me because I gave you all those things. Had I not, it would’ve never happened. This isn’t a game, Ryan. This is Kylie’s life. And right now? Hers is spiraling out of control and she feels alone.”

“She isn’t alone. She has me.”

“And the fact that she’s calling out of work but still working from home should tell you she doesn't believe that. Not anymore,” he said.

His words were sobering, humbling, and frightening. Because he was right at every single turn. I didn't want him to be right. I didn't want him to know Kylie and me this thoroughly. And even though his advice should’ve made me feel better, it only made me feel worse. The answers I now had showed me that I’d become part of the problem, part of the reason she was struggling as much as she was.

And if I didn’t change my tune, she’d put me in the same column as Adam and I’d lose her forever.

That was something I wasn’t going to tolerate.