Page 23 of Inevitable

“Okay, boss.” He chuckled.

“You’re still the boss,” I said. “Just think of me as your running buddy.”

“Running buddy?” he asked, and I nearly laughed at his confused expression.

“You still make all the decisions. You’re the one actually doing the training and the running.” I smiled. “But I’m here to help you achieve your goals. I’ll be cheering you on, by your side, as you run the race of life.”

“I like that,” he said. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to talk to someone about this. It can be lonely at the top.”

I latched on to that, wondering if he meant that he was lonely in business or in life. Perhaps both? While I didn’t want him to be lonely, I hated the idea of him with someone else. I could remember the day he’d announced that he was engaged to Rachel. In that moment, I’d felt my heart shatter and break. Which was ridiculous. I’d been seventeen. I’d known nothing about the world, about love.

I still didn’t know why they’d broken up. All my dad had told me was that they’d called off the wedding after his birthday trip to Monaco.

“Do you want to talk about success for a minute, then come back to the time audit?”

“Sure.” He grabbed a pair of glasses from his desk and slid them on as he reviewed a piece of paper. They rested on the bridge of his nose, and every thought, every question I’d been poised to ask fled my brain.

I’d thought he couldn’t get sexier. But, apparently, I’d been wrong. The dark frames highlighted his dark lashes, making his blue eyes appear even more striking. I attempted to compose myself, though my jagged breath said otherwise. Glasses, beard, suit—I was a goner.

“Did you walk through the ideal life exercise?” I asked, shifting in my chair as if that would ease the ache building.

He nodded, removing his glasses before setting them aside with a sigh. “Though I struggled with it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I mean, what more can I possibly achieve? I have it all. Financial freedom. The ability to do whatever I want. A fabulous house, expensive cars, a successful company.”

“Mm-hmm.” I watched him, reading his body as he spoke. He seemed to shrink into himself with every word. “Do you actually want those things?”

“Of course,” he answered quickly, almost instinctively.

“Why?” I asked, wanting to dig deeper into his motivations. I crossed my legs and felt his eyes track the movement.

“Isn’t that what you want? What everybody wants?”

“This isn’t about me,” I said, sensing resistance. An attempt to deflect. “This is about you and what you want. Do you know what that is?”

When he didn’t answer, I decided to take a different tack. “Have you ever felt torn between what you think you should want and your true desires?”

“I-I…” He hesitated, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him at a loss for words. “Yes.” He swallowed hard, my eyes tracking the movement of his Adam’s apple as it bobbed.

“I can help you audit your time and make all the positive changes in the world. But unless you get to the heart of why you’re doing it all, unless you figure out your ‘why,’ none of it will make a lasting impact.” It was easy to forget my nerves when passion took the wheel.

“What if what I want is something I can’t have?” His fervor was unnerving, and it made my skin tingle with awareness.

Was he talking about… I shook my head. Surely he couldn’t mean me.

“Then you decide whether you can live without it,” I said.

“And if I can’t?” The rasp in his voice made my temperature rise a million degrees. This wasn’t all in my head? Right?

I leaned forward. “Then you find a way. You do whatever it takes to make it yours.”

I wasn’t sure I could handle his intensity or this conversation, so I decided to switch gears to a safer topic. “Let’s get back to your time audit for a minute. What is JO?”

He smirked. “It’s the category you wouldn’t let me put as ‘shower’ or ‘sleep.’”

It took me a minute, and then it dawned on me. It was Jonathan’s “me time.” Definitely not a safer topic. Judging from the way he shifted in his chair, we were veering into dangerous territory. But I didn’t want to back down.