Within These Walls (Within These Walls #1)(81)

I jumped over the desk, and my fist went flying, punching him hard across the cheekbone. He went flying. “You have no f**king clue what I’ve been through, what I gave up to be here!” I roared, pinning him down to the floor.

His lip was bleeding, and his eyes were fuming with hostility. “Seems we have a lot to learn about each other then,” he hissed.

I pushed away from him, and I paced around the room. “Just get the hell out of my office—and leave me alone.”

Wiping the blood from his lip with his collar, he got up and walked to the door and stopped. “You know, if this is going to work, we’re going to have to work together. You might be smart, Jude, but you don’t know shit about the public side of this company. As far as anyone knows, you’ve been in a cave for the past three years, and they’re all dying to know why. We’ve got to give them something.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” I sneered.

And I’d be damned if he didn’t.

I woke up the next morning to see my face plastered all over national news.

“Next up, Jude Cavanaugh’s tortured past. We have an inside look at how losing his fiancée turned this young man into a recluse.”

“You’ve got to be f**king kidding me,” I muttered, throwing the remote across the room.

I got out of bed and maneuvered around the untouched boxes toward the kitchen. Since arriving in New York weeks ago, I’d been staying in this furnished upscale apartment that Roman had found for me, and I still hadn’t unpacked a single box.

Moving in would make it too real, too permanent, and I was having difficulties coming to grips with my new reality. It was the reason I counted down the minutes each day until Marcus called to check in, and it was the reason I still hadn’t visited my parents after being home for three weeks.

Dressed in loose-fitting pajama bottoms, I made my way into the sleek, modern kitchen, shaking my head at the size of it. Why Roman had thought I needed all this was beyond me. He always had been over the top. His own apartment was twice this size and three floors up. We were practically roommates.

I started a cup of coffee and walked briskly over to the door where the weekend paper had been delivered. For three years, I’d lived virtually off the grid, and now, I couldn’t go five minutes without turning on the news or picking up the newspaper.

I made a quick breakfast, grabbed my coffee and paper, and sat down at the table, prepared to read all about me and whatever clever story my brother had managed to whip up overnight. Flipping through, my fingers tabbed the crisp pages, and I had the briefest flash of Lailah lying in her hospital bed, reading one of her worn paperbacks, her fingers thumbing the frayed edges. She loved books, real books, just like I loved real newspapers. Something about the smell and feel of the words right in front of you was irreplaceable.

Like her.

My chest ached from that one tiny memory, and I no longer cared about what the paper said. Roman could do what he wanted—paint me as the poor, grieving broken man—but it wouldn’t change anything.

I was here, and she wasn’t.

I might have been that broken man after Megan had died, but Lailah had saved me, and now, I was saving her—by being here.

Food forgotten, I cleaned off my plate and walked up to a lone box standing in the corner of the vast living room. Taking a deep breath, I cut it open with a knife and slowly began the process of coming to terms with my new reality.

Breaking down the last of the boxes, I folded and hung the few clothes I had side by side, next to the closetful of suits my brother had had waiting for me upon my arrival. How he’d gotten my measurements I’d never know.

Seeing my old clothes stacked up next to my new ones was odd. My ratty old T-shirts, worn and faded with years of use, were next to priceless suits from top-of-the-line designers. As I stood there in my towel, readying myself for my first visit to my parents’ house in over three years, it was like looking at two halves of myself—the old and the new.

But which was old? And which was new?

My entire life, I had been raised for one thing—the family business.

You are this company’s future, my father would tell me as I traipsed behind him as a young boy.

It had been what I wanted, what I was good at, until the pressure got to be more than I could handle.

My three years in the hospital had taught me that I could be more than what I had simply been raised to be.

Now the question was, could I be both? Do I even want to be?

Looking at the closet again, I reached out and grabbed the nicest T-shirt I could find, deciding to bench the internal debate for another day. I had a family reunion to attend.

For as long as I could remember, our time growing up had been split between Manhattan and what my parents would describe as the country. For most of the year, my father had lived and breathed work, and during those times, which always seemed to coincide with school, we would live in the city. Although my father had been absent much of this time, my mother had been very atypical of our high-society lifestyle, and she’d immersed herself in the lives of my brother and me. When I hadn’t been with a tutor or the occasional nanny, I had been with her. Growing up in a place like New York could be stressful on a shy kid, but she’d made it like a game, a giant mystery the three of us were employed to solve.

During the summer, however, when my father had taken much-needed vacation time, we’d be whisked away to the summer home upstate. It was there, in the country as my parents had called it, that I’d found my real childhood home. Far away from the noise and chaos of city life, everything had moved at a slower pace out there. Even my father’s relentless drive had lessened in that house. I’d see him go on evening walks with my mother, pick roses for her in the garden, and laugh with her while they sipped lemonade.