Protecting Her(45)

CHAPTER ELEVEN


11


PEARCE

The past few months I’ve been consumed with work, at the expense of spending time with Rachel and Garret. It started when I took over as interim CEO. I was finally able to take charge and make decisions, and within a month, I was seeing results. We were operating more efficiently, reducing costs, increasing profits, and I’d managed to land a new client. I became addicted to the success and wanted more. I wanted to prove to my father that I could run this company without him and do a better job. But in the process of doing that, I neglected my family.

“He went right to sleep,” I say as I come down the stairs. Rachel is sitting on the leather couch in the living room. I just put Garret to bed, which I haven’t done in months.

“I think you wore him out,” Rachel says.

“He wore me out.” I sit next to her. “He never stops moving. You must be exhausted after spending the day with him.”

“It’s my workout.” Rachel smiles. “Between all the chasing and the lifting and picking up his toys, I’ve never been in better shape.”

I turn her toward me, my hand on her arm. “I should’ve been here, taking care of him, giving you a break at night.”

She nods. “Yeah, you should have. Not because I need a break, but because he needs you.”

“I know he does.”

“Then why haven’t you been here for him? And why haven’t you been here for me? For us? I need to understand, Pearce, because if I don’t, I’ll keep thinking this is only temporary.”

“It’s not temporary.” I look her in the eye. “Last night when you said Garret might be better off without me, it was like being punched in the gut. It killed me to hear you say that. But I needed to hear it. It woke me up and made me realize I could lose you. Both of you. It’s what I fear the most, and yet it was happening right in front of me and I didn’t even notice. I was letting it happen. I was the cause of it, and yet I did nothing to fix it.”

I look down at her hand, picking it up and holding it in mine. “I wanted to prove to my father that I could do it. That I could run the company better than he could. That I am not the failure he keeps saying I am. And I did it. I achieved my goal. I did more for that company in six months than he’s done in six years. And he knows it, yet he won’t acknowledge it.” I gaze down at the couch. “He still thinks I’m a failure. He called me that just this morning.”

“He’s wrong, Pearce. Don’t listen to him.” She lifts my face up to look at her. “Why would he even say that?”

“One of our biggest clients didn’t get a delivery on time. It wasn’t my fault. I had nothing to do with it. But since the order was placed when I was interim CEO, my father blames me, saying we should’ve allowed more time for the delivery. He knows this is not a task for the CEO. Someone at a much lower level handles the orders, but he still called me into his office to reprimand me because he couldn’t find anything else to yell at me about. It just proved to me that my father will never be satisfied. I could triple profits every quarter and he still wouldn’t be satisfied. He’d still say I could do better.”

“So you’ve spent the past year trying to prove yourself to your father?”

“Yes. And in doing so, I realized that he’s not the only reason I spend so much time at work. I realized that if someone isn’t there to stop me, I’ll keep working to succeed. If I see I’m making progress, I want to keep going. I’m driven by results. I find it addictive. So when my father was absent because of his illness and I was seeing results from my efforts at the company, I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going. And when he came back, it became even worse because I was so damn determined to prove myself to him. To show him what I’d done and that I could do even more.” I pause. “That’s not how I want to live. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to get his approval. And I don’t want to let my addiction to success take over and consume me. I need you to stop me, Rachel, like you did last night. If you ever see me get this way again, I need you to tell me.”

“I tried to, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“You made a few comments, but that’s it. You were too nice about it. These past few months, you’ve let me get away with too much. You need to be tougher with me. I can handle it. I need you to be direct and tell me when things are getting out of control.” I place my hand along the side of her face. “And please, don’t ever let it get to the point where you consider leaving me.”