Thrive: A Friends-to-Lovers Standalone Romance (Stonewood Billionaire Brothers Series)
Thrive: Chapter 7

Therapist: You’ve mentioned your friend, Mikka, before. Is she just a friend? Even after what happened that night?

Jay: She’ll never be just a friend. She’s a colleague that I trust with my career and a woman that I respect.

Therapist: Anything more?

Jay: A lot more.

Jay

Rehab had been near the hardest thing I’d ever done in all my life. Every day, every hour, and every minute felt like a weight of anxiety now hung around my neck.

I couldn’t let anyone down again. I had to nail this movie role and to do that, I couldn’t fall victim to the one thing I thoroughly enjoyed while living in the city.

Partying had been my life for years. Drugs were always a complementary friend that tagged along. Withdrawing from it had pushed my body to limits I wasn’t capable of understanding before being an addict.

All of that seemed easy, though, sitting next to a woman I considered so close to me and knowing that she had been sucked dry of her life force.

Mikka was the epitome of perfection. If you thought of her as a bug, she was a butterfly; if a cat, she was a tiger; if a dog, she was a purebred. She walked into a room and instantly you knew she was the most intelligent, put-together person there. Then she opened her mouth and her hunger to be better made you strive toward your best too.

Perfection.

And all of it was gone.

Rehab had been easy.

Seeing my friend broken wasn’t.

Her infectious energy to live and fight her way to the top had been extinguished. The moment I saw her, I knew. She’d lost weight, put on more makeup, and approached me like a wounded animal seeing a friendly face. When I’d hugged her, her body froze up like every part of her might be bruised.

She ran ahead of me and shoved me back, desperation in her brown eyes. “Jay! Stop.” She whispered the last word, “Please.”

Her hands didn’t leave my chest as I stood there, a fury I hadn’t felt in a long time coursing through my veins. “Mikka, what do you expect me to do? I stood by and let it happen before to Aubrey. You know what that does to a kid? To let his best friend go home to a dad that beat her?”

She winced at my story. “It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like?”

“I go back willingly, Jay. I’m an adult. I…It’s not like I have nowhere else to go. When things get out of control, if he hurts me, he doesn’t hurt me like that.” She tripped over her words, none of them really making sense.

Reining in my anger was like taming a wild beast. “Are you hearing yourself? It doesn’t make sense. If he hurts you, he isn’t? Meek, if he’s hurting you, the rest is black and white.”

“No! It’s murky, and mixed up and a mess, Jay.” She swiped at her cheek furiously as one lone tear escaped from her dark eyes.

“Little Pebble, you could be with someone so much better,” I murmured.

“Like who? You?” she shot back.

I wanted to nod but didn’t get the chance.

“You can’t commit to a meeting with me, let alone a relationship!” she spouted. “Dougie’s committed and that says a lot about a man.”

“Any man would commit to you.” I meant it. “You’ve got a million things to offer.”

“Jay, you kissed me, flirted with me in my mother’s porn shop, and then went to party with another woman the next day. You hung out with me and my mom, flaunted your abs in my face and acted the complete gentleman with her, only to turn around and have your hands up another woman’s skirt later that night.”

“Meek, we weren’t… I wouldn’t have done that had I thought I stood a chance with you.” I ran a thumb across the path of her tear to wipe the remnants away. “What do you expect from me?”

“Just, please, let me handle this! I’ve handled it this long.”

I took her face in both my hands and tilted her head up to look straight into my eyes. “And that’s too fucking long.”

I started to walk forward but she pushed back on me.

I gripped her wrists as softly as I could. “Little one, I can’t let you handle it the way you have been. You get that, right? You get that I can’t let him off so easy?”

“I still want this to work, Jay. I stayed. I chose to be a part of this life. Me. That’s not anyone’s fault but mine. I have to figure out what works for me. That might not work for you, but at the end of the day, it isn’t your relationship. It’s mine. You and I are friends, not lovers. We’re colleagues, not partners.”

Her words hit me harder than they should have. “You might not be my girlfriend, woman, but you’re definitely my partner. You have been since the day I met you.”

I rubbed my thumb up and down, remembering how soft her skin was. She leaned into my touch, and I wondered if I was the last thing holding her up. I wondered if anyone else knew, if anyone else had tried to talk her out of staying. I wondered if she’d lost friends over it and knew I couldn’t have her lose me when she needed me most.

She sighed and her long lashes swept down onto her cheeks as she closed her eyes. “You’re right, okay? But Dougie and I have been a team too. I have to just… I get that we need a break. I get that things aren’t right. I’m accepting that leaving for a month will be good for everyone. I just need to handle it my way.”

She could reason her way into anything. But she agreed. She was coming with me.

I would make sure she wasn’t coming back too.

“I’ll fall back and take your lead. But I’m still coming up with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She didn’t move her hands from my chest or turn around. She stared at me for what felt like a minute or more. As she did, her eyes filled with unshed tears, ones I knew had probably resurfaced again and again in the last two months I’d been away. “Thank you, Jay.”

She turned then and walked up the cement steps. After she unlocked the door, we strode in. I was shocked to see that nothing was askew. I expected shattered vases, smashed-in walls, something to showcase that they were living in hell with one another.

Her home looked as it always did, though. The white countertops were clean, the porcelain vase was intact with fresh pink flowers in water. The beige throw was folded neatly on her linen couch. Everything was white, spotless, almost innocent-looking.

At first, I thought we’d missed him but Mikka turned to me and lifted her index finger to me to motion for silence. I glanced around and spotted her bedroom door ajar where he looked like he slept heavily.

I nodded and leaned a hip against the kitchen table as she buzzed into her bedroom where I saw through the doorway that she was collecting items. She moved with quiet precision. As someone whose childhood friend was abused, my eye was trained to see her practiced cautious movements. It wasn’t just that she tried to be quiet, it was that she winced a bit when the sound was too loud as she set her suitcase on the hardwood floor. As she unzipped the bag, her fingers shook.

Mikka was afraid, and she’d never been afraid of anything.

She inhaled deeply before she zipped her suitcase. We both held our breaths as she walked through the doorway, but the hinges creaked as she bumped it open a little further.

His body stirred. “Baby, you home for the day?” I heard his groggy voice ask her.

It took a new determination, one I’d found in rehab, to stand back, to not burst in and beat him within an inch of his life.

Her soft response just beyond the wall felt smaller than usual. “No. Jay’s in the kitchen if you’d like to say hi, but we have to take a trip. The agency wants us to do a stay in his hometown.”

He grunted, still not moving from the bed. “For what? They paying us extra for that?”

She sighed. “Dougie, you know I’m salaried.”

When I heard the rustling of the sheets, I tried my best to trust her, tried not to barge in, tried to give their relationship the benefit of the doubt.

“They pay you a salary for when your actors assault you?”

Before I could even contemplate his words, I heard her hiss, “Douglass, I told you that was just as much my fault as it was his.”

“Maybe we should ask him, huh?” I saw him finally stand as his words shifted the situation into place. I’d been drunk and high. And dumb. So dumb. I should have known our kiss would send that selfish prick into a violent rage. He’d always had a look in his eye, especially when he drank around us. I knew something was off and it took our kiss to confirm it.

Dougie stormed out with Mikka after him, her suitcase in tow. Her brow was furrowed and it finally looked like she might not be able to stand another moment with him.

“You got some nerve stepping foot in my home after the shit you pulled on my girlfriend,” the asshole spit at me.

I wanted to correct him. Mikka paid the rent—I knew that for a fact. I’d been shopping with her for the picture she hung on the wall and picked up the vase for her flowers one day. She’s what made the house a home. Her home. Not his.

I didn’t move from where I stood. I didn’t owe him the effort. I would apologize, though. I would right my wrong because it was part of staying healthy and sober. It was part of moving forward with Mikka too.

I crossed my arms and looked at her, breathing heavily behind him, her eyes wild as she tried to figure out what to do next. “He’s right, you know. I shouldn’t have pulled that, Meek.”

Her shoulders slumped a little and she shook her head slightly like she wanted me to stop.

“I have a lot of people to apologize to. And I’m not sorry that I kissed you, love. I’m just sorry it happened when and how it did.”

Her eyes widened and I held her gaze. My world shifted, my heart jumped, we experienced something I couldn’t put my finger on.

I’d never wanted more with a woman, not more than what was attainable. I had fun with those that wanted to and I had friendships with others. I lived a carefree, commitment free life. Staring at Mikka, saying the words I said, I wondered for the first time if I wanted something more with one of my friends.

Dougie stepped in front of me, puffing out his chest. “You want to apologize to me too?”

“Nope.”

He cocked his arm slow enough that I saw the punch coming from miles away. I leaned at just the last second so that his momentum would carry him right into the chokehold I had ready for him. I grew up scrapping with two brothers, and even though Dougie was big, he wasn’t a match for me.

“You going to calm the fuck down?” I asked him as I squeezed his neck while he struggled in the hold.

There’s something about the way you feel once you get out of rehab. Everything’s a little frayed, lines are a little thinner, easier to cross, the edge of darkness creeps closer, and the rage, the feeling of losing control is always pulsing around you, ready to take over. Even when he stopped struggling, I wanted to squeeze his neck harder.

He deserved it.

Mikka’s tiny hand grabbed my arm, though. “Stop.” Her eyes were on me and then him. “Both of you.”

I shoved him forward out of the chokehold, and he coughed as Mikka said in a defeated voice, “Dougie, you promised last night that after everything we were going to try to get better. You were going to try for me. Is that you trying? You can’t hit other people.”

“Baby, I said sorry. I…He’s provoking me.” He pointed at me. “I’m trying, I swear.” He reached an arm out slowly to smooth his hand over her face and then let it drop to her ribcage where he rubbed. She winced and his hand flew off. “I’m sorry, baby. So sorry.”

The next words she whispered sounded strained, broken. “I think we need a break, time apart.”

The man appeared soft around the edges, no muscles too big and no smarmy smile to make you think he’d attack a woman. But I saw the red pop up over his face as she said the words. She did too as she took a few steps back and grabbed her suitcase.

“Does it matter that I don’t want time apart?” he growled.

“I just… we aren’t getting better together. Look at this.” She waved her hand between him and me. “You can’t attack somebody else and think it’s okay.”

“What if I come with?” He was back to trying a different angle.

She shook her head and stood taller. “It’s this or nothing.”

He rolled his shoulders as if he was weighing his options. I fisted my hands under my crossed arms, hoping it would help me to keep from losing my own control. This man didn’t get to manage her life. She did that and still I saw how he’d been steering it for far too long.

“Look, man.” He turned to face me. He had the audacity to hold his head up, to stand proudly there as if we were man to man. He dragged a hand over his face, wiping away the discomfort of the situation. “Mikka and I have gone through some shit. I’m not proud of it, and I’m not that kind of man. It’s just, she’s mine. It’s hard to process that you both made a mistake. I’ve got problems doing that.”

He kept talking, but the anger inside me tuned him out. The roaring of it was like a thunder too loud for me to hear his words anymore.

Mikka stepped between us, put her hand on his chest like she had done mine, and whispered “Enough. The agency wants me there to PA for Jay for a month. It will be good time away from each other. You do you. I’ll do me. We’ll see what happens after, okay?”

He gripped her wrist. “A month? Baby, I don’t…”

She eyed where his hand was, and he dropped it immediately like he knew he was too far in the doghouse to try anything. The red mark from it remained though.

“Look, fine. Okay. I’ll do whatever you want. I don’t want you seeing other people though.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

His brow furrowed. “But not him! Right?” He pointed at me, his voice heightening in desperation.

She scoffed, not even looking back at me. “Jay has better things and women to do, Dougie! Come on.”

My jaw worked at her statement. Did she think any woman was better than her?

Dougie barreled on. “We should still talk. I want to keep in touch. I want to hear your voice. I need that. I need to know where we stand.”

She nodded and I saw her love for him still there.

I stumbled back. It was a hard realization, replaceing that my friend didn’t want to be saved. And she wasn’t mine to save either.

She kissed him, and that hurt just as bad. My mind was scrambling to catch up with the idea my heart had just figured out. Mikka had been my only friend in LA but she’d also been someone I’d developed more than friendly feelings for.

Her kissing him goodbye was the stab I needed to jolt me back to the friend zone.

She turned to survey her place one last time. “Everything is paid through the month. The plants over there”—she pointed toward her dining table—“need to be watered once a day. I’ll remind you when I call.”

He slapped her ass and smiled at me over her shoulder. “Take care of my girl, huh, Jay? I’m trusting you, man to man.”

Would she talk to me again if I broke his nose? I contemplated it for a second too long as she whispered, “Jay!”

I nodded at him but didn’t respond. I was saving my response. I knew sooner or later that I was going to give it. It might not have been that day or the next that I inflicted the pain on him that he had her, but there would be a day.

“Yeah, I’ll take care of her.”

Better than he ever would.