Chapter 45 THE BROWN FILES ABOUT BAXTER.
45.
~RAFAEL~
"No, Kim." I manage to bite her and pull her up closer to me.
Her expression is kind of confused as she stares at me."Is there something wrong, did I..."
"I just want us to sleep tonight, Kim. It would be great to have sex but I don't want it to be the bane of this arrangement."
"The arrangement that will soon end." It's at the tip of my lip to say it out loud but I don't want to hurt myself tonight.
She still looks confused but doesn't say a word as she brings my hands down from her body.
I watch her slip on the shirt and short slowly, covering the body I want to hold and thrust into all night but no, not now.
Unable to keep my hands off her longer, I lift Kim up the ground and lower her onto the bed, with her hovering on top of me.
"Thank you for agreeing to sleep here, I've been..."
"Unable to sleep." She smirks, seeing through my shit and I nod defeatedly.
"Thank you." I say again, wrapping my hands around her, Kim places her head on my chest, her body pressing into me lightly.
As if a sedative aerosol has been sprayed in the air, my eyelids close off not up to a minute later.
THE NEXT MORNING.
"Fuck you!" Rowan growls the moment he enters the office the next morning. I turn to him from the large window view and chuckle which only aggravates his anger more.
"I'm resigning." He deadpans, dropping the heap of files on the table before walking over to me.
But his words don't scare me, Rowan has said that more than ten times this month.
It's his company as much as it's mine too, our names are coined together to set it up but while we both handle things together off the screen, he prefers me facing the clients because he hates attention.
And I genuinely don't know what I would have done without him.
"You're so full of shit, dude." I hit his head chest lightly with my fist and he scoffs before taking the cup of coffee from me.
He guzzles down the rest of the content and drops it on the glass table beside him.
"Did you have some rest?" Rowan asks, glancing at me.
"Yeah." I bite out, remembering the awesome sex with Kim, the hard conversations and her sleeping in my bed and the breakfast we both made together before dropping her off in school.
"Glad you did, I couldn't take my mind off what Baxter said, he might not have the upper hand right now but once the shareholders find out about this, it will turn messy."
"We both own more than 90% of the company shares, that's not enough to move us." I shoot back at him in a hard tone, quite pissed that he's reminding me of Baxter.
"No, it won't affect us but that's not what I'm talking about and you know that, Rafael." Rowan presses further in a matching tone.
My shoulder drops immediately because I know what he's talking about.
He's referring to my unspoken fears about facing this battle squarely, the fear of being ousted, my attempts, my unstable mental health and they will try to prove my inability to be the head of the company which will make the stock tank and I will be fucked.
"What do you want me to do? Tell them I inherited clinical depression from my mother and my life is a fucking mess?"
"Your life is not a fucking mess, you're not a mess. You did this, we both did and that's what I want you to prove to people." Rowan insists, adding more emphasis to each word.
I sigh in exhaustion, tired of arguing and bantering words with Rowan because he will definitely win, he knows me too well.
"Prove to people? Why should I prove to people that I'm not a mess? Is that how other people's lives are? Why did we have to be so fucked to the extent that we have to work ten times harder than others so they won't take us for a joke?" My voice hikes through the room, gaining steam that irritates the hell out of me.
I still hate that I couldn't forget how the people we ran to for help, the company we worked at to survive in the first years of trying to build our company, because once they investigate our background and they found out that we've received psychological support, they would back down. I can't emphasize how much I pulled Rowan back because I was in a much deeper mess than him.
"We didn't choose our lives, trust me, I'd rather be a normal man right from the beginning if I was given the privilege to do that, Do you know how much the thought of everything we worked for crumble right in our front keeps me awake at night?" Rowan scoffs, he swallows nothing, his Adam apple bobs, I watch his shoulder tremble.
He's never been this vulnerable in front of me and it kills me that I caused it.
"This morning, when I was driving to work, I saw the office workers and civil servants trying to catch the bus, they look so free, I know they have their own shits to deal with but I wish I was like that, Rafael. But I have no control over that. Why should we hide?"
"I told Kim about my Mom, not all the details, only the ones I had the courage to share and she cried, she cried so hard. I did too, and it was great to talk to someone, I wondered if I could have the courage to do it but in front of a much wider audience."
Rowan's eyes turn into a rumble of compassion immediately, his face softens as he stares at me.
"I'm glad you had that conversation with her, But..."
The door creaks open immediately, we both turn to the direction just to see Wendy disheveled, her hair and face all messy including her clothes, as if she's in a tussle with someone.
Eliana peeks her head in simultaneously, a full grin on her face.
"I tried to stop her." Wendy says, breathing heavily. I nod and dismiss her by waving my hand.
"Hey, stepson." She waves, sashaying her way towards me.
"Deal with this,I'm out." Rowan grumbles under his breath and drifts away from me.
Eliana lurches towards him admiringly but Rowan swerves away from her immediately.
"Keep your hands to yourself woman." He warns in a hard tone.
Eliana has some sort of attraction for him and since she knows Rowan hates that, Eliana uses every opportunity she gets to taunt him.
I remain rooted to the window side and watch them leave with only Eliana and me in the room.
"What are you doing here?"
This woman doesn't know how much she exhausts me, she's been nothing but a snake to Mom and when she was alive and she's not apologetic about that.
"Want to make another deal?" She asks, waving a brown file in the air.
It's probably something filled with mundane things about Dad but I'm done with that, it's time I shove them in my past.
"Not a chance, Eliana." I deadpans, remembering how I had to agree to her difficult terms and conditions to get Kim out of her grasp.
"Oh, you will love this." Eliana insists, walking towards me.
I roll my eyes in frustration and shake my head again. I detest how persistent she is.
"I said..."
"It's about Baxter."