A Billionaire for Christmas

For some reason we’re at the Kane estate. Charlotte is there too, even though Johnny told us that she’s dead. I don’t know why we’re up at the Kane estate. I have only been up there once, and that was recent. I rode up with Joey to pick up Maisy for one of his father weekends when Huck and Wald were out of town on business and Brooke was at work.

It was a nice drive up, I guess. But then the guard at the gate said he knew me. There was this weird conversation with him. We went to school together. I swear to God, I have no recollection of that dude.

But anyway. He was there. The guard. And we were at the Kane estate. All of us.

There was some kind of weird ceremony. Not the money-making one that Joey described after that weird shit-show went down earlier in the year, but something else.

A wedding, I think it was.

Except we were all getting married. Only not to each other. Like, I wasn’t marrying Emma, and Johnny wasn’t marrying Megan, and Joey and the guys weren’t marrying Brooke.

We were all marrying something else.

The Way, I think.

I think it was a dream about being married to the Way.

A subconscious message that this happiness we’ve found is just an illusion.

That we’ll never break free.I wake up in the middle of the night sweating and throw the covers off me. Emma is on her stomach, snoring softly, the light from the city outside illuminating her dark hair with bits of gold and red.

And I don’t know, but… I can’t shake this feeling that the great time we just had at the holiday party is just an illusion.

I swing my legs out of bed, walk down the hallway, and open the door of the fridge. White light spills out past the door and I just stare into it. And come to a realization.

I need to marry her. Like now. Like now.

I don’t want to wait until spring.

But I can’t marry her now. We’ve got plans. Hell, in a few hours we’ll be on the jet to Key West and by dinner tomorrow night we’ll be completely wrapped up in Christmas preparations.

“It’s fine,” I tell myself, grabbing a bottle of water and closing the door. It was just a dream. Everything is going great. Johnny is having a baby, for fuck’s sake. I’m gonna be an uncle again. Joey and his partners are all happy and satisfied. Maisy comes every other weekend to spend time with them.

Hell, I even have a fucking client. First fucking client in years. Some young teenager who wants to learn how to race yachts. He’s not from a big important family, and I’m not taking money for it, but still. This kid… he’s good. He reminds me of myself at that age. And I could be a part of his rise. A huge part.

Everything is good. Everything is perfect. And next spring Emma and I will have the perfect wedding and it will only get better.

Even Zach is doing things. I’m not really sure what, but he’s living down on Key West and working with Emma’s brother, Luke, on some boat.

We made it.

We got out.

We gave away fifty million dollars to charity last night.

But my eyes wander back to the Bossy Building across town. It’s like a siren song calling me back.

“Fuck.” The sound of my own voice startles me out of the lingering dream-state. “Jesus Christ, Jesse. Pull yourself together. It’s just a stupid building.”

I uncap the water, drink it down, cap it back up, and then go back to bed.

Emma turns over when I get in under the covers, her hands instinctively wrapping around my upper arm as she snuggles up to my chest.

I push the weird dream away. I push all the anxiety away and concentrate on what I want instead of what I think I deserve.

Because deep down I want Emma, but I don’t think I deserve Emma.

And I do.

Dammit, I do. She was the first girl who ever found her way past the thick, cynical, drugged-up walls around my heart. And she never left. She’s been in there, inside me, for thirteen years.

It’s our time now.

So I think about that instead.

I think about sleeping with her every night for the rest of my life.

I think about Saturday night dinners with her family. I think about that whole street of cottages the Dumas family owns and how her mother already calls the blue one the Emma and Jesse house. How we will spend our lives down there with them. And maybe my brothers and their partners will have their own houses too.

One will be called the Joey, Huck, Wald, and Brooke house. And one will be called the Johnny and Megan house. Alonzo will be my friend and we’ll go fishing with his father every summer and catch giant swordfish. And we’ll go diving with Tony, and boating with Luke.