Sophie (The Boss 8)

Aside from the relief I felt over finally being proven right, I felt anger. All I’d had to do, all of these years, was simply issue an ultimatum?

But that anger faded when I realized that El-Mudad was right. He had no issue demanding this from Neil, but I had. All along, I’d felt it wasn’t my place to request it because I didn’t understand. They’d had a child together, and I’d told myself I couldn’t touch that bond. But El-Mudad knew that bond just as intimately as Neil did. He had no trouble crossing the imaginary boundary I’d set for myself.

“No, you’re right.” Neil pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve done this to myself. And to her. We can’t be friends.”

“You’re too toxic.” I wish I could have found a way to make him realize that years ago. But now, somehow, it felt like it could stick.

“We’ll have to see her when it involves Olivia,” El-Mudad went on. “I’m not asking for you to never speak to her again. But I think the closeness you two had must be over now. If you can do that, I can put aside my jealousy. And I think Sophie will, as well.”

“These next few months are going to be...difficult.” Neil Elwood. Master of understatement. “At least she doesn’t know about the adoption.”

“She knows about the adoption,” I blurted.

“Ah,” was all Neil said.

The silence between the three of us might as well have been the event horizon of a black hole because it felt like time stretched out endlessly. I waited for something, anything, from either of them.

It didn’t come in the form of the angry explosion I dreaded.

“This doesn’t have to be bad,” El-Mudad said softly.

Neil tilted his head back and stared up at the roof over our heads. “We were going to have to tell her, eventually.”

“I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it,” El-Mudad said, glancing over to me.

“Nor I,” Neil agreed with a resigned sigh.

I pressed a hand to my chest. “My god. Did I take action on something without consulting the two of you, and it was the right thing to do?”

Neither of them answered.

“I, Sophie Scaife—”

“Sophie Scaife-Elwood-Ati,” El-Mudad interrupted, trying for a charming smile.

“Not cute, and not now,” I warned. “I just want to make sure I’m not dreaming here. I did something the two of you were too cowardly to do, and you’re immediately acknowledging that it was the right thing? We don’t have to argue about it endlessly?”

They both looked elsewhere. The eaves and the beach were suddenly fascinating.

I folded my arms over my chest. “No one is going back into that house until both of you say, ‘Sophie, you were right.’”

Grudgingly, they both mumbled the words, “Sophie, you were right,” followed by a few grunted words of apology.

And it was the most satisfying thing I’d ever heard.

The surface of the water shimmered above me. I exhaled and swam upward, breaking through as wisps of smoke curled up from the bubbles.

From the side of the pool, Holli called, “Woo! Now do a cannonball one!”

I swam over to her and boosted myself onto the edge. “Okay, light me up, bitch.”

“Are you sure this is all right?” she asked. Again. Because the paranoia had set in. “Neil isn’t going to be mad?”

“Neil isn’t even here.” He and El-Mudad were in Reykjavik for the biannual hand-off of Olivia to the Van Der Graf’s for a week. “I’m sure the smoke will have dissipated by then. And it’s not like he was addicted to weed; he smoked it now and then, but I’m not sure pot is ‘designer’ enough for someone rich as hell in the eighties.”

“And richer now, since you locked up the Fine Piece from the Middle East,” Holli took a deep inhale from the joint and held it out to me.

“Don’t call him that,” I warned. “Because now he’s calling himself that. Sometimes, like a WWE ring entrance.”

“A man after my own heart.” She waited until I took a big inhale to say, “Okay, now, cannonball.”

I got to my feet, still holding my breath, hurried to the diving board, and launched myself as high as I could, curling my legs up beneath me for the maximum splash. This time, hitting the water made me cough and sputter.

“Weak,” Holli criticized as I pathetically dog paddled my way to the side of the pool.

“Excuse me. You should be more worried about me. There is such a thing as dry drowning, you know,” I shot back when I could breathe again.

She scrunched up her face. “What the fuck is dry drowning?”

“You have a kid, and you don’t know what that it is?” I shrieked. “It’s super dangerous. If kids are swimming and they inhale a bunch of water, they can drown from it hours later.”

“How the fuck do you even begin to worry about something like that?” Holli rolled her eyes and took another puff from the joint. Holding back the smoke, she added, “You and Deja are super paranoid.”