She became stronger as days passed, and her confidence began to return, though her heart was going to take the rest of her life to heal.
Jonathon was discussing the final details of closing his business deal with Anthony Bryan who had finally agreed to the deal that Jonathon and Naomi had offered him when they met with him shortly after she had been hired.
Anthony was seated in Jonathon's office, smiling and signing the last of the paperwork when he looked up at Jonathon. "I'm glad you were patient with me, and understanding. It took me a long time to decide that this was the best possible choice for me and for my company. I'm glad to do this with you, but it took me a while to think it over carefully, and you waited. Thank you for that." He said genuinely, looking at Jonathon.
Jonathon nodded. "Well, I didn't want to push you into anything that wasn't the right fit for you." He answered.
Anthony eyed him carefully and nodded. "Yes, the right fit can be the most important aspect." He paused a moment and took a breath, his eyes steady on Jonathon's. "I was surprised to learn that Naomi had left here and gone to Jupiter Inc. I understand that she's doing quite well over there. I'll be honest with you, I talked with her before I made my mind up to be here with you, and she urged me to come here and keep my business with you. She didn't want to steal me away from you. I don't know if you knew that about her."
The mention of her name was like a tidal wave inside him that clenched everything in him tightly. He hadn't bothered to find out where she had gone, because he knew that he would be too tempted to go to her, and he could not risk his father destroying her life. He had no idea she was at Jupiter.
He tried to breathe and appear calm as he looked back at Anthony. "I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me."
Anthony smiled and nodded. "She's quite a remarkable young woman. I don't know how you ever let her go. I certainly wouldn't have, no matter what." He said, and Jonathon got the distinct impression that Anthony might not be talking about business.
"She is indeed a remarkable young woman, but sometimes circumstances are beyond our control." Jonathon said quietly. His mind was on her again, as it was so often day and night.
Anthony shook his hand and left, congratulating him on his upcoming wedding as he walked out of the door. "I hope you find some happiness with the choices you've made. You know, we only get to go through this life once, and anytime we can make the right choices for ourselves, we should." With that parting comment, he walked out of the door and closed it behind him, leaving Jonathon with his thoughts, which Jonathon felt was an utterly cruel thing to do.
He walked to the wall of windows in his office and looked down over the city; teeming with life and chaos and organization and pollution. Everyone in it was living their own life, their paths criss-crossing and intersecting, their lives touching one another's for years at a time, or sometimes for brief seconds. She stayed on his mind, and Anthony's parting words haunted Jonathon's mind, echoing back and forth as though they were waiting for him to pluck them from the space there in his head and hold tight to them.
‘We only get to go through this life once … ' Anthony had said. Jonathon knew that he was right of course, but Jonathon could see no way around the choices he had been making, and he could not get rid of the cold, hard feeling in his core that he had been making all of the wrong choices from the moment he let his father force him into the marriage from hell.
As he stood there, he came to grips with the fact that he may have agreed to the wedding in order to save Naomi, but he had seen the pain that he had caused her in the doing of it, and he had just learned from Anthony that she was doing quite well at Jupiter. It made him realize that his father's reach might not be as far as he insinuated, and that perhaps she was doing so well that his father could not destroy what she had worked so hard to build.
He clenched his jaw then, determined to begin making the right changes instead of all of the wrong ones, and he knew that the first change he had to make would begin with his father. Jonathon left the window and walked out of his office, heading one floor up to his father's office. He did not announce himself. He walked straight past his father's secretary and through the door into Phillip's office.
Phillip looked up from his desk to his son, his expression calm. "I'm in the middle of something here. You should have asked for an opening in my schedule today." .
Jonathon walked over to the front of his father's desk and looked down at him. "I'm not marrying Susan. You do whatever you need to do to me; disinherit me and fire me, but do not go after Naomi. This is my choice. I love her. I want her more than I have ever wanted any woman in my life, and we shared a passion that I'm not sure you could ever understand. I let you take that away from me, and I let you hurt her and me, and I'm not going to let you do that anymore."
Phillip's eyes opened wide.
"You and mom had a beautiful marriage. You were in love and you were so happy. In fact, I can't remember a time when you two weren't laughing and close. I remember you holding her hand all the time, I remember you kissing her so often. I remember knowing that she was the most important person in the world to you, and when she passed away I thought you were going to die right along with her." He spoke gently about his mother and his parent's marriage.
His father's eyes were wetted with tears.
"I grew up knowing what real love was between a man and a woman, and you showed me that, because you had it. You lived it. You were lucky enough to find that. Well, I found that same kind of deep, real, strong love, and you made me make a choice that took that love away from me, all because you are so hell bent on me marrying your best friend's daughter to merge families and merge your business.
"Well, I'm not a business transaction. I am your son. I am your only son, and I would think that you would want my happiness above all else. I would think that you would want a love for me like you had." He shook his head as his heart beat wildly in him. He had never spoken to his father the blunt and honest way that he was at that moment.
Jonathon looked at his father with pained eyes and sighed. "Father, I have worked just as hard at keeping this company successful as you have, ever since I walked in the door on my first day. Building this business up has been my number one priority. You must have missed that if you are willing to give it all to someone else just because I don't want to marry the woman you have chosen for me. It means that my time here was worth nothing, father; all of my time here was worth nothing to you, if you would take that away from me, especially for something as shallow as an arranged marriage."
Phillip stood up slowly, his eyes steady on his son.
"Father, I don't love Susan. I never have. I don't want her at all. You are condemning us both to a loveless marriage. I am never going to sleep with her. I'm never going to cherish her. I'm never going to make her a priority in my life. She deserves to be loved and cherished by someone who actually wants to be with her, and I am not that man. I never will be. She is going to grow to hate me and she will be lonely for the rest of her life. You and Vincent are forcing that on her and on me. You are sentencing us to a cold and lonely marriage that will probably only last until you and Vincent pass away and I could see Susan and I divorcing then. That's your idea of success, but it isn't mine." Jonathon kept his voice as calm as he could while he was talking, holding in a great deal of emotion so that he would be able to say what he needed to without marring it with anger and pain.
"I am in love with Naomi, father, and there is no woman on this earth for me but her. I can't believe I let you force me into letting her go. She is no cheap fling. She is the love of my life, and I am going after her. I don't care what it costs me here; if it costs me my inheritance, if it costs me my job with this company, or if it even costs me my relationship with you.
She is the most important person in my life, and I am going to go find her and fall on my knees in front of her and beg her to marry me. The worst thing in the world isn't losing money or power or business. The worst thing in the world is losing true love, and I'm going to fight with everything in me to get it back, and when I do, I am never going to let her go." He turned and walked a few steps toward the door and then looked back at his father who was standing there, speechless.
"I want a love and a marriage like you and mom had, and I am going to have it with her. Goodbye, father. You do whatever you need to do. I'm going to do what I need to do." He said solemnly, and then he turned and headed for the door again.