Chapter Thirty-Nine

Knox

Did you see that?

That! Right there.

You saw it, right?

That thing flying by just over your head.

Yeah, that was my promotion. On its back was my boost in salary, too.

Let me bring you up to speed. Bianca’s fever hit a high of 102 yesterday after two days of this I’m-not-sick game, I think we could both finally agree she was sick. I texted her sisters and they couldn’t offer much advice other than to just be patient with her because she was a big baby when it came to being sick (their words, not mine, but I wasn’t going to dispute them). So that was what I was doing—being patient.

In any event, I couldn’t very well leave her. So I’d called into work the afternoon I was due on my flight after a lot of thinking and told them I wouldn’t be able to make it to London. They’d agreed to send someone in my place but had warned me that it meant the end of discussions about my promotion.

It was funny, at any other point in my life this would have never even been an option. I never would’ve walked away from that opportunity for my career or the money. You remember my childhood, right? Who could blame me on the money front. But suddenly, a new title and money didn’t matter as much as it once did. Sometimes working hard was good enough. I didn’t need to work hard at the expense of everything else in my life.

It was like what I’d said about Rina: she couldn’t sit still in favor of work, and the same was true for me. Other parts of my life mattered, they always had, which was why I had friends and relationships outside of work. But a piece of me still always put work first.

Suddenly, with Bianca, I was noticing that had changed. It’d been a slow, gradual change that I didn’t even realize was happening until recently. With her living here, I would try to come home early when I could or bring home dinner. I always found an excuse, but really it was for Bianca. I didn’t like that she was home alone. Her getting sick, though, that was when it hit me over the head like a sledgehammer. Bianca was quickly becoming one of the most important things in my life.

Bianca was my Roman Empire.

So there you had it. Now you knew everything that had been going on.

Right now, she was still asleep, finally having dozed off after I woke her up a couple of hours ago to give her more medication and some cold compresses to help with the fever.

I, well, I was just thinking about my life. I thought about Rina and hoped she was finding balance. I thought about my parents and wondered what had led to their decision to all but give up on the job and money front.

I had a feeling that, as long as I had Bianca in my life, I’d never forget my reason for reprioritizing my life.

And just for the sake of argument, no, this wasn’t Angelo’s expectations coming to fruition. I wasn’t planning on mooching off Bianca. I was just learning what was really important and I was well-off enough that I no longer needed to keep pushing myself to get further and further ahead.