Chapter 30 Gus

Julia holds up her hand, signaling for me to wait. Surprised at first, I lift both eyebrows, but I don't say a word. Over the past year, I've learned that my girlfriend is never to be interrupted when she's hard at work.

She finishes typing and shuts her laptop with a snap. "Yes?"

"What are you working on?"

Smugly, she pats her laptop's shell. "Another brilliant pitch for The Carraway."

Unsurprised, I shake my head. "You know, I bought that website because I wanted them to stop writing about you, not because I wanted you to add it to your arsenal. How many more lies can you possibly pitch?"

Slowly, she blinks several times, staring at me with her brow tight. "I'm sorry, do you even know me? My ideas are endless, my love. Endless."

I believe it. When she announced she would be assigning a writer at The Carraway to write one salacious and scathing post about Jay Raymond every week, I figured it would go on for a month or two. In retrospect, it was na?ve as fuck of me to assume she would ever stop. Julia has been feeding fake stories to the website for a year now—and shows no signs of slowing. In the last month alone, she has fabricated a story about Jay sobbing alone in a hotel bar when he was catfished by a college fraternity as a hazing prank, has revealed that he's currently blacklisted by every therapist in Manhattan, and also came up with a particularly clever story about him selling his Rolex because he maxed out his credit card while buying Taylor Swift tickets.

I love this psycho.

Chuckling, I let out a relaxed sigh. "We should go," I recommend. "Traffic is shit at this hour."

"Traffic is shit at every hour in Boston," she replies. She breezes around her desk towards me and plants a soft kiss on my cheek. "I'm driving."

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?" she demands before she slides her hand into my pocket and pulls out my keys.

"It's a new car," I remind her. "Remember what you did to that Toyota Corolla? Like hell are you driving a new Tesla into a ditch."

"Oh please," she says, waving her hand like I'm bringing up pesky details. "It's springtime in Boston, not dead of winter in bumfuck. Speaking of, what a great name for your memoir."

"Bumfuck?"

"Dead of Winter," she clarifies as she heads to the front door of our house.

I grab my coat and I follow her out the door and to the car. "I think that's the worst book title I've ever heard in my life."

"Okay, what about Winter Wonderland?" she calls over her shoulder.

I stop in my tracks. "Julia, you are shockingly bad at this."

"I am, aren't I?" she muses while she stands by the car, head tilted thoughtfully. "Fine. You drive, I'll keep brainstorming."

Julia tosses me the keys and I catch them before I head to the driver's side. Minutes later, we're on our way, with Julia spitballing puns the entire time.

"I've got it. What about: The Winter of Our Discontent?" she asks while taking off her coat to hand it to me.

"Do you hate me?" I ask, frowning as I grab her coat. "Deep down, you must still hate me because the only person you would make such bad suggestions to is your mortal enemy."

"What's wrong with the Winter of Our Discontent?" she demands.

"You're fucking with me. First, it's already the title of a book—ah shit. You're fucking with me. Has this entire conversation—"

"Yes," she interjects, smiling devilishly. "Although, I really think Winter Wonderland is excellent."

"Excellent for what?" Davis asks—Davis senior, that is. Julia's father.

"Dad, Gus is trying to come up with a name for his memoir," Julia explains. She falls into her father's arms and hugs him.

The look of surprise on her father's face tells me he's still not used to his daughter hugging him. But as a couple, we have a policy: If you love someone, just tell them already. It means Julia has been doing an awful lot of hugging these days.

"Don't use a pun. Puns are beneath you," her father states succinctly before he holds out his hand. "Winter."

"I agree. Ridgeway." We shake hands. Hard.

Is this situation weird? Yes. It's insanely weird. I'm in the home of the man whose company took over mine. In exchange, I got eleven billion dollars from my equity stake—and a night with his daughter.

And he knows it.

Even weirder: I've run in the same circles as this man for years. We never connected since neither of us is particularly nice or friendly. But ever since I started dating his daughter, the man has put in a considerable effort.

Hence, here I am having yet another family dinner with him and Julia.

Dinner is awkward. We've had a dinner a month with him for the last twelve months. All awkward.

And the awkwardness persists after the plates have been cleared and the digestifs have been consumed, when I head into the kitchen and find Davis Ridgeway washing dishes with his sleeves rolled up.

Does he even know how to wash dishes?

Julia is in her father's office, probably stealing a stack of books like she does every time we visit his home. He and I are alone. And as uncomfortable as it is, I do recognize he'll be in my life forever. He's important to the woman I love, and therefore, he's important to me. I want him to like me.

I join him at the sink.

"I know what you're thinking, and no. I do not wash my own dishes." he mutters without looking at me. "I'm trying to distract myself."

"It's that painful, huh?" I pick up one of the plates he just washed and dry it with a dishtowel. "I get it. I'm sure you never envisioned your daughter falling in love with a reclusive billionaire fifteen years her senior."

He turns off the water. "Forget all that. I'm twenty-five years older than my current wife. I'm not a hypocrite."

Surprised, I put down the plate. "So, what's wrong?"

"You'll have daughters one day," he says, nodding once. "And the day you realize you're not the most important man in their life, that your approval is no longer the most important thing to them, you'll feel odd. Sure, you'll learn to accept it, but when you meet the men they fall in love with and realize those men are better versions of you—it's going to sting."

It takes me far longer than it should to realize he's giving me a compliment.

"Thank you, Davis. I know Julia and I got together under less than savory—"

"Enough," he cuts in.

To be clear, nobody interrupts me—but I let it slide for once.

"We don't have to talk about how you and Julia got together," he explains with a grimace. "I don't like it, of course—but I do respect a man who stops at nothing to get what he wants."

"Fair enough. Thank you, again."

He exhales and faces me, holding my eyes in a classic power move, which I meet with aplomb. "Stop dancing around it," he mutters. "We don't do business that way, so just ask me."

I scoff hard. "I don't need your permission to ask Julia to marry me."

To my surprise, Davis nods—and even smiles. "Good. Because if you had been dumb enough to ask, I might have said no."

"Julia would never marry a man who asks for your permission."

"And that's why you have my blessing."

We exchange a nod. It's not overly sentimental—and neither of us acknowledges that he's about to become my father-in-law. It is what it is. And next month, when Julia and I are back at our cabin for the summer, I'll ask her to marry me.

But for now, we're enjoying a quiet weekend in Boston. After dinner, Julia and I drive back to our house in Beacon Hill—one of three homes we now own together. We put on the television and get under the covers together, and we watch two episodes of Nova because that's how much this woman loves me.

I'm about to put on a third episode when she grabs me by the wrist, takes the remote and says, "Enough, Winter. You risked fifty billion dollars and went through an existential crisis to get me. Do yourself a favor and fuck me."

So I do. Twice. It's rough at times and tender other times. Both times, I tell her how much I love her, never hesitating.

She says it back, smiling whenever the words leave her lips.

And for the first time in my life, I know I deserve to be so fucking happy—deliriously, incomparably happy.

We both do.