Chapter 21: Jessica - Forced Marriage to the CEO

Jessica

Saturday morning arrived with a heavy frost. I pushed him out the door. I told him to travel to Weston to visit his grandfather before Monday. Jonathan has always said when Henry is lucid, he is a good voice of reason. He can weigh the cold constraints of the Atwell legacy with Jonathan’s own personal moral code. I told Jonathan, “Whatever you decide, you should decide it with him, not around him.”

It’s now the afternoon and Jonathan is in Weston while I’ve spent the entire day at Anchor Point pretending I possess the capacity to focus on grant renewals. I meant it and I still mean it, I simply failed to calculate what it would feel like to sit in my office all day not knowing which version of my husband will walk into the penthouse tonight.

By four o’clock I’ve stopped pretending I can get any work done. I abandon the ledgers, my mind tracking our notes for Harborlight, imagining the infrastructure fully realized five years from now. Jonathan on the board, showing up to executive sessions in jeans because nobody cares what he’s wearing, only what he’s doing. He will try to bring his brand of friction to the intake desk, fighting with Darnell about some administrative protocol he thinks is too chaotic, while Darnell treats the mess like an elevated artform. I can see him chairing a budget committee with the unhurried precision he commanded before the AdComm panel: patient, precise, with an occasional flash of amusement. Except this time the stakes are a veteran family’s rent. And I know that survival data would matter to him just as much as the six million Alzheimer patients and a four-hundred-million-dollar laboratory. He is deadly in this element, driven by a raw necessity to help people because that’s what fuels his soul.

Then I imagine the alternative, the man who walks into that flagship boardroom on Monday and lets nine years of expectation close back over his head. He will want to protect Elizabeth, shield the company’s data integrity he spent nine years engineering and keep the nine hundred jobs from dissolving into Atwell Pharmaceuticals’ commercial pool. All of that weight sits on the opposite side of the scale from his own life.

I don’t know what his grandfather will say when all the options and consequences are laid before him and I don’t even know if Henry’s coherent today.

Jonathan calls a little after six.

“How was Weston?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light and mostly succeeding.

“Good,” he says, and something in that single word tells me I was right to push him to go there today. Something in my chest eases before he’s said another word. “He’s having a good day. I’ll tell you everything tonight.”

“And the board?”

A pause. “I’ve got four calls left tonight before I can even think about sleeping, and I want to make them on the ride home.” I can hear it in his voice. There’s a lot of maneuvering to be done before the vote and if he can’t get it done, I’m not sure which way the hammer will fall.

“My father thinks he doesn’t need to campaign, he thinks the board falls in line automatically, or that I’ll fold for Elizabeth’s sake, before it ever comes to a vote. He’s not entirely wrong that people expect me to fold.” Jonathan’s voice goes quiet. “He’s wrong about which direction I will fold in.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” I say, leaving him the time on the way home for his phone calls.

* * *

I hear him on the phone before I hear him come through the door.

“—no, Marcus, the trust can’t override the board on this one. Minority position or not, this isn’t the kind of decision they get a veto on, and I don’t care how creative Harlan’s lawyers get trying to argue otherwise—”

I sit at the kitchen island with my own laptop open, not really working, just listening to the cadence of it. Marcus Bellweather isn’t OncoNova’s general counsel; he is a friend from Tufts who understands every boardroom grid in the Financial District better than most of the corporate defense teams who work in them. He is the exact sounding board Jonathan trusts before he puts anything in front of his own company’s counsel. This is the architect I rarely see up close: brilliant, calculating, and earning the cut-throat reputation that precedes him on the streets. He is entirely awake, trading arguments with one of the sharpest legal minds in Boston.

“I don’t require Alderman’s vote, I just need his silence,” Jonathan says as he catches my eye across the granite, presses a finger briefly to his lips and mouths one minute.

By the time he severs the connection, it is past nine. He looks like a man who has spent the entire day carrying something far more massive than any physical weight, and I know the truth of it. The real labor has been the slow, exhausting work of moving people to trust his line of reasoning over their own instincts and experience. That kind of burden exacts a heavier toll than any two-ton load ever could.

“Four calls,” he says, dropping onto the stool beside me. “Two committed and one leaning our way.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Alderman’s still a question mark. He’ll sit quiet through the whole meeting and wait to hear everyone else before he casts anything, but at least I got to him first. Whatever he hears tomorrow, he’ll be weighing it against what I told him tonight, not just what my father wants him to believe.”

“And your father?”

“Hasn’t made a single call that I know of.” Jonathan reaches for the wine I poured an hour ago, now room temperature, and drinks it anyway. “Which tells me everything, he thinks this resolves itself without him lifting a finger, either the board falls in line on bloodline alone, or I cave for Elizabeth’s and OncoNova’s sake before it ever reaches a vote.” He looks at me. I don’t ask the obvious question tonight. I don’t think he can admit that he could possibly acquiesce to his father’s demands until he is pressed for that decision. And that may or may not be needed depending on the vote.

“Tell me about Henry,” I say to change the subject. Something shifts in his face. He’s softer, unguarded in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times since the wedding. “He already knew about Elizabeth, about not going back to the flagship permanently. He told me he’d known for a while, that he built the stability clause because he had always hoped I’d come back after OncoNova. But knew that after investing nine years of work to help others, it would be tedious to just work to help earnings.” He turns his wine glass a slow quarter turn on the counter. “He asked about you, wants us to come out before the snow blocks the drive.”

“I’d love to.”

“I told him that.” He looks at me for a long moment, and his exhaustion seems to recede, replaced by something more present. “He asked me one thing before I left. What home means to me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him it used to be an address, now it’s a person.” His hand finds mine on the counter, his thumb tracing slow over my knuckles. “It’s been you since I said I do Jessica. I just didn’t have the words for it yet.”

I don’t trust my voice for a second, so I close the distance instead, and he meets me halfway, his hand sliding into my hair, the kiss slow and unhurried.

I can’t tell him that I’m terrified that tomorrow may take him somewhere I can’t follow. That he’ll be forced to choose the throne because he can’t bear the thought of hurting so many people. He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I feel the day’s fear finally loosen its grip. I can’t worry about something I cannot control so I don’t let it. Instead, I hold him and give him the comfort and support he needs to face Monday. We had just gotten through AdComm, and an attempt to short sell his company into oblivion, two of the toughest fights of our lives. We should have been home free with Atwell in the rearview mirror and a bright Harborlight ahead. I can’t believe fate and another father’s machinations are pulling us back into the fray.

“Whatever happens on Monday,” I say quietly, “I need you to know I’ll still be here.”

“I know.” His voice rumbles low against my cheek. “As long as you’re still here, the rest is negotiable.”

I believe him completely, I do. But I also know in my gut that beneath that cold, calm exterior is a saver. He’ll do what he needs to for the people he cares about, if that means he gives up his dreams of Harborlight, he’ll do it and tell himself it was worth it. He hasn’t considered that saving everyone else might mean losing me too.

We go to sleep in each other’s arms. I’m exhausted by the day and thinking so much my head hurts. No more strategizing. Monday will be here soon enough.