The Boss Project by Vi Keeland

Oh, God.

Colette noticed my face and nodded. “Yeah. It was screwed up.”

It was difficult not to take what she’d just told me and focus on Merrick, but he wasn’t my patient. He wasn’t even my boyfriend anymore. So I forced myself back to what I should’ve been doing—helping Colette untangle her feelings.

“Let’s back up a moment. It sounds like you’re starting to question whether the things you’ve been holding Merrick accountable for are really his fault. And at the same time, you’re reminded of things you kept from him when you were once friends. You’re bringing a lot of guilt to the surface. Why do you think that’s coming up now? Because you’re leaving?”

Colette smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’m taking some clients with me. That’s against my noncompete. Merrick won’t be happy about it, though it won’t make a blip in the firm’s profit. But I also know he won’t do anything about it because I’m not the only one who’s held him accountable for what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only person who was tougher on Merrick than me was Merrick.”



• • •



That evening, even though it was Friday night, I didn’t feel like going home. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Merrick since my session with Colette earlier in the day. I’d even broken my week-long streak of staying on my own floor and not going upstairs in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be found. It was just as well since I was feeling vulnerable, and the last thing I needed was a reason to justify the way he’d acted and give myself hope that things could work out.

It was a beautiful night, so I decided to take the bus to Glass Bottle Beach in Brooklyn instead of going home. I walked the shoreline for an hour, picking up sea glass and sidestepping sharp pieces the ocean hadn’t taken for a long-enough tumble yet. But even my happy place wasn’t cutting it tonight. I sat down on a big rock at the ocean’s edge to watch the sunset. The sky lit with a mix of purples and pinks, and I closed my eyes to listen to the soft jingle the beach played as it hit all the glass. It seemed louder with each breath—so much so that I opened my eyes to look around and see if the waves had changed. But it wasn’t the ocean jingling; it was a set of keys.

I blinked, assuming the person holding them in his hand was an apparition.

But he wasn’t.

I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun as my heart started to race. “Merrick? What are you doing here?”

“I came to find some lucky sea glass.”

“Did you know I was here?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been coming every night around this time for the last few days.”

“But…why?”

He smiled sadly. “Is there room on that rock for two?”

I was afraid, but I couldn’t stop the hope from blooming in my chest. I scooted over to make room for him. “Sure.”

Merrick sat down beside me and looked over at the sunset. Since I had to face his direction to watch, I used it as an opportunity to take a closer look at him. It looked like he’d aged a few years in just a few weeks. I was angry as shit at the man, but I was human, and it looked like he needed a friend. So I pulled out my lucky orange sea glass and held it out to him.

“Give it a rub. It looks like you could use it.”

His eyes washed over my face before he shook his head. “I’ve treated you like shit the last two weeks, and you offer me something you treasure.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t been doing its job anyway, lately. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Merrick reached over and closed my open palm, leaving the glass tucked inside my hand. He stared down at my fist for the longest time before lifting his eyes to meet mine. “The day of Amelia’s accident, I found out she was having an affair and was also more than four months pregnant. I knew it was possible it could be someone else’s child, but I somehow convinced myself it wasn’t.” He shook his head. “I was certain the baby was mine. I was so damn angry at Amelia for what she’d done. But I eventually found a way to let some of that go by falling in love with my daughter.” Merrick swallowed. “It was like I had all this hatred and animosity in my heart, and the more I fell in love with a child I’d never met, the more those feelings pushed out the bad ones. I read to her for hours every night, played her all of my favorite songs, and even told her stories about her mother and me when we met in college. The nurses gave me my own stethoscope because I would borrow theirs to listen to her heartbeat all the time.”

It didn’t matter that Merrick had broken my heart, I opened my hand and entwined my fingers with his, keeping my sea glass inside our meshed palms.

“Over the next few months, I had to make a lot of difficult medical decisions. The more time that passed, the more Amelia’s life was at risk. But Eloise needed her mother because she wouldn’t have survived if she was born too early.”

“You had to make all those decisions for them by yourself?”

He nodded. “Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she wasn’t close to many people. But at the time, I wasn’t even sure I knew what she’d want, considering I’d had no idea she was having a long-term affair with another man. After a few months, Amelia’s health took a turn for the worse. It turned out she had some blood clots that were breaking off. It was still pretty early for the baby to be born—only twenty-nine weeks. But I agreed to try a new drug because they were both at risk. It caused Amelia to go into early labor. Eloise was born and went right to the NICU, but Amelia just kept declining. None of the medications were working.”