Aw, fuck. As if the disaster with the newspaper wasn’t enough, Dad thought it was a good time to corner me for more First Words? “Still not the one,” I told Dad. I looked at the poor girl he had dragged into my office. Dressed to Impress in her Sunday Best, with all the capitals. She was cute, but obviously uncomfortable in the heels that bumped her up a few inches and she kept shifting her shoulders as if it might settle her dress. “Sorry,” I told her. “I’m not sure what he said, but he’s a meddling old man without much sense. My secretary can show you out.” Joce was used to it by now. She tried to keep Dad from doing it, but he was technically still co-CEO with me; there wasn’t much she could do to stop him.
The woman blushed, and I felt sorry for embarrassing her. She still bravely gave her First Words: “Thank you for your time, Mister Prince.”
Not even close. At this point I was giving a huge opening for anyone to say my words and they were still missing them by a mile. It was stupid; I didn’t want to meet my soulmate right now, not while cleaning up ‘lyssa’s mess.
Joce led the woman out and closed the door behind them, and I rounded on Dad’s grumbling. “Damn it, I told you to stop ambushing me! I don’t have any soulwords - what will it take to get that through your thick skull?” It was a complete fucking lie, a stab to my heart each time I said it, but I didn’t have any other way to make Dad back off.
Dad completely dismissed the reason for my anger and latched on to the familiar argument with a roll of his eyes. “Everyone has soulwords, son. You’ve hidden yours from the world but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The other half of your soul is out there. You have no idea how good it will feel to find them.”
“About as good as it felt for you when mom died?”
Fuck. Fuck, my mouth. That was too far and I knew it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t - well, I did. But not to hurt you.” Fuck, explaining this with that god damn hurt look on his face. How do I even? “I just - I can’t go through that. I can’t have someone just to - well, you know.” Mom and Dad were soulmates. That bond went beyond marriage and promises and blood. But with the extreme highs came the extreme lows. Reminding Dad of losing Mom was just cruel, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
The damage was done. There was no fixing it. Nothing could bring Mom back.
“Your mother was special,” Dad said. He wouldn’t look at me, instead looking out the window and down to the street.
“Everyone says that about their soulmate.” And everyone was right, so I tried not to sound condescending.
“Everyone is right,” Dad said, echoing my thought. “You could be with 100 other people - 1000 even - and not a one of them would compare. I don’t understand why you don’t want that.”
How do you explain that you’d been hurt by too many partners pretending to be matches? At this point I just wanted someone who wasn’t a gold digger or a trophy. Someone who could be a friend. Yes, I craved a match. But close enough was all I’d get.
“This isn’t something you can force,” I tried.
“I want to see you happy. Happy and in love, with a child to care for of your own.”
Happy. That was a pipe dream. A fairy tale told to children who hadn’t seen the rough side of the world. I didn’t see how Dad could still believe in it. “I can’t force a mark, Dad. You know that. I don’t have words.” Lies. And maybe Dad never gave up because he could see right through them.
“I built this company on your mother’s dream, you know,” he said suddenly. “She was always at her happiest when she was helping people. Finding matches so they could be as happy as we were. She wanted to have a ball for you.”
I’d heard it before, and also knew the rest of the story. “But finding matches is tough work. It’s not like finding two identical cards. It takes years for us to build the databases that bring likely matches together. So we had to expand and started helping those with fading marks divorce failed matches, adding them to our database with proof of their marks - and blacklisting abusers and criminals. In order to be an angel to some, we became a bogeyman to others. Mom hated that.” I had no idea why he was bringing it up now.
“She hated the thought that we would be alone more. Never finding your match? Tyr, she’d be crying.”
Ah. The guilt trip. Dad was great at the guilt trip. “I don’t know what you want me to do. Science hasn’t even figured out how and why marks work. Should I, what, go to church? Even the devil had a mark. Those of us without are rare. Besides, as you just pointed out, we’re the bogeyman to a lot of different people. How could I possibly keep a match safe?”
“We have nothing to fear,” Dad huffed. “We’re legit, and can buy bodyguards if any of those threats become real enough to warrant it.”
“Because that’s a sexy match. ‘Come stay at my house full of bodyguards who will watch you all the time.’ That’s more like some twisted plot of a movie then something people actually do.” Dad watched too many action movies. He probably thought people actually could hire assassins and kidnappers without anyone finding out, when the whole point of those movies was that someone always figured it out.
“Sexier than saying ‘I can’t be with you because someone may, someday, decide to hurt you to get to me.’”
“But isn’t that the truth?” I asked. And a second core reason I couldn’t stand the thought of actually finding my match. “Someday we may blacklist the wrong person, get caught up with the wrong people, or even help one on the wrong side of some gang mess and anyone we care about is suddenly at risk of getting kidnapped, tortured, or even killed. Not everything we do is sunshine and roses.”
“Your mind goes to dark places. And you wonder why I think you need some happiness?”
My turn to twist the subject until guilt popped up. “You’ve heard of the new crew that came in to inspect the old strip mall off the interstate?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. Rumor is they work for the digger.”
Dad sucked in a breath, and I knew he was thinking of the same emails I was. “The digger? Around here?”
I nodded. The threat was vague, but everyone had a friend, or a friend of a friend, who knew something about the digger crew. If they truly were getting close to us then some of those emails and letters could be legit threats. I moved to stand by Dad, trying to see what he saw. Redbird’s was in clear view. They’d hit a rough patch when the owner and lead baker had broken his arm and we’d taken them in quickly. The bakery would recover fast and often supplied food for Balls. It was in our best interest to make sure they stayed in business. Outside the delivery man was squatting next to the chalk sign and carefully rewriting the board.
The man didn’t particularly stand out, but I’d noticed him a few times. He never seemed to be in any sort of uniform, so I guessed he didn’t have a job. Or if he did it wasn’t a steady one. Sometimes he seemed to just be wandering the streets. It was possible he was a friend or relation of one of the employees; that would certainly explain him hanging around the bakery when he didn’t work there.
“The digger is a ghost,” Dad said, and it took my mind a moment to catch up.
“Ghost stories have a grain of truth in them,” I countered. “It’s up to the police to investigate. The most we could possibly do is hire a PI to look into the leak that splashed across the news this morning and see if it’s related.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the mop of brown hair until he had returned back into the shop, and I shook off the urge to go and ask after the lunch deliverer. I might be a rich guy, but damn it, I wasn’t a creepy stalker.
And Dad could never find out that a random stranger had held my attention longer than any of the potential soulmates he’d paraded past me.
“Do you really want to put stock in a rumor?” Dad asked.
Again I had to drag my thoughts back to the conversation, but it was easier now that Redbird’s bird was out of sight. “Do you really want to chance it? With all the changes that might be happening, what if it’s not just gossip?”
“Change is inevitable.”
“And with it comes risk,” I reminded him. “Look, I’m not saying we have to start acting like we’ve got state secrets or anything, but we could do with a bit of caution. Including not making new enemies by bringing their daughters around to try and gobble up a piece of the pie.”
Dad frowned.
“They’re gold diggers, dad, and they don’t fucking like being turned down.”
“The last one was sweet. You wouldn’t know, seeing as how you didn’t give her a chance-”
“Her name is Evelyn, her father owns Derby Delights, and as part of an engagement of any kind they expect first bid for any outside events we host,” I sighed. “And that’s not an assumption. Her sister married the owner of a construction company, and he complains about it enough when you see him every Tuesday night for poker.”
Dad frowned in concentration, and I let him think about it for a time while I went back to my desk to sit down. “You mean Terrance’s wife?”
“Digger could mean gold digger, you know,” I offered. “But do you really want to take a chance on offending the wrong one?”
“Thousands of people pass through our town every year,” Dad said as he collapsed into a chair. Between the meeting earlier, the PR team hounding our heels for an hour afterword, and the general stress this morning, my office was a mess. I tossed the remains of the bagel sandwich and the mostly-untouched tea in the trash. The pie was in my drawer still; I’d throw it out later. After two hours of sitting out without refrigeration it probably wasn’t good any more, but Dad would still try to eat it.
“I’m not sure I get your point,” I said when dad stayed silent.
“It’s thousands of opportunities to meet your match - and you’re missing them.”
Of course it was about soulmates. When wasn’t it? “You should head home,” I told him. “It’s getting late. I just have a few things to wrap up and then I should be home for dinner. I need to make sure the PR team has calmed the fires down enough that we won’t be walking into a press storm tomorrow.”
“Fine,” dad sighed. “For now, you win. I’ll see you at home.”
It was a relief to see him leave. I didn’t want to talk about my match anymore. Yes, there were thousands of people on the street but it would be almost impossible for my words to come out of their mouths. Not without some prompting. I would definitely be the one to speak first.
I went back to the window and looked down, wondering if the delivery man was out again. Dad kept fucking pushing, and it was getting harder and harder to keep the truth from him. The truth would have dad in tears and mom rolling in her grave. Lord knows I spent two days locked in my room, crying and puking my guts up when I found the words. Thank fuck dad just thought I was sick. I brushed my hair behind my ear and let my fingertips graze the words nestled right in my hairline, hidden from sight and so very faint and small. Even I had barely been able to read them.
MR Prince please
What kind of soulmate could I be with first words begging so obviously?
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