She sighed. He was going to need a little help here. Fine. She could explain this to him. Then she was leaving.
“You need to do more,” she told him. “You need to do something important. You’ve been given every opportunity, and if you use your money and success and position to buy a soda company to make drinks for kids that are called troll spit, you are absolutely wasting all of it. And I can’t be around to watch that.”
He frowned. “I’m not wasting anything. I give money to charity.”
“You do,” she said. “But you randomly write checks to organizations. Those organizations appreciate it, I’m sure. But they don’t really mean anything to you. They don’t make you passionate. I know that Hot Cakes doesn’t make you passionate either. I know you’re here because of the guys. And that is awesome. Your friendships make you passionate. But you don’t care about Hot Cakes. Not really. Hell, sometimes I’m not sure how much you care about Warriors. At least not as it is right now.”
She felt herself frown as she said that out loud realizing that it was true. And that she was just now actually realizing that herself.
“I know that Warriors was your creation. Still is. But I think it’s… not exactly what you want it to be. But instead of making it into more, you just keep doing the same thing with it. And I don’t think you care about soda.”
Ollie was frowning deeply now. “Does anyone care about soda?” he asked.
“I have no idea. It would be hard for me to imagine,” she agreed. “But the point is, you need something to care about and I’m tired of you not looking for that. Not trying for that. I’ve been right here, for five years, supporting everything you’ve wanted to do—probably more than I should have—and made everything easy for you. I think that you need to figure out what you want and I think you need to work for it.”
“Work for what?”
“For the things you want.”
“What are those?”
She blew out a breath. “That’s what you need to figure out, Ollie. You need to figure out what you care about. I think Warriors just happened to you. I’m not saying you regret it, but I do think you wish some of it was different. Hot Cakes just happened to you. That was all Aiden. And now, when you go looking for something of your own, you land on soda? And you want to call it troll spit? Come on. You’re better than that.”
Notably, he didn’t argue with her about Warriors not being what he wanted it to be, nor did he declare that he loved owning Hot Cakes and thought that was incredibly important work.
“And you think everything is easy for me?” he asked.
“Yes.” She laughed. “Very.”
“So you think I’m…” He lifted a brow, as if challenging her to fill in that blank.
Well, she was ready.
“Entitled. Spoiled. Brilliant. A little lazy. Creative. Infuriating. One of my favorite people. And full of yourself.”
He just sat blinking at her.
“And clueless,” she added after a few seconds.
“Is that it?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure I can come up with a few more. Those cover the basics.”
“You think I’m lazy?”
“I also said brilliant and creative.”
He studied her, his eyes narrowed. “You also said one of your favorite people.”
She nodded. “I did.”
“So why are you handing me a resignation letter?”
“Because my contract with Fluke Inc. requires I write one. The contract, by the way, that none of you even remember that I had to sign.”
She knew very well she could have gotten away with not turning that letter in. Sure, Oliver might have thrown a little fit and Cam might have dug into his paperwork when he had a tiny niggle in the back of his memory about a contract. But her bosses had become very dependent on her knowing all of the paperwork details about the business. If she’d told them she didn’t have to write a letter, they probably would have believed her.
Which was why she couldn’t do that. She’d never manipulate their trust in her.
“So you want to quit? Even though you just said you really like me and you know that I need to find something that matters to me? Don’t you think I need you if I’m going to do that?”
She put a hand on her hip. Oh man, she’d love for this guy to need her. For more than booking plane reservations and writing emails and making sure he didn’t eat room service every night at the hotel where they’d both been living for the past ten months. Not that she was complaining. They both had penthouse suites. The hotel room was nicer than her apartment in Chicago, and that had been really nice. The guys paid her well, what could she say?
“Why do you need me to help you figure out what you need to be doing with your life?” she asked, truly curious about his answer to that question.
“Because you know me better than anyone,” he said easily.
Her heart flipped in her chest, then fell to her stomach. He wasn’t wrong. She did know him. Probably better than he knew himself. But that was the problem. Oliver needed to get to know himself. He needed to figure out what he wanted. He needed to stop being dependent on everyone around him to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do.
“This is all on you, sorry,” she said.
“So you really are quitting?” He actually looked and sounded concerned now. Finally.
She nodded. “I am.”
“You’re really that pissed about the soda company?” he asked. “Fine. I won’t buy it.”
“No, Ollie, that’s not it.” She sighed. “Well, that’s not all of it. That’s just symbolic.”
“So why are you quitting, then?”
“Because… I can’t be in love with you and work for you. And the only one of those two things I can change is the working for you part.”
2
The guys were going to kill him.
Ollie scrubbed a hand over his face.
They wouldn’t be surprised, of course. But they were going to be pissed.
They’d all known that Piper quitting was a risk and that one day she’d probably wise-up and lose her patience and that would be it.
They’d also all known that when it happened there was a 90 percent chance it would be because of Ollie.
The other 10 percent chance was that it would be because of Ollie and Dax together.
And now it had finally happened.
If it came down to choosing between him and Piper, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how that debate would end up. Or how short the discussion would be before they decided they wanted and needed her more.
That was only one of the reasons he hadn’t told them yet.
The other was because he was still processing the part where she’d said she loved him.
What was he supposed to do with that?
She wasn’t just supposed to say that out loud right to him, was she? He had not been expecting that. The guys and their girlfriends had insinuated for a while now that Piper might have a crush on him but no, he hadn’t expected her to ever say anything herself.
It was a might have. A crush. Okay, they were adults and maybe adults didn’t have crushes exactly, but everything anyone had said suggested that it was just that Piper thought he was interesting at times and that she didn’t hate spending time with him.