Page 16 of One More Chance
“I’m canceling Key West.”
A pause then his voice rose, too sharp and too fast. “Boss, that deal’s worth over two million dollars! We’ve already sent scouts down, already filed permits—”
I lifted my gaze to him as I put the hard hat back down and said, “I don’t care.” He stared at me as if I'd confessed I planned to burn the company down. “Listen, we’re hemorrhaging money. Fuel, labor, materials. It’s not sustainable. And Key West is a vanity project… and I’m done chasing vanity.” My voice almost broke there.
Jose took a step forward and asked, “Is this about her?”
I didn’t have to ask who he meant. My hands curled into fists on the desk. I took a breath, then another. “This is about me,” I said. “I built this place chasing numbers. Chasing attention. I had a wife who loved me. Kids who needed me. But I was out there: traveling, expanding, grinding. I was starving for… something, but I had no clue what that something was. Through it all, I let myself become someone I wouldn’t trust around my own daughter.”
The room was quiet. Jose watched me, that calculating stillness of his settling in. He had been with me from the start. The most loyal second-in-command anybody could ever ask for. Through miles of misadventures together, I had helped pull him out of the chaos of border towns and broken promises. I helped him get his green card, helped him buy land, and together we'd poured the foundation for a house his sons could grow up in. He never forgot any of those things. That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from a handshake; it’s forged in debt, in gratitude, in survival. Jose would follow me through Hell if I asked, even if he didn’t agree.
“I’m scaling back,” I said. “Local builds only. No more chasing deals states away. I want to be home by dinner. I want to show up for my kids. I want, fuck, Ineed, to fix what I broke before there’s nothing left to fix.”
Jose rubbed the back of his neck, eyes dropping to the floor. “Damn, jefe… That’s heavy.”
I shrugged. “It’s honest.”
He nodded slowly before he looked back up. In an instant, his expression hardened, slipping into business mode without a second thought, “Alright. I’ll start pulling the Florida crews back. What about the contracts?”
“Call the lawyer. Kill them. Pay what we need to pay. I don’t care.”
He hesitated for a second, then slapped my shoulder. His stone-cold facade slipped a bit as the weight of the moment broke through, “Good on you, man. Real talk, I was wondering when you were gonna come back to Earth.”
Then you should’ve fucking said something, I wanted to say. But I held it back. I knew Jose would speak up if he thought I was about to run the business into the ground… but when it came to personal matters, we both tiptoed around the edges and only ventured into those conversations when necessary.
I handed him the clipboard for the contacts of the Key West jobs. “Thanks. Now get out there and let’s fix this.”
Jose walked out, leaving the door open.
I placed my hands over my face, feeling the weight of everything settle.
What none of them knew, what no one knew, was that I had twelve years’ worth of hindsight now. And all that bravado, all that momentum… it was about to shatter.
A virus, microscopic and merciless, was already carving its path through the world. In weeks, borders would close. In months, economies would grind to dust. People would die, suffocate on their own breath while others hoarded toilet paper and hand sanitizer like it was gold. Society was about to crack and I was staring down the barrel of it, pretending I didn’t already know the trigger had been pulled.
Fuck me, things are about to go bad.
I sank into my sleek, leather chair, its refined surface cold beneath me, and stared at the desk in front of me. Paperwork. Receipts. Financials scattered and there, underneath a pile of estimates and bills, I saw a photo of Sloane and the kids in a half-buried frame.
I pulled it free and wiped off the dust with my sleeve. Set it upright. Stared at it like I was praying to an alter, recognition hitting me as I recalled that trip to the Smokies. Violet’s front teeth missing, Liam pretending he didn’t want to smile. Sloane, flushed from the sun, eyes bright.
This company gave me money, prestige… hell, it gave me the illusion of power but it never gave me home.I already had that. Yet, somehow, I had buried it under ambition, late nights, and the lies I told myselfabout success. The next steps of redemption weren’t about making more money or climbing higher. No, they meant getting things financially stable and securing the future so I could be home more. But even now, I wondered if I was too far gone to fix what I’d broken.
Can I rebuild the home I've demolished?
I threw myself into work: all of the shit that went into cancelling the Key West project, plotting the best investments to take advantage of the impending shutdowns, planning how to take care of my guys once the virus hit stateside and the housing market evaporated overnight.
The truth was, I had more reasons to cancel Key West than the impending pandemic. Yes, in my previous life that entire project had been stalled and then fucked sideways by the shutdowns and quarantines; it had proved to be one of the first major nails in the coffin of Master Builders Inc. But saving my company in this new life was not the only reason I was eager to cancel the trip to southern Florida. The thought of going down to that accursed place full of haunting memories was too much to bear… all because of who the Old Me had taken with him.
Angie.
It was our first trip together, her accompanying me to the Key West project in the midst of my divorce to Sloane. We had planned to treat it like a vacation while I was not on the job site, and the Old Me was stupid enough to believe it was a romantic lover's getaway.
Then the virus tore through the country, as it had throughout the rest of the world, and upended society as we knew it. It was as if the fucking thing was in a competition with itself to see which it could fill faster: graveyards or hospitals. Businesses weren't allowed to open, curfews enforced, travel restricted, and just… so, so many dead.
Angie and I were shut-in our hotel for months while my company, my life, and the rest of the world fell apart. Our relationship was newand I was a fucking idiot, so being quarantined together had seemed like a twisted blessing to the Old Me.
After that, Key West held a special place for us. It was where we later went to celebrate our one-year anniversary, where we went for her birthday, and ultimately it was the cause of our break-up as well.
