Unsuitable
Page 97

But my boy has grown up. He’s a man now.
And I’m…alone.
Well, I have Cece. But it’s not the same.
So, with my bird having flown from the nest, I drove back to London and came back to work. I was supposed to have the day off, but I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. So, I came in and helped out Jasmine, one of my part-time employees.
That’s right. I have employees. I am the proud owner of a little chic coffee shop called Thessa’s.
And, yes, I named it after the place where Kas is from. Well, he’s from Thessaloníki, but it’s not exactly easy to say, so I went with Thessa’s, and I think it has a nice ring to it.
After my name was cleared, Cece encouraged me to pursue compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care about the money. I was just glad to be free of the blame. To have that black mark taken from my name and to be able to apply for jobs without having to tick that box was amazing in itself.
But then Cece pointed out that I could put whatever money I got toward Jesse’s future.
So, I got a lawyer, and she pursued a case for wrongful imprisonment.
My case was won, and I nearly fell off my chair when my lawyer sat me down and told me what I would be getting.
It was enough to set Jesse and me up for the future.
The first thing I did was put a deposit down on a house. Cece and I couldn’t bear to live in the apartment anymore, and I would never want Jesse living there. There were just too many bad memories in that place.
It wasn’t our home anymore. Damien had taken that from us.
So, we moved our things out of there and started afresh in our new home.
And then, a month later, Jesse moved in permanently with us.
It was the best moment of my life.
I had applied for full guardianship, and after jumping through hoops, it was granted.
I remember the first day he moved back home. Just being there with him, seeing how happy he was, made all the bad stuff that I’d had to go through to get to that point worth it.
I wasn’t going to look back and wish that things had been different. I could look back and be angry all I wanted, but it wasn’t going to change the past.
I had Jesse with me now, and that was all that mattered.
But I was still unemployed. Jesse was at school, and Cece was working. I felt lost. I spent a lot of those days wallowing and missing Kas, wondering how he was doing.
I’d never been a wallower, and I was starting to drive myself crazy.
One day, when I was out for my morning run, things changed for me. As I was running through the town center, I happened to see a For Sale sign in the window of a cute little coffee shop.
Before I knew it, I was stopping, peering in through the window, and then putting the number for the estate agent in my phone. I headed back home and called the estate agent, asking for the price of the place. I also found out they were selling the shop along with the equipment.
It wasn’t as expensive as I had expected. Don’t get me wrong; it was a lot of money, but it was affordable for me.
I asked if I could view it. The estate agent told me she had a free spot that day.
So, I got showered and changed, and I headed back to the coffee shop where the agent was waiting outside for me.
The minute she let me inside, I just knew. It was meant to be mine. It was perfect. I loved everything about it.
I asked her why the owner was selling and selling so reasonably. She just said they had to leave the country unexpectedly due to a sick relative, and they wouldn’t be coming back for some time.
As awful as it sounds, their bad fortune became my good fortune.
So, I told the agent I would think about it. But my mind was already made up.
It would cut into the money, but it would give me a good income to help with Jesse’s future. And there would still be a decent chunk to get him started in whatever he decided to do when he left school.
I put an offer in on the coffee shop the next day. Lower than the actual asking price.
It was accepted an hour later.
I couldn’t stop smiling. And I couldn’t help but think that Kas would have been proud of me.
He was the first person I wanted to call. But, of course, I couldn’t because I didn’t know where he was, and I no longer had his phone number.
After he’d left, I’d deleted it, knowing that I would probably break down and call him. And I couldn’t do that.
So, I had no way to contact him.
And then I realized that I also knew absolutely nothing about running a business.
It wasn’t just about making coffee—even though I do make an awesome cup of coffee. This was running a business. It was huge.
And I thought I would probably fuck it up.
I started to panic, thinking I’d made a mistake, before rationality decided to make an appearance.
Look at everything I’d done…overcome. I could run a fucking coffee shop.
I could do it.
So, I got Cece’s laptop out and went searching for business management courses. I found one at my local college. The classes were at night, so it was perfect.
I enrolled and was accepted.
Then, I focused on making the shop mine. I gave the place a lick of paint and put my own stamp on it, and then I renamed the coffee shop to Thessa’s. It felt right to call it that. It was because of Kas that my name was cleared. He was the reason I could afford the place.
And I just wanted something of his, some connection to him, to remind myself that he was real. Because, sometimes, it felt almost unreal. Like Kas had never actually existed. Like he’d never really been mine.