An Ordinary Man Book Novels & Stories

"You want a day off from being Julian Croft?" "I want a day on. As someone else." He pivots, wiping his hands on a towel. His eyes are still rimmed red from the past week, but there's something lighter flickering beneath the exhaustion. "Someone ordinary. Someone who wanders through a farmers market and buys overpriced honey and doesn't check his phone every thirty seconds." "You've never been ordinary a single day in your existence." "Then guide me." The words hook into my chest and pull. Julian Croft, the man who assembled an empire and detonated it in a single board meeting, asking me to teach him how to be unremarkable.

now everything was changing. “Do you ever miss being ordinary,” he asked, his voice soft “like one of those people who don’t have to work so hard and control an empire….. Just wake up, choose a shirt and go have coffee in a cafe?” I let my eyes travel the length of the table to the window, to the city beyond “I have had ordinary,” I said finally, the sentence slow and deliberate, “and ordinary left my father with betrayal and ruin. Nope, I don’t miss being ordinary, it’s not for me”

I said, because I wanted the nakedness of confessions in daylight, the kind that simmer into vows without ceremony. He looked at me with that warm, searching look that makes me forget how to be careful. “I thought I’d never get to be ordinary,” he said simply. “I thought the world would keep asking me for more spectacle. Then you taught me how sweet ordinary is. You taught me to want a life that doesn’t have to be impressive to be worth it.” The words landed like a benediction. I reached for his hand and squeezed until our knuckles went white. “Good,” I said. “Because ordinary is my favorite color.”

He collapsed on the sand, convulsing, the stench of urine carried far on the wind. The party crowd that had gathered to watch earlier stood rigidly, not daring to breathe. They finally understood something. The man they had laughed at as a kept husband was the head of the Thornes, someone they weren't even qualified to approach! I held Luke close and spoke gently. "Luke, don't be scared. I'm here. No one will ever bully you again. I promise." Luke clung to my neck and nodded hard, letting out a small, muffled sound.

In truth, it was never a plan—only a desperate man’s last, flailing struggle. I calculated the days. Thayer’s deadline for repayment was approaching. During this forced isolation, my parents were undoubtedly frantic with worry. Yet this was the consequence of their own indulgence—it was nothing but poetic justice. Outside, the autumn wind tossed the leaves of the trees against the glass with a soft rustle. I locked the files into the safe and turned to look at the photo on the wall: Seraphina holding her elephant plushie. Her smile revealed tiny dimples, sunlight filtering through the soft strands of her hair, scattering delicate patches of light across her cheeks.

Just incrementally, in a library, on a Tuesday, with a strange old man and a stack of books and a wolf inside me paying careful attention. It was enough.

I sat in the chair nearest the door because sitting nearest the door felt like the right instinct, and I waited, and the house waited around me, and nobody spoke. Then the front door opened. The man who walked in was tall, not as tall as Damien but close, with lighter colouring and a face that shared certain features with Damien's the way different editions of the same book share a cover. You could see the connection if you were looking for it. The jaw, the set of the eyes, the particular way he held himself like he had grown up being told he was important and then at some point stopped believing it. He was maybe thirty. He was wearing a jacket that had been expensive once and was not anymor

Young man : look at you, anyone can say that you're not an ordinary man, you might be so rich or from a great family, a person like you will never understand the struggles of us Middle aged man : how can you say that I'm a rich man? Young man : when grand pa and my uncle brought you, I noticed your clothes, they're not ordinary clothes, they seems expensive, people like us never seen them, your hand have a watch it consists of diamonds, my uncle took that watch and went to city to sell it and settle there, but he was killed by someone, just because of that watch I have no one other than my uncle and grandfather, my uncle was dead, I can't loose my grandpa too I don't know whether you're a go

When she went back to her office, she sighed one more time. Ava realized that money is really a disease. A sickness that latches onto people and makes them feel like they are better than anyone. She used to be like that. Maybe not as much as that woman is, but she used to think that she's always better than everybody else. -Flashback- Ava was walking her way to her favorite bookshop. Their car was parked not too far away, so she decided to go alone. She's looking for a new book to buy.

That's what is making all this weird. ....................................................................................... Here's the chapter I promised, please enjoy. And keep supporting "Her Man."