32. Adrian

Chapter 32

Adrian

I didn't know what to say to her. It felt like hours passed as I stared at her message, watching as the little dots bounced at the bottom of the screen over and over before disappearing time and time again as I sat in my empty office.

I wanted to reply.

But every time I went to move my thumbs, it was as if my brain wasn't quite connected right to my hands, and everything just…stopped. I couldn't think of the right words to say, couldn't come up with a good enough answer that I would be happy with.

Days had passed since she'd been in the hospital, and I knew that although her anxiety the last few weeks had likely stemmed from the worry of telling me about the pregnancy, it was almost certainly still there for reasons obvious to both of us, now—I was uncomfortable with our situation. She was likely still anxious, and I wanted to fix it, but I found myself…stuck.

Until my phone started ringing, and a different Riley name popped up on my screen.

Funnily enough, my thumbs worked again. "Hey, David…"

"My office. Immediately."

Click.

I pulled the phone from my ear, checking if the call was still connected.

It was gone.

What…the fuck?

My heart rate kicked up as my hands grew sweaty, and horror hit me like a freight train. Does he know? How could he know? Did Ava tell him?

Is that why she texted me?

It felt as though an arrow had pierced me straight through the gut, bleeding me dry as I pushed myself up on unsteady legs. My chair moved behind me, slamming into the bookshelves behind my desk, knocking over a framed photo of Lucas and a strange glass bowl of clear pebbles someone had placed in here long enough ago that I'd never thought to ask about it.

I didn't bother packing away my laptop or the paperwork that was strewn across my desk. I shoved my phone into my pocket and grabbed my jacket, slipping from my private office so quickly I couldn't even remember making the decision to do it.

Michael stood in the hallway with a binder clutched to his chest. "Adrian?"

"Emergency," I said. "Hold down the fort."

His brows came together as I passed, but the subtle nod was enough to give me the tiniest glimmer of calm. "All right. Good luck with…?"

"Don't fuckin' ask, please."

————

Every second of the walk to the car, every second I sat in traffic, and every second spent in that goddamn elevator on the way up to David's floor felt like torture. I'd texted him three times on the way over, trying to get an answer out of him regarding what this was about.

He didn't reply.

But even as I stepped through the hallway and his assistant buzzed me in, the smallest glimmer of hope remained that I wasn't about to walk into what could be the second-worst conversation I would have to have in my life.

Three steps.

Two steps.

One.

Pushing open the door of David's office, I came face to face with the man I'd considered one of my best friends for nearly fifteen years, his face made of stone and his bloodshot eyes trained on me.

I could feel the blood drain from my face.

He didn't move as I shut the door behind me. He didn't move as I took a breath in, still as a statue, for once feeling small under his gaze—and he was a full foot shorter than me.

His mouth opened, and before the angry, spiteful, seething words came out, I knew. I knew it in my gut. "What the fuck is wrong with ‘ya, Adrian?"

Spittle flew from his mouth as he took a single step toward me.

"I trusted ‘ya. Wrongfully, apparently. You lied to my face, ‘ya took my daughter to the goddamn fuckin' Hamptons at my request, you pranced around telling me about all these women you're seein'," he scolded, one fat finger pointed in my direction. "Meanwhile, you're fuckin' her behind my back. She's twenty-fuckin'-five, Adrian. She's my kid!"

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if there was anything to say. I'd fucked up, horribly, and I knew I would pay the price for it at some point, but at least when I envisioned this happening Ava had been beside me. She was supposed to be here for this.

But she wasn't. She was somewhere else, nearly twelve weeks pregnant.

Oh, God, did he know about that, too?

"David," I gulped. "I need you to calm down."

"Calm down?" he laughed, that pointed finger flying in my direction. "You expect me to calm the fuck down when you've been fuckin' my goddamn kid? Is it that hard for ‘ya to find something to get your dick wet that it had to my own flesh and blood?"

My pulse thundered in my ears as he took another step toward me. Had anyone asked me before today, I would have confidently told them that David Riley was not the type to lay hands on someone else—but what I'd done might have changed that. "That's not it…"

"Don't fuckin' tell me what it is or isn't," he barked.

"Just let me explain." I took a hesitant step toward him, trying to remain hopeful he wouldn't swing at me. "I didn't mean…"

"I didn't mean to," he parodied, putting on the most average accent he could instead of his usual half-Boston and half-New Yorker twang. Bile rose up my throat, burning the dry flesh. "What, ‘ya tripped and fell and landed cock first in my goddamn daughter? Were ‘ya ever actually goin' on dates, Adrian, or was that all just a dramatic show for me?"

"I was," I insisted. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my suit jacket to conceal the shaking. "Genuinely, I was."

He scoffed as he spun on his heel, sauntering over to his desk with his freshly polished black loafers clacking on the ground. "As if I can believe ‘ya after all this," he barked.

He watched me from across the room, his hands closing into shaking fists. I didn't understand how this had happened, how we'd gotten to this point, how everything had seemed to fall apart in a matter of days. This felt like psychological torture.

"Is that why ‘ya didn't call me when she went to the hospital?" he said, a hollow laugh creeping up his throat. "I saw ‘ya chatting to her at that event. Looked back five minutes later and both of ‘ya had fucked off. Didn't want me to know you'd snuck off together, huh?"

I steeled my jaw. Fuck. At least, from that, I could make the assumption that he probably didn't know she was pregnant, but it felt like shit to be called out for doing the one thing she'd insisted I not do. Part of me wished I hadn't forgotten my phone in that stairwell and had called him while we were in the ambulance. At least then this all would have come out at the same time, with both of us in attendance.

But she'd done this without me.

She'd left me to deal with the consequences, and a single text of "Can we please talk?" would never have fixed this.

"Fuckin' disgusting," he said, leveling a glare at me. "Stay the hell away from my kid, Adrian. And stay away from me, too, while you're at it."

"You're just going to throw away fifteen years of…"

"Oh, don't fuckin' fifteen years me. Clearly, those meant fuckin' nothin' to ‘ya," he spat. The veins across his bald head protruded, one of them coming all the way down to his eye and making it look as if it were bulging. "You said yourself that ‘ya have enemies on your board, did you not?"

I blinked. What the fuck did that mean?

"Get within a hundred feet of my daughter again, and I'll see to it they've got everything they need to kick ‘ya off."

I stilled. My nails dug so hard into the palms of my hands that I worried I was drawing blood. "David, please."

"Nah," he laughed. "Don't fuckin' please me. You're hangin' on by a thread at Stone & Co., and I will gladly take a pair of fuckin' scissors to it."

I tried to breathe in, but my throat felt so raw, so swollen, it was as if the air wouldn't go anywhere. Adrenaline rushed through my system, sending my pulse skyrocketing to the goddamn heavens. I couldn't deal with this, couldn't handle it, couldn't fathom how I'd let things get so out of control that I'd found myself here. "We wanted to tell you together," I said, my voice barely level, barely calm. "I didn't mean for this to happen."

"Together?" he laughed. "Christ, do ‘ya love her or some shit? How deep does this go?"

"I…"

Fuck, did I?

Surely not. I hadn't allowed myself to think long enough about that to have come to any sort of conclusion—love had been off-limits for so long, and although I'd let myself believe that it could be possible with her, I hadn't stopped to consider if it was genuinely in the works or if I was following a path of potential and not certainty.

And if I did…

Surely, that feeling wasn't returned. Not when she'd done what she'd done.

"Get the fuck out of my office, Adrian."