Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Briar

A fter my afternoon class, I head back to Emmett's, ready to take a shower. Maybe I'll make him dinner as a thank you for being way nicer than I expected. My expectations of what it would be like living with Emmett compared to what it's actually like are as opposite as you can get.

He didn't lie about cooking. Most of our meals come from Jensen, but I'm not complaining. Emmett leaves early to work the farm, but he's never missed a breakfast with Wren. At night, he watches television, or he's on his computer, writing things down. Last Saturday, he went out, but he was home by midnight, since I heard his headboard hit the wall. He keeps his space, and I keep mine for the most part.

My phone rings in my bag, and I grab it. When will Gillian stop treating me like I'm thirteen?

"Gill? Thank God. Come and get me, Emmett showed me his pee pee." I use a fake distressed voice, trying to freak her out.

"Briar?"

I pull the phone back to make sure the voice I'm hearing is actually who I think it is. Sure enough, the bastard is calling me.

"You need to lose this number." I click End but I don't dump the phone in my bag like I should.

It rings again, and I let it go to voicemail, but it rings again almost immediately.

I pick up. "Stop calling me. It's over."

"Wait!"

I don't say anything.

"Briar, I… I know I should've told you. But I never knew how."

"You had an entire year."

"I know." He's quiet, which he should be. Cheating bastard. "I didn't expect to fall for you, and when I did, I knew telling you would risk everything. I loved you… love you… you're my everything."

I hate that phrase. I'm not his everything. I was his regular hookup. His side piece. Only I didn't know it. All the trips, the dinners, the lazy Sunday mornings. It's too cliché now that I'm looking back at our relationship with a magnifying glass.

"Just stop. It's over. We're… over." I shift the phone to hang up.

"Where are you? Let me talk to you in person. I can't do this over the phone."

"You mean you can't manipulate me over the phone. Your charm isn't going to work, Chad." I sit on the porch steps of Emmett's house, thankful his truck isn't in the drive.

"I want to see you. I miss you."

"Miss my body, you mean?"

He always complimented me on how fit I was and how great the sex was because I'm so flexible. Now I know who I was being compared to.

"Yes… no… you know what I mean. I miss us."

I roll my eyes, bring my knees to my chest, and rest my forehead on them. "Well, I don't."

I'm lying, but not because I miss us. I miss who I thought we were and who I thought we were on our way to being.

"Yes, you do. How could you not? We were great together."

"That's your perception. Mine is different."

I hear a muffled sound. "One minute, Janice."

His secretary. "You're fucking the secretary now? How cliché can you get?"

"No, I have a call."

"Take the call, Chad. We have nothing else to say to one another."

"I'll fly to you tomorrow. Just tell me where you are."

The fact he doesn't even know where I'm from says how little we knew about one another. I hate hindsight, but when I look at our path to I love you, there's a trail of little red flags I was happy to ignore.

"Goddamn it, Janice, I said one minute."

"Bye, Chad. Lose this number." I hang up and clutch my phone.

The tickling in my nose starts. I don't want to cry. I've pushed the tears back so many times since I returned to Willowbrook, but hearing his voice stirs up all the guilt and betrayal.

Sure, our relationship wasn't ideal. He worked late, traveled a lot, but he always made up for that when he'd come to me right from the airport or after a late dinner, and he'd bring me cheesecake.

One tear falls, and the others immediately follow. My back racks with sobs as my hands try to catch every tear because Chad isn't worth them.

I hear a truck engine pull in, and I know it's Emmett. I quickly sit up and run my fingers under my eyes. I hear him get out, and damn, I wish I was locked in my room. The last thing I want is for him to see me like this.

"Hey," he says, staring at me. "You okay?"

I nod unconvincingly. "I'm good."

He sits next to me, one step down, turning to rest his back on the railing of the stairs and look out at the lake. "So not sure if you're aware or not, but I'm not blind."

My shoulders sink, and my lips betray me in a small smile. "Can we ignore it?"

He nods. "Sure, if you want." He doesn't get up, continuing to stare at the lake.

"Why are you going so easy on me?" I shouldn't ask the question that's been plaguing me. He's never pushed me for any information.

At first, I don't think he's going to answer. He never even glances my way. "When your mom dies when you're two, everyone's always asking you how you're doing. Every milestone that she should've been there, you see the question in their eyes. ‘Are you handling it okay?' Fuck. What the hell do they think? It's a stupid-ass question. One I shouldn't have just asked you." He chuckles. "I figure if you want to talk to me about it, you will. If you don't, that's okay."

"Thanks." I wrap my arms around my legs and follow his line of vision to the lake. It's so pretty here, I see why Ben returned and Jude and Emmett stayed. "He was married," I say, figuring he knows I'm pregnant, so he might as well know the whole story.

"That sucks." He doesn't turn to look at me.

"I didn't know. I swear I didn't."

"Didn't think you did." He brings one leg up and rests his forearm on it.

"I met him at a hotel. I was booked for a private lesson with a client who was having her penthouse renovated. I was trying to get up to her room, but my client never put my name on the list, and she didn't answer her phone. He saw me arguing and came over to mediate. He was so charismatic, I was instantly attracted to him. He said he worked for the hotel and assured the receptionist he'd escort me to the room himself. Turns out he was some bigwig for the company who owned the hotel chain." I remember back to that day and how at the time, I'd thought my luck was changing. He was something good coming into my life. "His job was a great reason to always take me to hotels."

"Did you at least get unlimited room service?"

A sad sort of chuckle leaves my lips. "Do you take anything seriously?"

"Plenty."

"He flew me places, said how he lived out of a suitcase because of his job. I even believed the lame excuse that he liked my small apartment because it felt like home versus his bachelor pad. Do you know how bad it sucks to feel like a fool? To feel so stupid, you question your own intelligence?" I lean my head on the railing. "I was so na?ve, so blind. And I've felt so guilty since I found out."

"Don't blame yourself."

"How can I not?" I swipe the tears falling down my face. "Oh my god, you don't need to hear any of this." I move to get up.

Despite the shame I felt when I found out that Chad was married, as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I knew I would have the baby. That no other choice was an option for me. I know firsthand what it feels like to be an unwanted child, and I couldn't give the baby up for adoption or have an abortion. Neither felt like the right decision for me.

And I knew after I'd decided to have the baby that I'd want to do it here in Willowbrook. The cost of living is way less than in Chicago, and though I have friends there, I never really connected on a deeper level with them. I want to raise my child near my sister and in the town I grew up in.

"Sit down." Only when I do does he speak again. "My uncle Wade was sitting on our porch at my graduation party. The festivities had been dying down, and I was gonna go out with my friends to celebrate. I took the chair next to him, and to my surprise, he didn't ask me if I felt like something was missing that day because my mom wasn't there. He didn't ask me anything other than what I was going to do that night. Still today, I have no idea why at that moment, it felt right to tell someone what was going on in my head, but I sat with him for a half hour and told him all of the conflicting emotions I was dealing with. About my mom not being there. Waking up to random women in our house on Sunday mornings. The fear of staying on the farm forever. The fear of ever leaving the farm."

"Why did you decide to stay?" I ask—anything to get away from talking about me.

"Oh no, sweetheart, this is your confessional. And sorry that you've chosen me to spill your heart out to."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I'm not a counselor. I'm not going to hug you or tell you you'll find someone better. I'm not going to fill you up with hope because telling you those things, treating a relationship with an asshole as a loss, isn't what you need."

"What do I need?"

"That's for you to figure out. And you will. In time. Now, go on." His attention falls back to the lake, and I miss having his eyes on me.

"There isn't much to say beyond what I've already told you except that he doesn't know I'm pregnant."

Emmett nods.

"And I don't want him to know. I don't want him to be part of my life. He has his own kids that he left to spend time with me. What kind of father does that?"

"A shitty one."

"I want him as far away from me and our baby as possible." I run my hand over my stomach.

"Understandable."

"So, no advice? You're not an advice-giver either?" I ask.

He turns to me and smirks. "Anything I'm going to tell you, you already know for yourself. You know if you tell Gillian, she can help you the best out of anyone. She raised Clayton all by herself, and she found her way to believe in love and trust someone again. But you don't want to tell her, and you need to figure out why. Maybe you just need time."

My shoulders sag when I think of what it will be like telling my big sister everything. "I don't want to see her face. She'll be so disappointed in me."

"I think as long as I'm not the father, you're good on that front."

I chuckle and shake my head, some of the weight on my shoulders lifting. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Making me laugh. Before I came here, I hadn't really laughed in a while. Until I moved in here with you."

"So, you don't hate me?" I register the surprise on his face.

"Nah, I still hate you," I say, lying through my teeth. As mad as I was, and even though I still harbor a lot of embarrassment about the past, he's shown me that he's not the person I thought he was. "You know, you haven't made one sexual comment to me since I moved in."

"Well, you're pregnant." He shrugs.

"So now I'm unattractive?"

He rises to his feet, picking up his cowboy hat. "Don't put words in my mouth."

He walks past me, and I want to grab his wrist and tug him down next to me, but I don't. The screen door bangs shut behind him, ending our conversation. I haven't wanted to follow Emmett so badly since I was a freshman in high school.

Who would've thought the man who annoys me the most would become my biggest confidant?