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She kept my son from me. She didn’t marry someone else. She was hiding my son. Keeping him away from me.
“Come on,” Chase says as he moves to his doorway.
I’m standing there staring at where she went. A sick feeling enters my gut. The man I trusted kept my son from me. I turn and bear down on him. He’s barely crossed the threshold to his condo when I swing. I’ve been boxing for years; it’s how I got the capital to start our business. Our business. That’s a bitter pill I’ll have to swallow. I don’t want to ever trust this man again.
“You fucking knew,” I bark at him as I rear back to hit him again. The first hit was pretty much a sucker punch because he didn’t know it was coming. This time, however, he’ll taste my fist and my hatred.
“What is going on?” Laya comes around the corner.
“You only get that one, Thor,” Chase says, and he pulls back, ready to hit me.
I don’t think. I only see red and lies. I let it furl again, but this time he dodges and I hit the wall. He throws a couple of punches at my body, but I don’t feel the pain. I fall back away from him.
“Stay down, man. I don’t want to hurt you, this time.”
I don’t care. He’s a Judaist. He was my best friend. It all keeps rolling through my head how he got to see my son grow and I didn’t.
Our bodies slam into the wall, and I hear the drywall give. Pictures fall around us, but I get a couple more hits in, and so does he. Finally, I tell him what he’s done to us. It’s time to bury him for real. He’ll never be a part of our company again.
“I came by to see if you wanted to teach again. I have a contract for you, but I can’t have a man working for me that would lie to my face for years.” I push him into another wall, and more glass crunches under our shoes.
“I didn’t lie. I suspected, but she told me you weren’t,” he says, but we both know it’s not true. He could have told me. He should have told me.
“I’m your brother. I should have been told.” My voice catches. I missed so much.
“She’s like a sister to me. She had no one. You left her. You were engaged to another woman.” We push away from each other, and both of us stumble back, falling to the floor.
“I wasn’t engaged.” I get to my feet. Why does this keep coming up? Briar said it last month when I had her in my arms. I’ll bury her too. She’ll never know how much she hurt me.
“Yes, you were. Your personal assistant, Shelagh, told us. She said we couldn’t see you because you went on an engagement trip. When we found out later that you’d broken up, we had just moved on. I believed what Briar told me.”
“That’s why we broke up, because she had Shelagh put the newspaper article together.” I huff then look at his fiancée and back to him. He was like a brother to me. The betrayal hurts so much, but not as much as the fact that the woman I’ve compared all to did this. “I can’t do this.” I walk out the door and slam it so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if it breaks. I look over to her door. The urge to go to it is so great, but I’ll handle this legally. I slam my fist into the call button for the elevator. Before I reach the street level, I have left a message with my attorney.
First things first, how do I get them out of my company? Second, I’m going for full custody of my son. She will regret keeping him from me. I should have known sleeping with an eighteen-year-old child would cause this.
* * *
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” Remi slides his good arm around my body and tries to help me up off the stool.
“I’m f…fucking goin ta end em boff,” I slur.
After I left Chase’s condo, I found myself wandering Seattle. I ended up here, a bar I haven’t been to in years. A place in town I used to visit regularly to forget about Briar after I screwed up with her. I can’t believe she kept my son from me.
“She is a b-bitch,” I stutter. My heart hurts to call her that, but my heart is a shattered mess in my chest.
“Who now?” Remi chuckles as he leads me out of the bar to a car service.
“Br-Briar.” I can’t talk or think straight.
“Yeah, what did she do now? Last I knew she was a saint, and you were the devil who tainted her purity.” He’s the only one of my friends who knows I slept with her.
“Fucking s-saint had my baby.” I lean against the glass and watch the world pass by me. I wish I could make everything go away as fast as this car is moving.
“She what?” Remi pulls me away from the window and stares me in the eye.
“Baby. A son. Has my eyes. Big boy too.” I smile like a loon thinking of how big he is. He’s going to be bigger than me if he keeps going like this. I think about him, but it’s all fuzzy from the alcohol. Her, Briar, I remember exactly how she looked. The pain and hate in her eyes. Wait, hate? “She hates me.” I heave, and a bucket is shoved in my face. I purge a lot of the alcohol from my system.
“She hates you? Why? Are you sure it’s your son?” Remi takes the bucket and hands me a towel. He came prepared.
