Page 44 of Billionaire In Vegas

Chapter Ten

“Emmaline, I’m so sorry,” I whispered hastily as I stood at the threshold of her front door, waiting for her to let me in.

She blinked at me repeatedly in surprise and rubbed at her eyes. “What? What are you doing here? Come in.”

“I’m so sorry, I hope I didn’t wake Theodora.”

I didn’t complete my thought as a voice interrupted me. “Everything okay, Emmie?”

I recognized that voice and my mouth opened to a perfect O as I saw who was standing there behind Emmaline, shirtless with messy hair.

“Hi, Lacey. Long time no see.”

I smiled and wiped my nose on my sleeve. I was snotty from way too much crying and had taken a taxi straight from the event to Emmaline’s home because I didn’t want to go back to Jude’s loft. I had foolishly given up the lease on my apartment figuring that I could look for another one after the six months with Jude were up.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I thought to myself.

“Hi, Colin.”

We awkwardly hugged. I hadn’t seen him since college and it was a shocker frankly to see him again, half-dressed in Emmaline’s home.

“Umm… so when did you two get back together? When did this happen?”

Colin and Emmaline looked at each other.

She placed a hand against his chest and said, “Give us a little privacy, ok?”

He kissed her solidly on the mouth. “Don’t take too long.”

He then walked away from me. “It’s good to see you again, Lacey.”

I smiled, still confused by his presence. As soon as he disappeared through the door, I said, “What are you doing? What’s Colin doing here? When did this all start?”

“I thought you were here to talk about you?”

I narrowed my eyes at her and sat down hard on the couch. “Spill it.”

“It’s been going on for at least a year.”

“A year!” I hadn’t been expecting that!

“Yeah. It just sort of happened,” she said, smiling. “I’ve spent years pushing him away, determined to not need him, but I’ve needed him all this time. I was being stupid. And I ended up hurting both Theodora and myself in the process. What’s the saying? Pride cometh before the fall? I was so determined that I could be a great single mom despite my age, that I refused the love and help of my child’s father. I was so stupid… we even considered getting married in Vegas when we met up—”

“Hold on. Rewind. You two met up in Vegas? When we were all together? Like on our trip?”

She blushed. “Yeah. Sorry about that. He just popped up. I wasn’t expecting that. I actually went to Vegas to get over him. We had just had an argument and I was determined to end it with him, but he showed up at the bar that night—”

“So, that’s why you weren’t around to save me from myself!? I got beat up, you know. Jude had to rescue me.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I was too busy making out with my ex in the hallway…. where unfortunately, Misha caught us.”

“So Misha knows too? I feel so left out of the loop!” I narrowed my eyes at her. “So is that why you were MIA the next day when I found out that I had married Jude?”

She nodded guiltily. “I was hiding Colin in my bedroom.”

I shook my head. “So did you guys get hitched too?”

“Oh no! Even in our inebriated state, we realized that would cause a lot of confusion for Theodora, so we wanted to do it the right way.”