Page 97

Brett stilled. “You didn’t say you had company.”

I forced a smile but inside, I was freaking out. I wasn’t ready to see him. I definitely wasn’t ready to talk. How could I be in the same room with him and not mention the baby? I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until I decided what to do.

I knew what I was going to do. I was going to have a baby. But I wasn’t rational. Any decision I made would be in haste. Any choice he made would be out of obligation. I had nine months to figure out what to do. Nine months to let him go. I could already feel the impending ache piercing my chest to reach my heart.

“Sorry. You distracted me.” I slipped out from between him and the wall. “This is Holly. Holly, Brett. She came over for dinner. We’ve just been hanging out.”

Holly’s eyebrow lifted, and she tipped her glass of wine to her lips.

“I should’ve sent you a text before I headed over,” he said. “I can come back later.”

“Are you sure?” I was torn. I ached for him to hold me and tell me everything would be okay. But I didn’t trust my ability to be sensible. I couldn’t make decisions based on emotions. Loving him wasn’t enough. I’d loved Jeff. Comparing them wasn’t fair. They were nothing alike. But the situation was the same.

“You should stay,” Holly said.

“I don’t want to intrude.” He touched my cheek. “I’ll come back later.”

“Stay.” The moment the word slipped out, I wanted to swallow it down.

He leaned in and breathed me in. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

I smiled, feigning everything was fine between us, but I was emotionally wrecked. “Are you hungry?” I stepped back and entered the kitchen. “I was about to make dinner.” Because Holly had spent the last hour listening to me sob about my situation. We’d talked about Matti and Jeff. Then she’d called out for work tonight at the bar because she knew I needed her.

Only now Brett was here. I needed him. My heart hurt. I’d done this. I’d complicated whatever this was between us.

“I can eat.” He sat on the bench to take off his boots. “Whiskey would be nice.”

I cornered Holly by the sink. “You have to stay because I’m weak around him.”

“He’s fucking gorgeous. When you said biker, I was thinking beard, rough around the edges, a bit dirty and you know what I mean by dirty.”

“I can’t do this,” I whispered as I reached above my head for the whiskey.

“I should go,” she whispered back. “You don’t need me here when you tell him.”

“No,” I begged. “Please, don’t go. I can’t tell him. Not yet.” I splashed a few inches of whiskey into the glass. “I can’t do this to him.”

“You don’t have a choice,” she quietly snapped.

I glanced over my shoulder. Brett strode across the kitchen and took the glass of whiskey from my fingers. “Thanks.”

“How did it go with Lili?” I asked.

A lazy smile found his lips. “Fuck, baby, she was cute as hell.” He tipped the whiskey to his lips. “She talked from the time she got into the hearse until I dropped her off at her mom’s.”

“You drive her around in a hearse?” Holly slid onto a stool at the island.

I’d asked the same question the first time he mentioned the hearse. “It’s a flatbed truck.”

“I talked with Natalie and Henri.” He pulled folded papers from the inside pocket of his cut.

My heart rabbited. The last time he’d handed me papers, he’d been served a restraining order. I unfolded the papers.

“She’s not contesting the divorce,” he said.

“She’s giving you joint custody?”

“I think she’s finally done fighting with me.” He leaned against the counter and crossed his legs at the ankles. “We have another reason to celebrate.” He tipped the whiskey to his lips.