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“An hour, three exams, and eight vials of blood later, I am sitting on the exam bed in the private room, waiting for Lennox to come back and tell me that she didn’t find anything and let me go home.
“Well, I have good news. I figured out what is wrong with you, and it’s not fatal.”
“Uh yeah, I could’ve told you that. So, what’s the prognosis, doc?”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Oh fuck!”
Aryan
“When you realize what you’ve messed up, it is going to destroy you. Trust me, I know I was blessed to have gotten a second chance, but it’s not always like that,” Peter says to me as D and Lennox walk away. I don’t even bother replying. I look at Peter and walk away from the hotel so that I can get to my own appointment on time.
My client called when I was halfway to the appointment to reschedule, so I headed home instead to wait for Brook’s call. I hate to admit that Peter’s words got to me, but they have. I make my way to my workshop, where I put the box Brooklyn found in my closet. I take it off the shelf, setting it on the table before digging the key out of my wallet and unlocking the top. It has been more than a decade since I have looked in here. The mechanism unlocking sounds like a gun going off in the quiet of the room. Lifting the lid with shaking hands, I look inside at the contents I placed in here for safekeeping.
If only things could have been different, if only that one decision had been a different decision, my life wouldn’t be what it is right now. I would be a different person, but instead, I am a broken man, a man who can no longer love a woman fully even when she deserves it. I can’t even talk about what is in this box. All of my brothers healed as they found love with their wives, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I think something broke inside of me that nigh. I was so young, too inexperienced to be able to process what I lost that night. How can I love someone? There wasn’t enough of me left to give to someone else. I put my memories back in the box, lock it, and put it back on the shelf. I needed my mother. Yeah, my other mother was wonderful, and she loved me, loved us fiercely, but she shouldn’t have had to. My mother should have been here for me, for us. Fucking decisions changed everything.
I will stay beside Brook for as long as I can, giving her everything I can, and when she decides she wants more that I can’t give her, she will leave me, and I know it is going to gut me. She is my best friend, and it would kill me to lose someone else who is important to me, but her happiness is more important to me than my selfishness. My name being called pulls me out of my introspection, galvanizing me into motion to find out why my brother is calling for me.
“Anson, what’s wrong?”
“Josh wants us all downstairs,” he says, turning back around and heading back downstairs with me following.
“Have you guys heard about what the ladies are up to?” he asks without preamble as soon as we are within eyesight.
“Uh, you wanna narrow that down?” Joseph says out loud what we are all thinking.
“Lennox’s retirement party,” he responds.
“Yeah, we know about that,” Atlas says as Josh has completely lost it, considering we have been helping them plan it, too.
“Yeah, but they are planning something for Lennox and have purposely left us out of it. I overheard Savvy talking about it, and personally, I feel like we should participate and beat them at their own game,” he says, filling us in on what he’s discovered.
“Count us in,” Asher says.
“Yeah, and let’s let Peter know so he can help us pull it off without the women even knowing,” Jaasiel says.
“That sounds like a plan. Now, let's get to planning our takeover,” Josh says. We talked until Lennox texted me to let me know she was going to drop Brooklyn off later. They were doing some stuff after the interviews. The fact that we are hijacking the women's idea and are taking it to the extreme is a testament to our competitiveness. I gotta have Jabarri set up video equipment to get this on film for proof.
CHAPTER14
Brooklyn
Pregnant? What the fuck!?I am on birth control. How in the hell did this happen? The man doesn’t even want to be in a relationship, he is for sure gonna lose his shit when I tell him I am pregnant.Fuck!How did I get into this predicament?Fucking Idiot.Not only that, I am just going to be opening a family practice and will be going out on maternity leave. Who does that? This is a cluster fuck. No wonder I was always tired as hell. And I call myself a doctor and couldn’t ascertain that I’m pregnant. Now, what am I going to do? He can’t even say he loves me or even be in a relationship. Call me a coward, but I am not saying anything right now. It’s been a couple of days, and I still can’t accept what Lennox revealed. I had her do two more urine tests, a blood test, and an ultrasound before I was willing to accept the truth. I am so far along that I am going back in a little over a week to find out the sex of the baby. I know it was that night on that fucking motorcycle.
I am going to get ready for Lennox’s retirement party and worry about this shit later. I grab my dress and head to the dressing room to get ready. She thinks Peter is taking her to an event to honor a friend of his, and as far as we know, she has no clue that it is, in fact, her party. I slip on the peach and gold gown, and I swear my stomach has gotten bigger. It has to be in my head because I weigh the same now as I always have. My hair is freshly cut and dyed, my make-up is perfect, and my jewelry is custom-made by Aryan. I grab my purse and walk out to wait for Aryan, and I am not disappointed when he walks into the room. The all-black is just sexy as hell. The only color he has on is the matching gold and peach jewelry he is wearing.
“Are you ready?” he asks, walking in and fixing his cufflink. “Can you hel….. damn,” he says once he looks up and sees me in my dress. It is a peach lace dress over a shimmery pale gold sheath. The split hits mid-thigh, showing my legs, one of my best assets, with gold rhinestone heels on. I look good, and he and I both know it. “That dress is dangerous, and with you in it, it’s downright lethal,” he says, walking around me admiring the view.
“Stop it,” I swat his hand away when he grabs a handful of my ass.
“I don’t know which is your best physical feature, those thick thighs or this fat ass,”
“We have to go, or we’ll be late,” I tell him, stepping away.
“Fine, we’ll finish this later,” he says, holding his arm out for me to take, and we head to the car.
The venue is stunning. Peter did not spare any expense with this party, and I would expect nothing less from him. He went so far as to have us park at his hotel and provide transportation to the venue so Lennox would not recognize any of our cars.
