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Alex laughed. “And I’m glad to be back. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, kind of like going in the first place, but I just got to the point where I had to see my girls. I missed you both, I really have.”
“We missed you, too,” I said with a smile.
I couldn’t believe how much weight had been lifted off my shoulders with the apology, and I prepared myself to tell Alex about the pregnancy right then. But something held me back. We had just gotten through our first argument. I didn’t want to potentially start another by telling him that I was pregnant.
It wasn’t as though I was going to be any less pregnant in the morning, and perhaps it would be better to wait until he had the chance to see Lucy before I told him the life-changing news.
Either way, I was happy to have him home, and I just wanted to enjoy spending some time together.
“How was your trip?” I asked. “Tell me all about it.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alex
Ipressed the bag of frozen peas against my eye where Cassie had struck me, but I still saw a lot of humor in the whole thing. The thought of her being so small yet fierce enough that she was going to fight off an intruder with a kid’s baseball bat was simply adorable in my mind.
I could tell she was still embarrassed over the situation, but when she asked about my trip, I decided to let her embarrassment go and allow the topic of conversation to change.
“It was frustrating, to say the least,” I told her. “One of those trips that felt like anything that could go wrong was going wrong, and I seemed to be the only one who gave a damn.”
“Really?” she asked, her tone sympathetic. “How so?”
“The whole reason I went there was to do some damage control with the kid I’ve been sponsoring. He hurt himself being stupid, of course, and I knew the whole thing would blow up on social media. So, I was hoping to get down there to save face, so to speak, but when I got to the hospital, he wasn’t there.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You know anyone can request the hospital say they’re not present when they are.”
“No, I’m sure,” I said. “When I asked where he was, she told me he checked himself out. So, I did some digging, and the shithead went to the bar. When I got there, sure enough, he was all bandaged up from his accident and slamming shots like they were going out of style.”
“Oh God,” Cassie said.
“To make matters worse, the first thing he did when I showed up was try to drag me into the mix of his friends. Basically, he was showing me off to them as though that was helping his cause any. Then he had the audacity to ask me for money on top of everything,” I shook my head. “I know when I was younger, I made a living doing the same thing he is, but I want to believe I wasn’t that bad.”
“You know,” Cassie said with a giggle. “For as bad as it sounds with me being your girlfriend and all, I never actually looked you up.”
“Yeah? Don’t,” I told her. “I’m proud of what I have accomplished in my life now, but I can’t say I’m proud of all the means I used to get here. I was a reckless idiot for so long, it’s a wonder I’m here at all, let alone relatively unscathed.”
“That’s probably the precedent that made the guy you sponsor act the way he did,” Cassie suggested.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s a level at which one has to accept that they aren’t someone else. I’m glad for him being okay, but I also wanted to strangle him for not taking care of things as he should now. Downing all that alcohol while being onthe painkillers was stupid to say the least, and I can only imagine how that would come back to bite me in the ass if he were to die from toxicity poisoning.”
“Would it at all?” Cassie asked.
“It could. You really have to be careful with the wording of contracts. If he were to do something stupid and get himself killed, well, his family could sue on the ground he was trying to keep up with the shit I used to do. Would they win? Hopefully not. But again, you have to really watch the way things are worded. It’s part of the reason I was over there yelling at him to get his shit together.”
“Did you give him any money?” Cassie asked. “I mean, I guess I don’t even know what he wanted it for.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I give him the money I initially agreed to give him, but I’m not handing over extra. He was talking about losing sponsors for the shit he pulled, and I’m hoping this is a lesson to him for doing it.”
“Hopefully, but I doubt it,” she said. “I kind of feel like you’re the exception to the rule on the people who learned their lesson when living the risky lifestyle you did.”
“Fair enough,” I shrugged. “Not to say there’s not a lot of people out there who will do what I did and probably do it better. But it wasn’t just dealing with this kid that had the trip so frustrating. I had to deal with my investors.”
“Wait, what?” Cassie asked, clearly shocked. “I thought you were past having to deal with them?”
“Well, it’s not the same kind of relationship as what I’ve got going on with those I’m looking to invest in myself. These are men who came in and sponsored me before, and who have put their roots in my company. I could still take on new investors, but with the number I have already, it’s not like I have to go find any.”
“What did they want?”
