Page 66 of The Bossy Billionaire

“Yes. With your baby.” I try to breathe but can’t.

Pregnant. With my baby. Her words circulate around and around in my mind but make no sense. “We were pregnant, and you didn’t tell me?” I had no idea.

“Yes. Well, I never wanted children. You knew that,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

“But I did. You knew that,” I spit at her.

“That’s why I couldn’t stay,” she says, and I start pacing the living room, unable to stand still any longer.

“I would not have made you do anything you didn’t want to do,” I grit out, wanting to punch something. It is true, I wouldn’t have, but it would have ended us, and she knows that. I eye her suspiciously, my mind now whirling with a hundred other questions.

“You were never around. So consumed by work. Always trying for the next million and the next. Huxley, I was pregnant and scared,” Amy says, and I still. She is right. I worked too hard. I was never around.

“Fuck.” The stress of this situation starts to overtake the rational part of my brain, and I grab my cell from my pocket and throw it across the room, not thinking, and it smashes against the wall and bursts into pieces. “Fuck.”

I want her to leave. I want Lucy. But I need to find out everything. Shit. Am I a father?

“What happened to the baby?” I ask her, my steps faltering. I can barely breathe as I wait for her answer. Do I have a child?

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE - LUCY

I hear Huxley swear and yell, then a loud crash, and I bolt up and run to the open door. He didn’t close it. He has nothing to hide, but I also want to give him his privacy.

“What happened to the baby?” I hear his words and still. Huxley is a father?

I don’t want to listen in, but with no other sound in his apartment, it is hard not to. I walk slowly back to the lounge and despair sinks into my chest. Huxley is a father. Amy was his true love. I look around his bedroom for the first time as the realization comes over me that this apartment was his and Amy’s. She looks like she fits here. There isn’t anything out of place. It is nice, luxurious, but lacks character. I’m pretty sure the stairs don’t creak, and the carpet looks immaculate.

I don’t need to hear anymore. My heart feels like it is going to come out my throat, so I stand again and pace the room, just to keep my body active. It is a beautiful penthouse with large windows overlooking Central Park, tall ceilings, thick plush rugs on the floor that make me want to take off my shoes and dig in my toes. But I am too wound up. Anxiety crawls up my spine as I run through a million different scenarios of what this means. For Huxley, for me, for us.

I pull at my dress. The beautiful fabric that drapes over my body made me feel sexy earlier, but now I crave the safety of my sweaters and jeans. I look around his cold apartment and wish I were in my bookshop. My safe space.

I will admit, I am worried. Scared. What does this mean for us? His long-lost love is literally back in his life. They have a baby. How can I compete with that? I swallow the bile that rises as my thigh starts to throb. Huxley and I spent tonight further cementing our relationship. We are exclusive, we are together. In every sense of the word. But I should have known nothing goes right for me. On this day of all days. It is almost like the universe is laughing at me. My eyes look at the time on my phone, and I feel like I can’t breathe as I wait for the minutes to pass so I can cross over midnight, for a new day to start. I huff out a breath and sit back on the sofa, waiting, feeling more and more like I don’t belong here. Are they kissing? Are they declaring their love? I take in another deep breath.

But I know what I need to do. I lost my parents years ago and have felt lost without them ever since. Huxley has a chance to be a father. Something I know he would love and excel at. I can’t stand in his way of that. Regardless of my feelings for him. A small tear runs down my cheek. I was so close to my happy ever after. But I will not stand in his way. I will not be the cause of that small child not having a father in his life or be the one who separates his parents.

I hear the front door close, and I know Amy has now left. I swallow roughly and pull my shoulders back. If I can survive a fire, losing my parents, and finding four new brothers, I can survive this. I look up at Huxley as he walks back into the room. He’s pale. Almost in shock.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, but I don’t move. I want to touch him. I want to take care of him, but I can’t. If I do, it will make it all so much harder to leave.

“It’s a lot. That was a lot,” he says, looking at me with a frown. Like he doesn’t know what to do with me now, and the pain in my chest intensifies.

“It’s late. Why don’t you go to bed? It’s been a big night,” he says, not moving toward me. The gulf between us widens to a point that I don’t actually know if I am even seeing the real Huxley right now.

“What about you?” I ask, wondering what he is thinking.

“I’m going to have a whiskey in my den. I will be in later.” Without another word, he turns and walks down the hall, and I sit for a minute until I hear a door down the hall click shut, and I blow out a breath.

I don’t know how, but I go through the motions, cleaning my face, then I slip under the covers of his cold bed. The only saving grace for me is it smells like him. So I sink in deeper, letting his scent wrap around me and feel protected, eventually falling asleep.

I wake and sit up, startled, feeling unusual. It takes me a while to get my bearings. It is dark, and the room I am in is different. Huxley. I look to my side and see him sleeping next to me. I don’t know what time he came to bed. I must have fallen asleep, although I feel like I haven’t slept for days. My eyes flick to my cell on the nightstand. Four a.m.

Feeling cold, I realize that Huxley hasn’t touched me. Not just sexually, but he didn’t pull me to his side, cuddle, his leg isn’t even draped over mine. His bed is huge, yet he is lying so close to his edge, like he is too scared to get close to me. I see an empty whiskey glass on his nightstand, and my heart bursts open again as I relive last night.

I rub my eyes, knowing sleep is not going to come again for me, and I sit up in his bed, wondering what to do. But I know I don’t have a choice. I need to make this easy on him. He needs to be a dad. He needs to make his family complete. I can’t stand in the way of that. I also don’t want to see it in his eyes. The pity. He has never looked at me with pity before, and I couldn’t stand it if he woke up and looked at me that way while telling me he is going back to Amy.

So I slip out of bed and grab my cell. Brushing my fingers across my contacts, I call the only people I know who can get me out of this city at four a.m. without a trace.

My brothers.

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