Page 42 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

CHAPTER 16

KAI

Kai had rehearsed in his head a thousand different ways to reach out to Amy. He’d drafted emails and written out text messages, all of them now deleted and remaining unsent. In a cruel twist of his own making, he couldn’t even reach out to Jason or Jess, whom he now thought of as friends, to ask them what to do or they’d learn about the whole misguided plan.

There was a certain amount of peace knowing that it was all his own fault. If he had just grown a spine and told everyone the whole truth about everything from the start, then he wouldn’t be in this mess at all. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have dragged Amy down with him. She had done him such a massive favor, pretending to be his fiancée, and he had thanked her by stabbing her in the back. He had been a terrible friend. He was still being a terrible friend because he couldn’t figure out how to even begin apologizing.

Well, at least some personal growth had been achieved. That had to count for something, right?

Instead of doing any work, Kai had been watching emails trickle into his inbox and then not opening them. Right now, he just didn’t have the brain cells to deal with reading through emails riddled with corporate lingo and PDF attachments, a million different assistants and business partners CC’d into the conversation for no apparent reason. After his marathon of staying productive so that he didn’t have to think, Kai was burnt out and barely capable of reading a tagline on social media, let alone a ten-paragraph pitch that needed to be read three times before it even made sense.

But then the next email popped up, and it was from Jason. After all the mess and chaos of the last few weeks, ignoring an email from that man, in particular, felt sacrilegious. So Kai rubbed his eyes, sat up properly in his chair and clicked, opening the message.

Hey man, it said, and Kai could practically hear Jason’s loud, confident voice as he read through the words on the screen.

It’s been so awesome to really hunker down and talk about the business opportunities we have going forward. I’ll never say no to talking about numbers. They make the world go round, that’s for sure. But we’ve gotten a bit sidetracked and before we have any more meetings, I think we should sign that contract and make it official. With all the craziness of the yacht trip and getting back into work mode, it got left behind. I know you know what I mean man! Life is crazy sometimes.

Anyway, it’s a big deal signing this thing, and it’s been a long time coming. It was seriously so much fun having our ladies along for the ride with us, so what do you say we have dinner at that new place uptown and we can make a real event of it? You, me, Jess and Amy.

I’ve sent an invite to your calendar as well, but I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be good to see you again!

J.

Kai was numb. All this misery he had dumped on himself had been in the pursuit of getting another chance to sign this contract, and here it was handed to him on a silver platter. After everything, he was actually going to sign this contract with Jason. Instead of feeling elated or excited or even just a little bit happy about that fact, all Kai could think was: Was it all really worth it? All of the lying and planning and sneaking around. He’d lost Amy in the process… No. It didn’t feel worth it at all.

And speaking of Amy, he would have to make excuses for her not attending the dinner because there was noway that she would agree to keep pretending now…

Then Kai went from feeling numb to the very unpleasant sensation of sinking through the floor like he was made of slowly melting ice. He’d seen the recipients of the email listed at the top of the page and Amy’s name was there, as clear as day. So she’d gotten the message as well. God, if she thought he still expected her to play along with all of this nonsense, Kai would never forgive himself. That was the last thing she needed right now.

He’d been working up the courage for weeks now to reach out to her, and it seemed that it was time to bite the bullet. He pulled out his phone before he could give himself time to back out and started texting.

Hey, you’re going to see an invite to a couples’ dinner with Jason and Jess in your emails, and I wanted to make it clear that you’re in no way obligated to come. I’m sorry that you’re still getting dragged into this. I’ll handle it. You don’t have to worry.

Kai stopped there before he went from apologetic to groveling and sent off the text. He didn’t expect to get any sort of response, so when his phone pinged with a message from Amy almost immediately, he nearly fell out of his chair.

It’s fine. I’ll go. I want to.

It was about as short and no-frills as a text message could get, but reading it had lifted a thousand-pound weight off of Kai’s chest. In fact, he kept re-reading those six words until they were seared into his brain, analyzing them like they were Shakespeare.

Kai had said that she had no obligation. Even if he hadn’t made that clear, if Amy didn’t want to go to the dinner, then she wouldn’t go, especially after Kai had broken her trust like that. That must mean she didn’t completely hate him, right? She might still hate him a bit, or a lot, and she was definitely still angry. But accepting the invitation to a dinner where they’d be thrown together for a whole evening meant that there was at least a glimmer of hope that he might be forgiven, surely. The chances of winning her back might be slim, but there was a chance.

Kai put his head in his hands and laughed like a mad man in an old-time asylum. Winning her back? He never had her to begin with because he’d always been so terrified of acting on his feelings in case he messed up their friendship. Despite that, he’d still managed to mess it all up, losing Amy altogether because he thought he knew better. It was all his own fault.

But this was one last chance from the universe to make things right, and he wasn’t going to screw it up.

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