Page 164 of Crazy for this Girl

“You want to get on me for dating losers? I didn’t go off and plan a wedding.”

“Says the women who tried on fucking wedding dresses,” he bawls out, his face turning a light shade of red. “You weren’t available for me anymore. I tried to move on, Laynee.”

“I don’t want to hear anymore.” I hold out both palms to keep him from trying. “I just work for you. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t try.”

“Because I don’t like you. Because you make decisions for me. Because you expect me to drop what I’m doing and let you back in. What’s your next big idea, Cal? Are you going to enter into a covenant and become a priest?”

“Not when I don’t know what your pussy tastes like,” he counters with undiluted ire in his tone. “It’d be a cold day in Hell when that ever happened.”

“Had no problem with that when you decided to marry someone else.”

He takes one large stride in my direction and bears down all his intimidating height and glaring powers on me. “Sounds like you’re a little jealous and this is the last time that I’m going to say this, Laynee. So listen carefully because I won’t say it again. She’s dead. I was putting those on her grave not in her hands. I felt guilty for never loving her the way she deserved. For using her as a placeholder for someone who wasn’t in my life. But that’s until I ran into her other fiancé. The one who allegedly was having my child. I’m still waiting on those exciting results to come in to tell me if I lost a child in that car accident or if she fucking lied to me the whole time. If she got my hopes up and agreed on a fucking name with me. Fuck, that she was going to rip me off by taking half my money in her scheme of divorcing me within a year so that her and her prick of a douchebag could go run off and be happy. I’m hung up on the baby. Was she mine or was she his?”

She.

He was having a daughter. Cal was going to be a father and got a woman pregnant—maybe. The organ that has been thrown through the ringer in the last twenty minutes is starting to give out on me. It’s squeezing so tightly onto his pain and the resentment of a woman I’ll never meet. He claims to have tried to move on without me, and he did while I always stayed in one spot. My feet would move with these other men, but my brain would not budge from Cal Harper.

Ever.

For years.

For so many goddamn years.

I crave with everything within me to loathe him at this moment, but the grief and betrayal he must feel now I’m sure is overwhelming.

Still, he was about to have a family without me.

Even if not with me in his life but still without me. A whole new life I’d never know about. Things I should’ve known about. A woman I should’ve known existed as his friend.

“How long?” I ask, staring into his chest now because I can’t look into his greens anymore. I’ll cry again, and I’m not about to do that and turn this conversation into any deeper of a subject than it needs to be.

“How long, what?”

“How long ago did she pass away?”

“Over a year ago. I never allowed myself to be immersed in our relationship so maybe her other boyfriend was my karma. The kid, however, she can get fucked with.”

If you would’ve found him instead of getting into your feelings, you would’ve been able to stop this.

“What was…” I stop myself right there because, not only has he been through enough, but I’m on the brink of crumbling.

“Her name was going to be River Mae,” Cal replies as if reading my mind. “Because that’s what you told me your middle name was.”

“You were naming your child after me?”

“Of course, I was. You were my best friend, Laynee. I wanted a little bit of you within my girl.” My palms slam into his chest so hard that he stumbles backward and crashes right into the lake behind him. By the time I hear the splash is when I realize what I’ve just done.

Too many emotions. Way too many emotions.

I’m teeter-tottering between being honored and damn near insulted by him keeping me at arms’ length, yet so close.

Cal’s head comes above water as he pushes back his dark, sexy hair that is plastered to his forehead and looks directly at me. “Upset you would’ve gotten my kid’s middle name wrong?” He’s not even phased that I had just pulled my normal I don’t want to talk about it so you’re going in the lake response.

“You’re an asshole, Cal Harper.” Then I pivot and march my ass right back to my house.

We didn’t talk about all we needed to speak about, but I have time. After all, I do work for the jerk, and we’ll have plenty of time for him to corner me somewhere else to spill the rest of his guts to me.

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