Page 15 of Ghosted By Texas

Clea was busy with her new man.

I was occupied with hiding the fact that my miserable heart had been shattered beyond recognition.

Go to Chapter 5 Bonus Scene

Six Years Later

My first instincts about my one and only love might not have been right, but they were accurate as fuck about Clea’s boyfriend turned fiancé, Jeff. The bastard had been cheating on her. As far as she knew, it had only been for the past few months. My gut told me it had been throughout their whole relationship. Not that she would ever entertain my suspicions.

A few weeks ago, Clea and I went back to her office, unannounced, to grab her phone before heading to the cake testing for her wedding. The same testing that her piece of shit fiancé couldn’t be bothered to go to with her. The reason he couldn’t attend had been because he was too busy fucking Clea’s assistant on Clea’s desk, which was where and how we found them when we went to retrieve her phone.

I was honestly shocked that Jeff had been able to pull it off and hang in there with my bestie for so long, but I think a lot of that had to do with Clea being so busy launching her career. Plus, there was that whole fight she and I got into a few years back when she put her foot down and told me that unless I had proof that the asshole was doing her wrong, I needed to keep my mouth shut about him because she was tired of hearing my suspicions when there was absolutely nothing to back it up beyond the fact that I hated the guy.

There may have been mention about me being bitter that she met him the night everything fell apart for me and Mr. Texas – the only guy I ever confessed to her that I liked. If I had confessed the fact that I was falling in love with him to her, or been honest about how the aftermath crushed me, she might have been less heartless in her approach. Still, I’d kept quiet about my opinion of Jeff ever since to keep the peace. It nearly cost me the tongue I had to bite down on far too often, but at least my friendship with Clea was still intact all these years later. I was even a big enough person not to rub it in her face with a giant “I told you so!” balloon after we caught him fucking her secretary. Well, sometimes I might have rubbed it in, but not to hurt Clea. For instance, the news I heard recently was something she needed to know, in case she needed to be rechecked by her doctor.

“Have you seen the latest?”

“What now?” Clea asked as she glanced behind me, as if looking for her new assistant who failed to stop me from barging into her office for an unscheduled visit.

“There are three women claiming to be pregnant with his baby. Two have shown proof of their pregnancies, and I guess they’re all still pending a DNA test to show that the babies are actually his.”

Clea’s jaw dropped. Her wide-eyed stare hit me and held for a few minutes before she was able to pull it together to ask, “Are you kidding me?”

I felt bad for hitting her with the news so callously. Yes, it was true that Jeff had never been my favorite person, but Clea always had. There was a better way to deliver the news and I’d fucked up. Unfortunately, there was no going back either, so I bucked up and asked the question that made telling her the news necessary.

“Was your doctor absolutely certain you’re in the clear?”

“I made him test me for everything and then some,” she confirmed.

“And then some?” I asked, because what the hell did that even mean?

“Well, while we were there, I told him to go ahead and run shit for strep throat, the flu, rabies, freaking lyme disease, and anything else that asshole might have possibly passed on to me.”

I almost tipped my damn chair over when I leaned too far back from laughing so hard. “Oh…” I managed to get out, “My…” I was laughing too hard to make one tiny phrase come out properly. “God!” I held onto my sides to keep my ribs from hurting, though my abs seemed to get a good workout from my amusement. “Fucking rabies?” My all-out laughter died down to a light chuckle before I finally got myself under control again. “Did he actually do that one?”

Clea, who was clearly amused with my response, shook her head. “He threatened to throw water on me. When I told him to do whatever it takes, he said I couldn’t have rabies because just the threat of water touching me would have made me angry.”

I tucked myself into a tight ball in the chair because laughing could hurt if you did it too much, too hard, or for too long. “Oh shit, Clea! I think I just pissed in my panties a little bit,” I admitted through my hysterical laughter.

Clea cleared her throat while I wiped away the tears from my eyes. No, wait, that wasn’t right. It sounded like a man clearing their throat, not my best friend.

“Sorry, he said he had an appointment,” Clea’s kiss-ass assistant whined.

“Which is why Becs shouldn’t have been allowed into the office, no matter how much she begged,” Clea scolded her assistant in the nicest tone I’ve ever heard someone being chastised with.

“Oh, she didn’t beg. That woman just walked right past me like I wasn’t even there.”

I sighed and offered a sheepish grin to Clea, whose attention was on whoever was still hovering behind me. When I heard the man chuckle, the humor-heated blood in my veins immediately turned to ice. I knew that sound. Even after all these years, it didn’t fail to send tingles through all the lovely special places in my body.

I turned to see him standing there. “Austin?” I questioned as he moved closer.

“Becs,” he shot back at me with a bit of attitude, as if I was the one who had wronged him all those years ago. That fucker! Like he didn’t go straight back to enjoying his little best friend-fuck buddy before he even bothered to tell me we were through. In fact, he never did tell me. Maybe that’s what he was standing in Clea’s office for. No. Wait. That was ridiculous. The asshole probably hadn’t even thought of me once since he went straight back to the willingly naked arms of Jordan – the cunt-faced, man-stealing, bitch monster from hell. Actually, to say she was from hell was probably giving her too much credit. There had to be worse places.

“What are you doing here?” I finally asked, because my mouth couldn’t seem to stop itself from forming words that shouldn’t have been spoken.

The asshat took his big, brown eyes off me and turned a charming grin on Clea instead as he extended a hand to her. “Austin Mercer, we had an appointment.”

I was too stunned to do anything, and Clea mimicked my response with her fish out of water look, until the asshole spoke again.

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