Page 118 of Forking the Billionaire

My lungs burned. My legs went numb. Still, I ran. The movement left me feeling lighter, giving me control of something, even if the control was only over my body.

I ran and I ran, and I didn’t slow until I spotted a tall, thin figure looking around suspiciously and then ducking into the trees.

Curious, I stopped running and approached slowly.

“I told you I couldn’t talk yet,” a deep voice said.

The voice was familiar. I dropped down behind a bush and listened.

“You have to wait untilIcall you.”

I peeked up over the top of the bush at the figure—a man. He twisted slightly to look around, and revealed the side of his curly mustache.

It was Stan, and he was on the phone talking to someone. This was exactly the kind of behavior I’d seen before from him, when he started talking in Italian, even though that was usually in a closet or bathroom instead of outside.

I readied my own phone for translation. And Stan didn’t disappoint.

I watched the translated words fill my screen.

No.

Yes.

Under lock and key.

Before you ship a single biscuit more, I need to secure a new hiding place.

Stan wasn’tthe biscuit bandit. He was the bandit’s victim.

A small thrill flitted through my stomach. The first thing I wanted to do with this information was share it with Jasper.

I hated that.

The last thing I needed to do was talk to him.

THIRTY-ONE

JASPER

I sat on the beach, purposefully not looking back the way I had come. When Esme returned to the bonfire, I didn’t want to scare her away.

I could pretend like everything was fine. That’s what we’d both been doing all week long—pretending. We pretended not to have feelings for each other, we pretended we weren’t having sex, we pretended that we’d been just friends.

Or at least that’s what I’d thought we’d been.

But then she told me she hadn’t considered me her friend since we were kids and she’d broken Gabriel’s drone. I didn’t remember promising to help her, but I was sure I hadn’t intentionally broken a promise.

The longer I sat, staring into the fire, the more my thoughts twisted. Regret transformed into frustration.

A broken toy from our childhood was no reason for her to be angry at me.

Worse, I eventually would have told her that I was the astronaut from the costume party. I just wasn’t ready to tell her everything last night. I wasn’t ready for any of this.

She should know better than anyone how that felt. She found out she was pregnant on Friday, and she still hadn’t told her family because she needed time to process the news herself.

Why couldn’t she offer me the same grace?

Morgan and Oscar came over to warm their hands over the crackling driftwood pyre, with Juno on their heels.

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