Page 70 of Won’t Let You Get Away

I hadn’t planned on seeing her. She talked about this meeting for weeks, so my intention was to sneak into her office, drop off flowers with a note, and leave without being noticed.

She sways on her feet.

I shove past Paul and cross over to Bri, setting the flowers onto the tasting bar as I pass.

“No!” Paul yells. “I’m here now. You don’t get to run off on me again. And not with my baby!”

Bri looks up at me with pleading eyes. “It’s not his. There’s no way. He’s not the?—”

“I know, Sugar,” I reassure her and hold out my hand, which she immediately takes. It’s probably wrong, but the way she clings to me in front of everyone has my chest puffing with pride.

“Who the hell is this?” Paul seethes.

“Her boyfriend.” I answer and smirk. “And the father.”

His face turns blotchy and red as he glares at me.

It’s then that I notice just how rough he looks. His hair is sticking up in different directions, as if he’s been pulling at it. Uneven hairs poke out on his jaw, and his button-up shirt is done up wrong.

Bri squeezes my hand, but I don’t look away.

“That remains to be determined,” he says with narrowed, red-rimmed eyes shooting daggers at me.

“Paul, can we please not do this here?” Bri pleads.

“No! We’re doing this now. You’re out here playing house with some country boy, acting like a?—”

“Whoa there, man,” the businessman interrupts, stepping around me and Bri. “We should take a walk. And maybe find a place for you to rinse off.”

But that only upsets him more.

“You’re supposed to be my friend, Leo! How could you not tell me she was pregnant?” Paul gets in Leo’s face, or at least, his chest due to the height difference.

“It wasn’t my place to?—”

“Bullshit.” Paul leans around Leo, moving closer and I finally catch a whiff of the whiskey on him.

From the corner of my eye, I see Tucker on Bri’s other side and hold out my arm, shielding Bri between us.

Leo grabs Paul’s shoulders and backs him up a couple of steps.

“Dude, you’re clearly drunk. Let’s get you to a hotel and?—”

“Maybe the baby is yours,” Paul yells at him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

My fists clench and Tucker takes a step forward, but Bri places a hand on his shoulder and whispers something.

Paul looks back to Bri, already forgetting his accusation.

“You had no right to keep this from me. I have a right to know if I’m going to be a father!”

“We haven’t had sex in over a year and a half, Paul!” Bri yells, her voice echoing through the space as everyone stays silent. She pushes past me and Tucker but I stay behind her as she gets a little closer to her ex. “How the hell could this baby be yours?”

That finally shuts Paul up for a second, but he just shakes his head.

“I don’t…” He sighs, shrugging out of Leo’s hold and dropping his head. “I don’t know. All I do know is that we were happy, about to get married and then you just left. Everything was perfect until?—”

“Nothing was perfect!” Bri cuts him off with a gasp. I place a hand on her hip but she continues. “We were growing apart. We were so far removed from each other that you didn’t even notice I was fading. It was over long before I ended it.”

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