Page 81 of How to Prevent a Fumble

“Dinner is in the kitchen, help yourself. If you can make a plate for Elara, I’ll be out in a bit,” she informs me, not turning back.

“Briar, wait,” I tell her, finally catching up to her.

“What?”

My face pinches as I tilt my head, looking her over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ll be better when I have some time alone. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She tries closing the door on me, but I stick my foot in, preventing her from doing it. “Leo, I’m really not in the mood,” she sighs, her shoulders slumping.

“I want to help. However I can,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You can’t help. I have an obligation to you. I’m fulfilling it. That’s it.”

I ignore the pain in my chest at her words and instead focus on what she means by them. “What did he say to you?”

Her dark eyes meet mine, filled with pain. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

“I do.”

I don’t want to force her to do or say anything she doesn’t want to, but especially if it involves me in any way, which it sounds like it does, then I need to know.

I want to protect her from anything I can, including him.

After studying my face for what feels like ages, she bites her lip, looking to the side. “He saw the article about us and threatened to use you against me in court.”

Confused, I gape at her. “What do you mean use me against you in court? Why is there talk of courts?”

“He wants to fuck with me. Threatened to take me to court to get full custody of Elara.”

“I thought,” I begin, but her eyes flicker behind me to Elara’s door, and I realize she can probably hear us. I lower my voice and say, “I thought he didn’t want anything to do with her?”

Briar’s face is grim as she nods. “He doesn’t. He just wants to fuck with me. He knows I don’t have the money to fight him.”

“But you do,” I tell her, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans. She does have the means to fight him, because I’ll do it.

She shakes her head. “You do enough, Leo. Money doesn’t fix everything. I’ve told you that.”

“But it’ll fix this,” I argue.

I get it. Money isn’t going to fix all my problems. If the designer purse tucked into my closet upstairs is any indication, Briar isn’t exactly someone you can buy. In fact, she’s made it clear that she’s only agreed to this at all because it would have been financially irresponsible for her not to have. Not when there was so much money on the table and I had agreed to pay for Elara’s college education.

Giving her an offer she couldn’t refuse was the entire point of the deal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel awful about it.

I don’t want her to feel stuck. I don’t want her to feel anything other than relief. I’d give her that money without any of this. She’s Owen’s sister. If I knew she was struggling, I would have done anything I could to help.

And that was before I knew her. Really knew her. It was before I asked her to help me, and before I asked her to agree to this dumb fake dating scheme. It was before I realized that I may actually like her, and before I realized how big of a heart she really actually has. How much she hides behind her thorny exterior.

Briar Crosby was always something to me, but recently she’s had me wrapped around her finger, her thorns dug into me.

Briar chokes, breaking me out of my thoughts, and I instantly reach for her, pulling her into a hug.

Closing the door behind us, I back her up until she’s at the bed. She sits, and I take a spot next to her, pulling her back into me as her body starts to convulse with sobs. They rip through her with a fury, so hard I start to think about what I’m going to have to tell Elara when she eventually opens that door and asks what happened.

One of the strongest women I’ve ever met in my entirelife, and also one of the scariest, comes apart in my arms, and I have no fucking clue how to make it better.

So I just let her.

I let her cry, grabbing my shirt.

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