Page 158 of The Catalyst

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now. No sense lying about it. I’ve dropped hints the past few days, but not even Ronan caught onto it.

“What the fuck happened?” Oliver’s voice booms as he walks out of the hall, rushing straight for me.

“She deserved it, Ollie–knocked up or not.” Aimee stands her ground, her head held high, and crosses her arms over her chest. Well, she’s a stubborn goat. That’s for sure.

Before he can reach me, he turns to her, and the inferno created by his rage is so sweltering that it singes my skin. “I’ll say this once. Touch her again, and I will fucking end you. I don’t give a shit about who your brother is or where you came from. It changes nothing about how I will beat your ass into the ground if you touch her, say anything disrespectful to her or about her ever again. You hear me?”

She opens her mouth to argue, but with one nasty look from him, she scowls at him.

“Get her out of my sight and stop jumping to her defense. You’re not her lapdog,” Aimee mutters angrily.

“How about you just leave?” he growls in her face. “Know. Your. Place.”

A part of me feels bad for Aimee. I’ve been jealous before, and it sucks. She hates that I have a place with Oliver, and she isn’t his first choice. He made it clear that I am. If it wasn’t for Nigel’s behavior and this deal, I would be his only choice, and she knows it. I’m not just a threat to her. I hold the majority of Oliver Doyle’s attention. To her, he’s her only choice. To him, she’s just a memory. Most of the time, Aimee annoys the piss out of him, but the rest of the time, I see that there could be something there if she didn’t make a habit of getting on his nerves.

Her expression falls, but she tries to cover it up with rage. “Fuck you.” Then, instead of waiting for me to get up so she can go out the front door, she charges through the kitchen and out the door there, slamming it as she goes.

“Come on,” Ollie mutters as he turns to me and helps me off the floor with his arms around me.

“I’m fine. My cheek just stings.”

“Why didn’t you call me when the meeting ended? I would’ve picked you up.” Ollie removes the single piece of hair attached to my lip and sweeps it behind my ear.

“I didn’t want to bother you if you were busy,” I justify before looking at everyone else. I reiterate my question from when I arrived as Oliver stands by me, his arm draped around my waist like it’s second nature to him.

“Someone tipped Nigel off about the deal,” he explains, and my eyes widen.

“What? No! Ijustsigned the contract. How could he already know?” I panic and cling to Ollie as he holds me.

“He received a visit before dawn from Martin at the behest of Nolan Gray, inviting him to your wedding,” Ronan utters with disgust across his face.

It’s not Martin’s fault. I know the kind of control his father has over him. If Martin did what they say he did, Nolan held something over his head and made him do it.

“Oh my god. No, no, no! It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

“Calm down, crazy girl,” Oliver whispers as he cradles my face in his hands, angling my head so I’m gazing up into his gorgeous eyes. They can be so alluring and distracting sometimes, but not right now. “He should be getting out soon. You can explain everything then.”

“How about you explain it to us? Why are we out of the loop on whatever is happening, but Doyle knows about it?” Oisin pipes in, looking more irritated than I’ve ever seen him, and that’s saying a lot.

My head swivels, so I’m looking at everyone, but before I can say anything, Ollie does.

“Beth has been brokering a deal with the Grays to release Nigel. A big part of that deal is that she has to marry Michael.”

I thought my problems before all of this were bad. I wish I could go back to my biggest problem being my mother getting sober and getting out of this situation with Nigel. Now, things just seem to be piling onto my plate, one after another.

“How does that work with you being pregnant?” Ronan presses, and Judy joins the conversation.

“We’ve already worked that out. Her part of the deal doesn’t take place until she marries Michael, so they’re going to push back the wedding until after she gives birth and she’s going to leave town to have the baby, right, Beth?”

“I don’t think that idea will go over too well with Nigel. Shouldn’t he be there when she has the baby?”

The tension in the room is so thick from Charlie’s words that it couldn’t even be cut with the sharpest blade in the world. Judy sends a supportive look.

“Do you want to tell them, Bee?”

I sigh with exhaustion. “I don’t know if the baby is Nigel’s, and I won’t until I get to the doctor. It might be Ollie’s and…it could also be Martin’s.”

There’s a few minutes of silence where everyone just absorbs everything, but they aren’t the ones who bring an end to the silence.

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