Page 81 of Hard To Leave

Chapter 26

Chloe

The doorto Brogan’s hotel room slammed shut so hard I could hear the noise echoing down the hallway. He sent the room key sliding across the desk and marched over to the mini bar. Cans and bottles smashed around and then went flying across the room until he finally found what he was looking for.

He held up a small liquor bottle filled with vodka in his trembling hands.

“Brogan.” Alarm shot through me. “Please, don’t,” I begged him, feeling my heart thunder in my chest.

His eyes narrowed, pinning me with a murderous look. “I’ve been sober for two years. Two fucking years. Do you know how hard that was? I just got my second bronze sobriety chip two weeks ago at a meeting in Tulsa.” His hands started to slowly twist the lid off the bottle.

“Put the bottle down!” I yelled, having no control over my voice.

His entire body shook with rage. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Don’t act like you fucking care because your words mean shit to me right now.”

Screaming didn’t seem to help, so I quieted my voice, hoping to calm him down. “I get that you’re pissed and want to lash out at me right now, but that little bottle of vodka isn’t going to help you.”

He threw the bottle across the desk, knocking over a few plastic cups, sending them to the floor. “Why?” His voice was pained. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep him away from me for all these years?”

“Can we sit down, please? It’s not as simple as you make it sound. There is so much I need to explain to you.”

“Well, I’m all fucking ears, so start fucking explaining.” He slammed his body into the rolling chair and threw his face in his hands.

My legs trembled as I walked over to the king-sized bed and sat down on the end, opposite of Brogan. I closed my eyes and tried to bring memories from eight years ago back into focus. I went through the timeline and tried to work myself up to what I could say that would make this better for him.

“We were in a bad place, Brogan. I felt like I had no choice. I loved you so much, but you were changing right before my eyes. The drinking, the partying, and the girls that you claimed werenobodies…” A tear fell from my eyes. “It was too much.”

“I never fucked other girls when we were together,” he said in an almost convincing tone, but I knew better.

A frown pulled across my face, remembering the many nights that I had to go pick him up because he was too shit-faced to drive. Did he not remember how many times I caught him kissing a random girl or the hushed phone calls he would take in the other room?

“Why would you lie about it now?” I asked, calling him out. “I don’t understand. I know why you lied all those years ago, but you have no reason to lie now.”

He slammed his palms down on the wooden desk. “Because I didn’t. I fooled around and did some stupid shit, but I never fucked another girl when I was with you. I had my limits.”

I scoffed and tried to rein in my anger. I was here to beg and plead for his forgiveness. Fighting with him and debating over his past infidelities wasn’t going to help.

“I want you to put yourself in my shoes for a second. I caught you numerous times in situations that I’m pretty sure, if the tables were turned, you would not have been okay with. There were probably a dozen times where you climbed into bed with me smelling like cheap booze and even cheaper women.” He flinched, and I paused to take a breath. “Maybe you didn’t have sex with those girls, but you still cheated.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t just about that, though. It was about the choices you were making and the life that you were living. It wasn’t good. It was toxic.”

It was bad enough loving him and knowing that he was giving parts of himself to another woman. In the end what destroyed us was the drugs and the partying. He became a danger to himself and to those around him.

He pointed his finger at me. “I’ll give you that. I admit that I lost sight of what was important, but maybe you need to climb into my shoes for a minute, sister. When my band started to become more well-known, and we moved up from dive bars to bigger venues, I fell deeper and deeper into that lifestyle. I did some things that I’m not proud of. I even did things that were reckless.” His hands shook. He looked wired and keyed up. He looked like he was itching to have a drink, and I couldn’t have felt worse if I tried. Tearing through our painful past wasn’t easy. “However, that didn’t give you the right to hide the fact that I had a child with you.”

Guilt consumed me because he was right. I hung my head in shame. “I know.”

“When did you find out you were pregnant?” His question had me lifting my head. “Did you know that you were pregnant with my kid when I asked you to go to Nashville with me?”

He was referring to the day that I broke up with him. The day that I set him free, so I could find my own way to happiness. As much as I loved him, there was no way I was willing to give everything up for a man who was barely holding it together.

After we ended things, I was sick for weeks. At first, I thought I was just sick over our breakup, but eventually, I knew it was more. It only took one quick trip to Walgreens to confirm that I was pregnant.

“No. It was a little over a month after you left when I found out.”

He let out a sigh of relief as if my answer mattered to him. Would I have handled things differently? I’m not sure I could answer that. All I knew was that it felt like I had no choice.

“I went to Nashville to tell you.”

His head jerked to the side. “What are you talking about?”

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