Page 120 of Marrying the Billionaire Single Dad
"What?" I blink. "Baron? Our Baron? The one we haven’t seen in nearly a decade?"
"Know of another?" Edward leans forward in his seat, "Go on, tell him the rest."
Arpad pulls out a sheet of paper from the pocket of his slacks, "Of course, the douche used snail mail. Not like it’s going to stop us from trying to track him down."
"We’ve tried and failed so far," I point out, "What’s new now?"
"What’s new is that he’s addressed this communication to all of us, sans you." He jerks his chin at me.
"But you’re reading it to me?"
"He wants us to share this with you."
"Well, spare me the suspense," I mumble, "not that I am fucking interested or anything in what he has to say."
"So, you don’t want to know how his advice to you is to not marry her."
"Hold on," I pause, "I decided to get married two days ago, and he’s found out about it and had enough time to send Arpad here a letter stating I shouldn’t do so?"
"Seems like it." Arpad nods.
"Something doesn’t feel right about this."
"You think?" Sinclair smirks.
"It means he’s not far off." I glance around at the faces of my friends, "Likely in this city. Close enough to keep tabs on us."
"So we think," Edward agrees.
"Why would he do that?"
"Who knows why Baron does anything?"
"Isn’t he over-dramatizing this entire incident thing, considering it wasn’t he who got the worst of the experience?" I glance at Edward, who pales.
He rises to his feet, walks over to me, "You have something to say?" His jaw tics. "Something you want to get off your chest, perhaps. Considering you escaped the incident, more or less intact, only to fall apart at the first sign of a personal tragedy."
"What do you know about personal tragedies, huh? You, who took the easy way out, and decided to leave the world and its day-to-day matters behind, after all? You renounced everything and ran away, Edward. You left it to the rest of us to hold each other up. You weren’t here when we went off on the bender, when Saint got into such intense fights it was clear he had a death wish, when Sinclair decided to pursue business success to the detriment of everything else, when Weston fell apart after his father died, when I lost my…" I swallow, "lost my daughter and her mother, and knew it would change me forever. I needed you then Edward, and where were you? You were off in some monastery somewhere, trying to find yourself."
"I would have been no good to you if I had stayed," Edward mumbles. "Hell, I was so out of my head with pain, I was no good to myself in the state I was."
"So were all of us," I growl. "But we stayed on, we helped each other, we worked through our crises."
"You had each other. You didn’t need me." Edward’s throat moves as he swallows. He glances around the room, "Isn’t that right, fellas? You had the six of you—"
"Five," Arpad cuts in. "Baron cut and ran not long after. He’d have stayed, if you had."
"Wait, so this is all on me?" He stares at the assembled men. "Weston? You’re the most level-headed of these tossers. Do you feel the same way?"
Weston snorts, "Me, level-headed?" He scratches his beard, "Maybe in comparison to the rock star hellbent on self-destruction, with his continuous string of failed concerts and the worst-performing Christmas single in history—"
"Hey," I protest, "it wasn’t that bad. In fact, it hit number one—"
"In what, the worst Christmas songs of all time?"
"Close," I mumble. "It was called the least festive song ever, I believe. At least, get your facts right. And weren’t we talking about how Father, here, did the vanishing act on all of us?"
"You’re deflecting, Savage," Weston admonishes. "And for the record, yes. If you’d stayed, Edward, things would have been different.’
