Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
While my head wraps around what Easton’s just said—a woman is possibly carrying Braxton’s baby—my heart squeezes in my chest as I imagine a completely different scenario.
Braxton and me getting married.
Buying a home together.
Finding out we’re expecting a baby.
Filling our home with lots of babies and love...
“What do you need me to do?” I ask, shaking my thoughts from my head. All of those dreams went up in smoke the second I pushed him away, so daydreaming about the what-ifs will only make it hurt that much worse.
“Braxton isn’t answering his phone. I need you to find him and ask him if he was with her. I’ll send you the info and her picture. Keep him from getting online, please. His initial response will be to lash out at her, which we don’t want him to do. Once we know whether her accusation is plausible, we’ll go from there.”
We hang up, and I quickly shower and get dressed. It’s still early, so I can handle this before I need to get going. Technically, this is still my job since I haven’t been fired yet. I’d imagine if I was, Easton wouldn’t have called me, or he would’ve at least let me know.
I find Braxton in his bed alone and sit on the edge, watching him for a few seconds before I wake him up. He looks so calm in his sleep, and I would give anything to be lying in bed with him, snuggling against his warm, hard body. When we were together, the times we got to spend the night together were few and far between, but those were some of the best nights of my life. Not just because of the sex, even though that was damn good, but because I always felt safe and at home in the comfort of his arms.
I glance over at the nightstand and see the journal I gave him. Despite the way he feels about me, I love that he still uses it to write his words in—even if some of those words are written with the intent to hurt me. It makes me think that in some way, even though I hurt him, he still cares about me the way I care about him. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have thrown it away and gotten a new one that wouldn’t make him think of me?
When I shake him, he turns over, and his eyes meet mine in confusion.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice gruff from sleep.
“We need to talk.” I pull up the social media account that Easton sent over and click on a picture of a beautiful woman. “Recognize her?”
Braxton barely gives her a once-over. “Yeah... so?”
“She’s claiming to be pregnant—”
“Good for her...”
“—with your baby.”
“Not possible,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Condoms break.”
“True.” He slides up the bed, and the blanket falls, exposing his naked, muscular, tattooed chest and six-pack abs. I can’t help but look. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him up close, and when we were together, he was still more boy than man. Now... he’s all fucking man.
“Like what you see?”
My eyes ascend to his face and find him smirking. He lifts his arms, crossing them behind his head, and I swallow down a groan.
“You’ve gotten a lot of tattoos,” I say stupidly.
He chuckles, and the sound wraps around me like a warm blanket on a cold night. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh, and especially not with me.
“She’s not pregnant with my kid.”
“Huh?” And then I remember what we were talking about. “How do you know? Condoms aren’t one-hundred-percent effective. And we don’t know how far along she is.”
“It’s not possible—”
“Braxton...”
“—because I didn’t sleep with her.”
“What? But you said...”
“I recognize her, yeah. Did we fuck around? Yeah. But I never stuck my dick in her.” His tongue darts across the seam of his lips, and flashbacks of how well he used that tongue on me hit me hard.
“Maybe you were too high or drunk to remember.”
“Doesn’t matter how much I smoke or drink, I always know who I’m sticking my dick into. And I know I haven’t stuck my dick into her.”
“Maybe—”
“Kaylee,” he says, stopping me from finishing my sentence. “I haven’t fucked her or anyone in months.”
His admission has me rearing back. “Months?”
He nods. “Months.”
“But...” I’ve seen the women in his bed. He even asked me to get him condoms.
“Months,” he repeats.
“I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us.” He throws his blanket off his body and stands. “Call her bluff. She isn’t pregnant with my kid. And then can you order breakfast, please? I’m starved.”
He says it so nonchalantly that I can’t help but believe him.
Braxton was right. After I reached out to Fiona—the woman making the accusation—and told her that Braxton would gladly do a paternity test once she was seven weeks pregnant, she tried to go around it, saying she wasn’t going to risk harming her precious baby. I was expecting this, so I explained science has come a long way, and a noninvasive test can now be done.