by Rush, Olivia
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Then that’s all I need to hear,” he said. “But you have other problems.”
He fished his phone out of his pocket.
“Chelsea gave me her number last night so I could make sure she got home OK. And about ten minutes ago she sent me this.”
He held the phone in front of my face, which displayed a text from Chelsea.
It read, “Tell him I’m gone.”
I felt like the life had been drained out of me. Defeated, unable to believe what was happening, I fell back against the headboard, my head thwacking into it and sending a fresh wave of pain through my already-throbbing head.
“You can’t really blame her, can you?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I can’t.”
“You probably feel like hell right now,” said Damien. “From the booze and everything else. And I could make it worse for you and tell you that I don’t want to go into business with a man who can’t keep his house in order.”
I turned my eyes to Damien, my heart now thudding in my chest.
“And maybe I will. But first, I want to ask you something. And I want to you be straight with me.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked hard at me. “I want to know if you love this girl. Really and truly. Because if that’s true, then nothing else matters.”
I opened my mouth to quickly shoot out a yes, but then the question gave me pause. I’d gotten so wrapped up in the lie of the engagement that I hadn’t even taken stock of my own feelings.
But the truth of the matter was that I’d fallen hard for Chelsea, harder than I’d ever fallen for a woman before in my life. I loved her smile, I loved her laugh, I loved how stubborn she could be. I loved her passion and her ambition and her everything else.
I loved her.
“Yes,” I said. “I love Chelsea.”
Damien nodded.
“Then you’d better go get her back.”
Chapter 39
Bryce
Damien let me borrow one of his cars to get back to my apartment, and by the time I was behind the wheel, the adrenaline rushed through me with such intensity that my hangover was completely obliterated.
Easy hangover cure, I considered—just have your life fall to pieces all around you.
All I could think about was getting back to the apartment and trying to find out where Chelsea had gone.
As I whipped around the corner leading to my place, my phone rang in my pocket. My heart jumped in my chest at the idea of it being Chelsea, but when I pulled it out I saw that it wasn’t her—it was an unlisted number.
Normally, I would’ve let it go to voicemail without a second thought. But something told me that it was important, and that I needed to answer it. It was just a hunch, but I’d learned to trust my gut.
“Bryce Carver,” I said.
“Hi, Mr. Carver?” came the woman’s voice on the other end.
I half-expected it to be someone from one of the tabloids checking to see if they could score an interview—something to really add insult to injury.
“This is he,” I said.
“Good afternoon. This is Nurse Erin Stafford at Doctor Garcia’s office. Do you have a moment?”
“Sure,” I said, pulling the car into the parking garage, coming to a stop in my spot, and killing the engine. “What’s the issue?”
“First of all, sorry to call you on a Sunday. But I’m having trouble getting in touch with Chelsea.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Is she sick?”
A long moment of silence followed.
“Oh no,” said Nurse Stafford. “She’s as healthy as we can hope at this stage.”
“‘Stage’?”
“Yes—I’m sorry. I really can’t speak with you about this. I just thought you might be able to put Chelsea on the phone.”
“You said ‘stage.’ What has stages? Cancer?”
“I’m sorry to have scared you, Mr. Carver. You’ll have to speak with Chelsea.”
The rest of the world was shattering around me. It was like a bomb had gone off, leaving me with nothing but a ringing in my ears.
“Mr. Carver,” said the nurse. “She’s not sick at all, if that’s what you’re worried about— she’s as healthy as can be. But it’s important that we get her in for this exam before too much time passes.”
“I see,” I said, still in shock, still confused.
“So, would you like to confirm the appointment?”
“Sure,” I said. “Put her down.”
“Sounds great. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. And congratulations.”
Congratulations? Surely the nurse didn’t know about the business deal, and it didn’t sound sarcastic, like she’d been reading the tabloids. Chelsea was in a stage, and needed to see a doctor, and this nurse was congratulating me?
I couldn’t even react. I sat in the car for several long minutes, my mouth slacked open an inch and my eyes staring wide ahead. Then it dawned on me.
Pregnant. Chelsea was pregnant. She was carrying my child.
Still stunned, I got out of my car and slowly made my way to the elevator leading up to the apartment. I spent the ride up trying to process what I’d been told, but it was all too surreal.
The doors opened. My apartment was bright with afternoon light, and on the couch was my mom, a narrow-eyed expression on her face.
“Bryce Carver,” she said, standing up and slowly walking toward me. “I’m so furious with you that I don’t even know what to say.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “I need to see her.”
“You don’t get to make demands like that,” she said, her voice as cutting and hard as I’d ever heard it. “You’ve wrecked that poor girl with your selfishness.”
Then she took a deep breath and spoke.
“And she told me everything.”
“Everything?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said. “The fake engagement, and—”
“And the baby,” I said, finishing her words. “I just found out minutes ago.”
“And now you’re in quite a freaking jam. Maybe you can call Felicity up and she’ll lend a sympathetic ear.”
“No, no,” I said, walking into the room. “It’s all a—”
“A what?” she asked. “A big misunderstanding? Please.”
“But that’s precisely what it is,” I said. “I mean, I think. Felicity tried to seduce me, and the paparazzi must’ve caught us at the exact moment that we kissed, right before I pushed her away.”
Mom said nothing, instead listening to me go on, her hands on her hips.
“And the photos—she’d been sending them to me, I guess to make me jealous. But it was a one-way thing—I should’ve blocked her number, but I didn’t. Stupid me, but I didn’t.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you telling me that there was nothing going on between you two? That’s your story?”
There was nothing else I could say.
Well, maybe one more thing.
I stepped close to Mom, placing my hands on her shoulders.
“There’s been some major dishonesty going on,” I said. “But what I’m about to tell you I know for certain is true, without a shadow of a doubt. I love Chelsea.”
Having said the words at Damien’s had given me a strength I didn’t know I had. It was like my love for Chelsea was some kind of superpower.
And the conviction of my words must’ve had a profound effect on her.
“I don’t know what to say, Bryce,” she said, backing up and taking a seat on the long couch. “I was all ready to tear you a new one for what you did to that poor girl, and for what you did to me, lying right to my face.”
I sat down across from her. “There’s nothing I can to do to take back the lies. I’d gotten so caught up in my plan and the idea of getting what I wanted that I didn’t think about anyone else other than myself.”
“You’re damn right about that
,” she said. “This was all selfish and stupid, and I have no idea how you’re going to make things right.”
“I can make things right by talking to Chelsea. And you can help by telling me where she is.”
Mom chewed on her bottom lip, considering the matter.
“You have to get her back, Bryce,” she said. “She was furious this morning, but it’s clear as day that she loves you too.”
I hoped more than anything that it was true. All I could do was tell her how I felt. I’d be putting it all on the line.
“OK,” she said. “She’s at her old place. But she told me not to tell you, so I guess you’re not the only liar here.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I said, pulling her in close for a tight hug. “Thank you so much.”
I stood up to leave. But before I could even take a step, Mom called out.
“Hold on,” she said, looking down at the engagement ring on her hand. “That ring you gave her was about the gaudiest thing I’ve seen in my life.”
She twisted the engagement ring off her finger and gave it over. I took the small, beautiful ring in my hand.
“That’s a family heirloom, and I know your father would want more than anything for it to be passed on to the mother of his grandchild. He told me he could tell the moment he saw you and Chelsea that there was something special between you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“To me? Nothing. Chelsea’s the only one who needs to hear anything.”
I pulled her in for another hug before slipping the ring into my pocket.
“Go on, baby. Go get your girl.”
She didn’t need to tell me twice.
Chapter 40
Chelsea
I was in a stunned daze—no other way to describe it. Everything that had happened since Damien sent me home last night had been surreal, dreamlike.
But I’d been ready to chalk it up to the pressure catching up to Bryce. I knew that the strong, stoic act that he’d put on after the death of his father couldn’t hold up, and I was ready to cut him some slack for getting dead drunk and passing out.
When I went back down to the party, however, there was something strange in the air. Felicity and Hunter were there, and when I stopped by them to say hello they both regarded me with the same amused demeanor, as I was the butt of some joke.
I wanted to leave right away. I was ready to put the evening behind me and turn my attention to the more important subject the baby, of letting Bryce know that his life was about to change forever.
A text from Bess on the way home from the party changed all that. The text read, “Check the San Francisco Tattler, right fucking now.”
Confused as to what the hell she was talking about, I’d pulled up the website. And as soon as I saw what was on the front page I felt like my guts had been ripped out.
There were Bryce and Felicity, standing on the balcony and sharing a kiss, her hand on his hip.
I dropped the phone onto the floor of the limo, my hands shaking. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen.
The driver pulled up to the apartment, and my first inclination was to tell him to keep driving so I could leave all of that behind. Instead, however, I went back up to the apartment so I could sleep and deal with it in the cold light of day.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse. But the news I woke up to made it very clear that yes, it most definitely could.
Another text from Bess, another suggestion to check the local gossip rags.
There’d been another one of those mass phone-hackings that had been so common in the last few years. And the one on the front page of the Tattler was the hacking of none other than Bryce Carver’s phone.
When I’d read the headline and nothing else, I assumed that there’d be nothing. After all, I wasn’t exactly a sexting kind of girl, and as far as I knew every conversation between Bryce and I had been pretty tame—and we’d made sure to avoid sending texts that might’ve revealed our fake engagement plan.
But as I scrolled down the page, I realized that “tame“ didn’t begin to describe what had been found on Bryce’s phone. There was picture after picture of Felicity, each one a mirror selfie of her posing in lingerie, a sultry expression on her face.
The mystery of why Bryce had been so cagey about his phone over the last week was revealed.
That tore it. I wanted nothing to do with that man. I was carrying his child, sure, but there wasn’t a chance that I’d let a liar and cheat like him take any role in raising this child, my child.
I had no idea what I was going to do next. But I was certain what I needed to do at that moment, and it was to get away from Bryce.
So, I told Barbara what had happened. I was worried that her first instinct might be to take her son’s side, but she was with me all the way. I told her that I was going back to my old apartment to start the process of leaving this all behind.
Then I packed my things and left.
And now I was in my small, cramped apartment in the Mission, pacing back and forth and wondering what the hell I was going to do next.
I had to figure out what to do about my job. There was no way I could keep working with Bryce as closely as I had been. But the work that I’d been doing over the last month had been like nothing else I’d ever done.
Bryce hadn’t lied about that—it was the entrepreneurship opportunity I’d been hoping for all my life. It’d been challenging and difficult and stressful but so satisfying I couldn’t put it into words.
But I’d leave that behind, take my experience, and move onto new things. Maybe even start another company—who knows?
For now, I needed to recover. I sat curled up on the couch, my apartment dead silent aside from the low humming of the fridge. My hand, as it had done so many times since Monday, drifted down and settled on my belly.
There was something inside of me that was more important than my job or my relationship with Bryce or anything else. I had to be strong not just for me, but for the baby.
And right at that moment, my phone buzzed on the coffee table, the words “Bryce Carver” on the screen.
My first instinct was to reach over and hit “silent.” Once the call was silenced, I tried to get back to my thoughts.
But then the phone rang again. I put that call to silent too.
Then another call.
Another silent.
Then, moments later, text.
“I’m here, at your apartment. Please, talk to me.”
I sighed and shoved the phone across the table, the thing buzzing with another incoming text as soon as I did. I leaned over to look at it.
“If you want to get rid of me, that’s fine—I get it. But at least hear me out first.”
I shook my head, not wanting to hear his excuses.
But then the next text changed everything.
“I know about the baby.”
My heart stopped in my chest. I didn’t know how he’d found out, but he had—the proof was right there on the screen in front of me. Had Barbara told him? She’d clearly told him right where I was.
I hadn’t known what I was going to do with Bryce and the baby. I knew that I had to tell him at some point, but only after I’d had time to process the hell I’d just been through.
But I knew now that there was no putting it off. I had to talk to Bryce, and I had to do it now.
I picked up the phone and texted him.
“Buzzing you in now.”
“Thank you,” was the reply.
I hit the button to unlock the front door, tension forming in my gut as soon as I did. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. Part of me wanted to run at him with claws out as soon as I laid eyes on him. But the other part of me hoped that whatever he had to say would solve everything.
I loved him and hated him, all at the same time.
A knock sounded at the door. I took a deep, slow breath and opened it.
Bryce looked haggard, to put it kindly. His handsome faced was tired
and worn. Clearly, the combined effects of the booze and the news were wearing on him.
“Hey,” he said.
“You look like hell,” I responded, my body tense.
“Can I come in?” he asked. “We need to talk.”
Letting him stand out in the hallway wasn’t an option, and I’d already gone so far as to let him into the building. I stepped aside and gave him space to enter.
He sat down in the recliner and I took a seat from him across from the couch.
“Well,” I said. “You’re here. Say what you need to say.”
He didn’t waste any time.
“It’s a lie—all of it.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “No shit,” I said. “The two of us have been living a lie for the last month and a half.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “What happened last night—it wasn’t what it looks like.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him hard.
“And what, exactly, is it? Because over the course of the last twelve hours I’ve seen pictures of you locking lips with Felicity and shots of her stolen from your phone. How exactly is that not what it looks like?”
“Because she’s been chomping at the bit to try to get back with me ever since she found out that I was with you. And last night I got drunk as hell—stupidly. She must’ve seen that I was out of my head and swooped in.”
I wasn’t convinced. “And how do I know you didn’t go along with it?”
He glanced away for a moment before turning his eyes back to mine. As he looked at me, I couldn’t help but notice the pain in his eyes. If he was lying, he was putting on an award-winning performance.
“That shot is the split second it took my booze-soaked brain to realize what was happening before I pushed her away from me.”
“And the pictures on your phone?”
“She’d been sending them for the last week or so,” he said. “I know I should’ve blocked her number but I didn‘t—I figured it’d cause more drama than it’d be worth.” Then he raised finger. “And then I got to thinking, don’t you think it’s strange that the very night that Felicity makes a move, a photo that someone catches at just the right moment, is also the same night my phone gets hacked?”