by Lucia Jordan
Second Chance Mess
Bad News Billionaires Book 1
Lucia Jordan
Contents
1. Prologue (Brooke)
2. Chapter One (Tim)
3. Chapter Two (Brooke)
4. Chapter Three (Tim)
5. *** (Tim Continued)
6. Chapter Four (Brooke)
7. *** (Brooke Continued)
8. Chapter Five (Tim)
9. Chapter Six (Brooke)
10. Chapter Seven (Tim)
11. *** (Tim Continued)
12. Chapter Eight (Brooke)
13. Chapter Nine (Tim)
14. Chapter Ten (Brooke)
15. Chapter Eleven (Tim)
16. Chapter Twelve (Brooke)
17. *** (Brooke Continued)
18. Chapter Thirteen (Tim)
19. *** (Tim Continued)
20. Chapter Fourteen (Brooke)
21. Chapter Fifteen (Tim)
22. Chapter Sixteen (Brooke)
23. Chapter Seventeen (Tim)
24. Chapter Eighteen (Brooke)
25. Chapter Nineteen (Tim)
26. *** (Tim Continued)
27. Chapter Twenty (Brooke)
28. *** (Brooke Continued)
29. Epilogue (Tim)
1
Prologue (Brooke)
When Kate and I finished putting the last of the moving boxes into my car, I left my key on the kitchen counter, and then closed and locked the door to the apartment. I had loved that apartment.
I tried not to cry anymore as I got into the car. I situated my little violet plant between my thighs and started the engine. It felt like one of those scenes in a movie where the girl drives away; it felt final. I pulled out of the parking lot and followed Kate back to her apartment, which I guess was now my apartment, too.
When we got there, her boyfriend was already waiting by the door to help us unload the cars. I liked Nick; he seemed like a nice guy. He was cute and had a sort of "indie-grunge" vibe that made him look like the perfect fixture for hanging out late nights at a coffee shop, which just happened to be exactly how they had met. Kate worked at CUPS, a hip coffee shop in downtown Seattle which she had thankfully been able to land me a job at starting tomorrow, too.
I honestly didn’t know what I would have done without her help now. I was just hoping I could make as decent of a barista as Kate did. She had the quintessential aesthetic for the job; short, yellow-blond hair in a pixie cut, bright-blue eyes that seemed to say hello without her needing to speak a word, and a teal rhinestone nose ring that matched them. Kate was tall and thin, but curvy in all the places that guys liked to look at. She had even invented her own drink at the coffee shop, a dark-chocolate, orange mocha that her customers adored her for. Together, Kate and Nick looked like everything carefree and trendy that I wanted but would never have.
My life seemed like it had come crashing down into a dissatisfied and disappointing mess. My job was gone—my real job as a personal marketing assistant to a billionaire CEO, not my new one as a crappy barista—my boyfriend was gone, and now in one last painful jab to the ribs, my apartment was gone, too. I hadn't even realized that I had been sitting in my car, talking aloud to the violet plant in my lap as I monologued my sad story. My eyes caught Kate standing outside of my car window and staring at me as if I'd lost my mind.
"Sorry," I said as I opened the car door. "I guess I got lost in thought there for a minute."
Kate eyed the plant in my lap. "You're going to want to put that up somewhere where my cat won't try to eat it. She loves eating plants and things."
No! She couldn’t; it was my violet. It was the only thing I have left.
"Okay," I said as I got out of the car, clutching my plant as if it were the last thing of value on earth.
"Hi, baby," Kate's boyfriend said as he walked over to us and wrapped his arms around her waist while he pushed his tongue into her open mouth and kissed her.
I stared at them in amazement. That was probably the most erotic kiss I'd ever seen two people have as they both moaned, and I could see the swirling movement of their tongues from beneath the skin of their cheeks. I was pretty sure that they'd probably had sex on every surface in Kate's apartment; I tried not to think about it.
"Hey, Brooke," he said once they had finally untangled their tongues from each other.
I felt myself blushing as I said "hey" back to him. I felt like I had just intruded on a private and intimate moment, which was ridiculous since I knew that they were both so flagrantly outgoing with their feelings for each other. He had once tried to have sex with her when she came to sit on his lap during her break at the coffee shop, but she almost got caught, so they stopped before she got fired. Living here with these two was going to be quite an experience. They were both totally great and caring people, but they were the literal opposite of me. Fortunately, Nick didn't live here, even though he seemed to stay at Kate's apartment enough that one might think he did. But it was just Kate and her high-allergen, plant-eating cat up until now that I was moving in.
Nick went to reach for my plant to carry it in for me so that I could grab my backpack on the front seat, but Kate stopped him before his hand came close.
"Nope, don't touch her plant," she said sternly.
He looked at her as if she had three heads.
"I'll explain it to you later," she smiled.
Kate was a great friend. Anyone else would have laughed or rolled their eyes, but not Kate. She was there for me no matter how ridiculous I was being.
As the three of us worked to unload the boxes into my room at Kate's, my mind kept wandering, and I kept wondering what Tim would be thinking right now after having gotten my text. I knew it didn't do me any good to think about it; I just couldn't seem to stop.
"So, what do you think really happened between him and that woman?" Kate asked as we were grabbing piles of clothes from my backseat since I had run out of boxes while packing.
"I thought you told me it wasn't healthy to keep talking about him," I said.
"True. But I'm changing my mind. I think it's less healthy to keep it all in and silently obsess about it like I know you are. So we might as well talk about it together before you twist things all-around in your mind."
Yep, she knew me.
"I don't know," I said. "I mean, it very well could have been nothing, I suppose. Maybe he just all got swept up in a good time the party he was at and had a bit too much to drink, and then maybe that woman was just trying to come on to him right as somebody snapped a picture of it. It's not like Tim could have stopped her in that exact second if she had just reached her hand onto his lap. He might have pushed it off right after the image was captured, and it could have all been completely an innocent misunderstanding."
"Then remind me why you broke up with the guy?" Kate asked as she paused to look at me.
"He stopped communicating, Kate. He never said anything about it, and then he acted like I barely existed during the days leading up to his trip. If it had been an innocent mistake and if he had cared about me at all, then it would have been important to him to correct the situation and talk to me about it. The fact that he ignored it completely made it seem a lot like an admission of guilt."
"I agree," Nick said as he came back out to get another armful of stuff. "That was a lame thing for a guy to do. No man should treat his woman with such disrespect."
Kate dropped the pile of clothes back onto the seat of the car and turned around to kiss him with a huge smile on her face. She wrapped her fingers in his dark, messy hair and tried to wrap a leg around him too as he leaned her up against the car while
they kissed. For a minute, I thought they might start having sex right against the side of my car. They were the most amazing couple, but damn, this was annoying, especially considering my current mood.
"See?" Kate said to him as they thankfully stopped making out and went back to unloading the car. "And this is the kind of shit that makes me love you."
I did still wonder how Tim was going to react when he got back to Seattle and found that he no longer had an assistant at work or at girlfriend. I guessed that he probably wouldn't care. Any handsome billionaire like him could have their pick of women in Seattle. I was sure he wouldn't stay single for long, and I was glad that I had listened to Kate about blocking his number so that I didn't keep obsessing about it. I, on the other hand, would plan to stay single for a while as I tried to shift gears from having a career at a multi-billion dollar company to being a barista at a local coffee shop that made lattes for those business billionaires I used to work alongside. I grabbed another bag and followed Nick and Kate back into the apartment, wondering if this was where I should be at this point in my life.
2
Chapter One (Tim)
“Have a wonderful day, sir.” The flight attendant smiled at me as I disembarked the plane and walked out into the airport.
I turned my phone back on and checked to see if Brooke had texted. My head was still swirling from all the Bloody Marys on the plane, which explained why I went ahead and tried to text her again just to see if she’d had a change of heart and unblocked my number. But she hadn’t, and when the text returned as undeliverable, I flew into a bit of manic rage.
How could she have broken up with me over text? Who even did shit like that nowadays? Not only had she been my girlfriend for months, but she was also my employee. Adults didn’t break up with each other over text and block each other’s numbers unless they were in some sort of awful and abusive relationship, which we definitely were not. I was so mad that I couldn’t see straight as I tried to weave through the people in the airport and get to an Uber on the street level. I knew that I was mostly hurt and upset, but anger was a lot easier emotion to swallow than the distress of having just lost a girl that I truly cared about.
Okay, so yeah, I hadn’t been the most stellar boyfriend the past couple of weeks, but I had been super busy preparing for this trip to Spokane, and it was a good thing I had done all the work that I had because my company landed the contract. Then there was also that thing with Chelsea, the woman in the photo that somehow blew up all over the internet. I had been planning to talk to Brooke about that when I got back home following my trip, but she didn’t give me a chance.
I heard Max’s voice in the back of my head as if he were my little cricket conscience telling me that I’d actually had plenty of chances to talk to her before my trip but that I chose to stall on it instead because I took for granted that she would still be here when I got back.
“Hey, man, welcome back,” Max’s voice said through my phone’s speaker as I got into an Uber and handed the driver the address to my apartment downtown. “Did you land the deal?”
I needed to call and tell Max about it, not because I needed someone to talk to, but because I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t a complete idiot. In hindsight, I probably should have realized that Max was too honest a guy to stroke my ego. The Uber driver looked at me in the rearview mirror as we pulled away from the airport. I was hoping that since the Bloody Marys were starting to wear off that I didn’t look as bad as I felt.
“Max, you were right,” I said.
“About what?”
“She’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” he asked. Then there was a moment of silence over the phone, and he realized what I meant. “Ah, man, I’m sorry. I really liked Brooke, and she was good for your stubborn ass, too.”
Here it comes…
“I tried to tell you.”
He was right; he had. And I was too full of myself and too ignorant to how Brooke was feeling to listen to him.
“I know you did,” I said.
“What are you going to do now?” Max asked.
“Well, I landed the company that lucrative contract in Spokane, so starting tomorrow, I’ll have a lot of work to do. Tonight though, I think I’m going to go out.”
“You really think that’s the best idea?” Max said. “Why don’t you try calling Brooke instead?”
“I did. She’s blocked my number.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I just can’t sit around and do nothing tonight, or I’ll drive myself crazy. I should be out celebrating the big success of my trip, not moping around my apartment and staring at the useless phone. You want to come out with me?” I asked, already knowing the answer was no.
“Nah, I’m just gonna chill in my van tonight and work on some new designs to help me to clear my head. You should try something similar.”
Max was the epitome of a free spirit and borderline nomad. He had converted an old Volkswagen van into a tiny home on wheels and had tricked out the entire interior to look like it was something straight from middle earth. He was an amazing craftsman, and his work was unparalleled. He was also one of the most down-to-earth and reclusive guys I knew, definitely not someone who jumped at the chance to go out partying in downtown Seattle at night.
“I have to distract myself for a little while, just until I can get my head on straight,” I said.
“All right, man, well, be careful, and have fun. Sorry again about Brooke.”
When I hung up, we were almost to my apartment. I kept this downtown apartment just so that I would have a place close to the company office. My real home was an architectural delight that I built alongside the Cascade Mountain Range, and it was where I went every chance I could get. Being a billionaire CEO of a company that designs, builds, and converts shipping containers into modern, modular tiny homes, had the advantage of being able to create anything that I wanted for myself in my spare time. Max was an expert designer and had helped me construct my home in the mountains, which was comprised of four modular tiny homes stacked together. That home had garnered some major positive publicity for my company, Cubed, and made me one of the hippest and most well-known builders around. I think that was part of what drew Brooke to my company, which reminded me that she wouldn’t be there tomorrow.
Jaspers was one of the hottest nightclubs in downtown Seattle, and it was nearly impossible to get into the place unless you were part of the elite social scene. I called up a few friends—the kind of friends who were more like club partners than actual friends—and by the time everyone had arrived at the bar, I had already realized that this idea of mine wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t stop thinking about Brooke, no matter how hard I tried. I watched the people laughing and mingling, and I watched the girls dance in the middle of the dance floor. It looked like an undulating sea of bodies that were glittering with the sheen of sweat and makeup. But it was impossible for me to think about anything other than Brooke.
When Chelsea walked over to sit down with us, I almost got up to leave, but then I realized it would have been a ridiculous move for me to make. Nothing had happened that night, not for Chelsea’s lack of trying, but still nothing. Getting up to leave just because she came here to hang out with some of our mutual friends would be the same kind of avoidance that got me into this mess with Brooke, to begin with. Apparently, avoidance was more of an admission of guilt than I had realized. So, I stayed and hung out with everyone for a while, pretending to have fun and trying not to pay attention to the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about Brooke.
The next day, I was back at the office, and everyone was hitting the ground running with the new Spokane project. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to find a new assistant to take Brooke’s place. My schedule and the project workload at the company was just too busy not to have an assistant to help. I spent the morning interviewing a handful of people that my HR lady had selected. She said that as soon as the open job posting went live, there were
more responses than there were hairs on a cat, which I assumed meant an unfathomable amount.
She selected the best ones and lined them up for interviews in my schedule immediately. By late afternoon, I had hired a new assistant to take Brooke’s place. The girl would start tomorrow, and it would feel weird. I sat at my desk for a few minutes before I started going through all of the motions at work without Brooke there to talk to, and the only word that I could use to simplistically describe how I was feeling would have been unhappy.
3
Chapter Two (Brooke)
This was just not going well. I was all moved into my new apartment space with Kate and was trying really hard to adjust to the change in lifestyle, but it wasn’t going well—at all.
Kate was great, and she has certainly saved my ass by letting me move in with her, which I loved her for. But she just wasn’t easy to live with. Her apartment was a wreck literally all of the time since neither she nor her boyfriend ever seemed to clean up after themselves. She had Nick over constantly, so he was essentially more like a third roommate than a drop-in boyfriend. On top of that, they were so overly sexual that they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off of each other for longer than the attention span of a fruit fly. I was pretty convinced that they’d had sex on almost every surface in the apartment, which grossed me out so much that I tried not to think about it for too long. I also tried to touch as little as possible in the communal areas of the apartment. I spent most of the time in my room, which wouldn’t have been too bad if it weren’t for the fact that there were never any moments of quiet. Kate and Nick were loud at all hours of the day and night, playing video games, blasting music to dance with, or making moaning sounds that were way too loud not to have been faked.