Scoring the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 3) Page 21

  But what struck me as different was the urge to do so—look away, that is.

  Outside of biologically, I didn’t have any desire to ogle anyone’s breasts other than Winnie’s. Imagine that.

  I smiled at the thought, and unfortunately, the wattage of Amelia’s grew brighter.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late. Everyone is freaking out about the weather. Apparently, it’s supposed to be a bad one.”

  Shit. “The weather?” I asked like an idiot, sitting up straighter.

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “Snow, I guess. It might sit here, right on top of us for a while.”

  Fucking fucking shit.

  I needed to hurry this along. “So, did he change his mind after I left last night?” I asked.

  She blushed slightly before shaking her head. “Unfortunately, no.”

  Okay…what the fuck were we doing here, then?

  When I struggled to figure out how to ask that without cursing all over the goddamn place, she waded in. “But we’re friends, right? I figured we could use the time to catch up.”

  Be polite, be polite, be polite.

  I forced a smile, and it made me think of what Winnie would say I looked like. Probably something horrible like a doe in heat with six bucks chasing her little white tail intent on a gang bang. In other words, wild-eyed. Panicked. Intent on escape at all costs.

  Ridiculous, I know. But these descriptions often got lengthy.

  “That’s nice.”

  It’s so not fucking nice.

  “But I’ve really got somewhere to be. I’ve got to go if we don’t have any real business to discuss.”

  Well, that was blunt. But fuck, I was having a really hard time finding my finesse as I looked out the window to see fucking flurries falling.

  Shit.

  “I appreciate the effort,” I added, trying to make one of my own. “Really. But I’m sorry you came all the way out here.”

  Disappointment suffused her features, but she managed to maintain her dignity. “I was actually hoping we could spend some time together—”

  I stopped her before she went on with a raise of my hand and an apologetic smile. “Amelia.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m seeing someone.”

  She nodded and wrapped her hands around her gloves. “It had to happen eventually, right?”

  I tilted my head in question.

  “I always knew you’d settle down eventually.” She shrugged. “You’re a nice guy. And the nice guys almost always do.”

  I reached out and squeezed her shoulder awkwardly.

  I meant to stand up immediately, but for some god-awful reason—I was blaming this on Thatch and Kline—I started to talk.

  “She’s amazing.” Amelia smiled as much as she could manage on the very cusp of rejection, so I went on. Babbling like a buffoon.

  “She’s actually the new team physician for the Mavericks.” I blushed. “I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere—she fought me tooth and fucking nail, but yeah.”

  “Wes,” Amelia said with a sweet smile. “It’s okay. I’m happy for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  I wanted to stop, really, I knew I was just using her for her ear at this point, but it felt so good to talk about all the things I’d been keeping bottled up for months.

  “Good luck in the Divisional on Saturday. You guys have looked so strong all year.”

  At the reminder of football, I finally stood up and threw on my own coat. “That’s where I’m headed now…a football game.”

  Her eyebrows shot together, so I laughed and clarified. “Pop Warner. She, Winnie, my girlfriend,” I stuttered, “has a six-year-old daughter. They made it all the way to the championship game. She’s the kicker.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wow. A six-year-old.”

  I nodded and smiled just thinking about Lexi.

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “Since October.”

  “Jesus.”

  I narrowed my eyes, and she covered her mouth before reaching toward me in apology. “No. God, I’m sorry. It’s just fast. Good, I’m sure it’s great, Wes. I…well, I was just thinking about myself. I don’t think I could know that quickly. Not with the added responsibility of a kid.”

  My mind reeled. Sure, it’d been fast, but Lexi didn’t feel even remotely like a responsibility. And Winnie sure as fuck didn’t. “I really am sorry,” I offered again, and she nodded.

  “I am too,” she murmured. “Especially if I held you up.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sure they’re great, Wes,” she semi-repeated, apology in her eyes.

  “They are,” I confirmed. Too good for me, that little voice of doubt whispered in my ear.

  Goddamn, I hope she didn’t hold me up.

  Winnie: We can’t wait to see you.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lancaster,” my pilot said as he walked down the aisle of my plane toward me. “We’re going to be delayed. They’ve called a ground stop on all outgoing flights. Incoming planes are being diverted to Charlotte.”

  I looked first out the window to the ominous dark clouds and blanket-like snow and then to my watch as sleet started to pelt the frame of the plane.

  “How long?”

  I knew the answer before I even asked. When the pilot came out of the cockpit to talk to me, no urgency in his manner, it wasn’t good news.

  His face was apologetic. “At least a couple of hours.” He paused before admitting, “Probably more.”

  I knew my face fell. I could feel it in every cell of my body.

  Lex’s championship football game was supposed to kick off in an hour and a half, and I’d promised her I’d be there.

  Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have taken that extra meeting, not for the chance at the trade, not for Amelia, not for fucking anything—especially not without looking at the weather first.

  “We can wait here, though. As soon as they lift the ground stop, we’re ready to fly.”

  “Thanks, Josh.”

  I backed out of Winnie’s message and pulled up the weather app on my phone, something she’d jokingly shown me how to do, and nearly wept when I saw the clear skies over New York and endless cover over Baltimore.

  Lexi’s game was going to happen.

  And I was going to be here.

  As I dialed Winnie’s number and got no answer, a headache took root in the very base of my skull.

  The two of them had never had a man to call their own that they could count on without question. We’d all foolishly trusted it to be me.

  I hated myself—and they were going to hate me too.

  It took twenty hours for the snow to clear enough that we could take off.

  I’d considered renting a car, but with reports of dozens and dozens of wrecks and abandoned cars all along the interstate, Winnie had requested I not.

  I’d finally gotten in touch with her—after the game—and the disappointment at my absence was stark in her voice. She’d tried to hide it, especially at the seemingly no-fault situation of a weather delay. But I’d yet to tell her all the details. That’d I’d put business before them, that I’d thought I could have everything, and that I was self-fucking-important enough to think the world would wait for me.

  The whole situation literally felt toxic inside me, eating away at not only the organs, but all of the carefully cultivated happiness Winnie and Lex had planted there over the last several months.

  I thought about the hours and hours they’d spent without me, waiting for my return, and the thought that I’d made a promise I hadn’t tried my absolute hardest to keep to a little girl with too few normalcies in her life plagued me.

  It chewed and gnawed, and by the time I knocked on the door to Winnie’s house, I didn’t think there was anything left behind.

  No certainty. No contentment. And absolutely no worthiness when it came to the love of these two women.

  I’d finally decided I wanted it all, and I’d sti
ll blown it.

  And now…I felt numb.

  Winnie opened the door with a small smile, and I couldn’t match it.

  I waited for her to usher me inside the door, then I pulled her into my arms and inhaled her smell one more time.

  I had so many things I wanted to say, all of them coming together in my brain at once, but in the end, all I could say was one colossally stupid goddamn thing.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  Those words hit me like a bullet to the heart, and thanks to our proximity on the porch and a day and a half of convincing myself all would be well, it was at point-blank range. The pain was damn near unbearable. My knees shook and knocked together, making it an impossibility to stand on my own, and I reached a shaky hand out and gripped the doorframe for support.

  I blinked several times as I processed his words.

  He can’t do this?

  Over seven long years ago, I’d heard those same words from a different man as a tiny combination of the two of us grew inside of me. I could still picture Nick’s face, wide-eyed and apologetic—almost—as he told the woman to whom he’d pledged his eternal love, that a baby, a family, wasn’t in his five-year plan to dominate neurosurgery. That if I wanted to keep the life I harbored a few inches under the warm flesh of my rounding abdomen, I’d be going it on my own.

  The wound felt nearly as fresh as I looked into Wes’s beautiful, wild, hazel eyes.

  With a rough mental slap to bring myself back from the brink, I concentrated on the simple combination of words. So basic in their structure and vague in description, Wes could have been talking about anything. Overreaction and transference abounded in déjà vu scenarios like this.

  Right?

  Relax, Winnie, I told myself. Don’t dramatize his statement until you know the facts.

  What…this…could he not do?

  “You can’t do this?” I finally found the strength to repeat his words for confirmation, calming my voice and waiting for the relief to rush through my veins.

  “I can’t,” he semi-repeated, nearly choking on the words as he pushed them out.

  Programmed after months together, I reached forward and tried to pull him into my arms. Just for a minute. Just to make it stop hurting so much—for both of us.

  But he stopped my progress with a tight grip on my upper arms, the prints of his fingers mottling the cold, flushed skin white.

  “Winnie.”

  “What this, Wes? What exactly can you not do?” I asked, the tether to my control fraying one tiny piece of rope at a time.

  An unsinkable ship, they’d said about Titanic, and after the last couple of months, I would have thought the same for Wes and me. But just like on that cold night in April of 1912, the words stood out like stars in an unobstructed sky. This ship will sink.

  And in the context of Wes’s deceivingly simple phrasing, I was now a this. A sad, four-letter word backed by zero emotion or meaning.

  Me and Lex were just a this. A small little blip in Wes’s relationship history, and now, he had decided he was done with us. We were disposable. Sure, we’d lasted the longest of anyone he’d ever made a go of it with, but what the fuck good did that do us?

  We were more attached, more hopeful, and in the end, still all alone.

  All alone.

  I wasn’t sure which was harder, letting those words sink all the way in, or forcing my lungs to breathe air in and out.

  He only gave the slightest of nods. He could tell by the look on my face, I already knew what this was about. “This. Me and you. I can’t do it.”

  All of this time, I had been feeling so much guilt and shame over the little voice in my head warning me of Wes’s past. I’d felt fucking awful, actually nauseated I was so disgusted with myself, that I was even contemplating thinking the worst of him, and now…he was proving all that goddamn ugliness inside me right.

  I was very likely going to be cynical and alone for the rest of my life. Too jaded by the jilting of two goddamn men, and I fucking hated them for it.

  Wes, as he stood staring holes into my head, most of all, because he’d shown me what it was like to have everything and had then taken it away. At least Nick had never bothered.

  I couldn’t find the strength to search his eyes. Honestly, I didn’t want to see what was in them. I feared it would only cause me more pain, and maybe even worse, more hope for him to crush. Because he’d looked like he was hurting just as much as I was, not like a smug playboy who’d gotten his fill, and as he’d already taught me, kindness before torture was worse than torture all the way through.

  I looked out toward the street and focused my gaze on the streetlight illuminating half the block as my mind spun in erratic circles.

  This man, with whom I knew I was without a doubt in love, was telling me he couldn’t do it. This man, whom I’d let fully into my life, into my world, into my daughter’s heart, was turning his back on not only me, but her, too.

  I clutched at my chest with both hands in a pathetic attempt to ease the discomfort. Or maybe I was just trying to prevent myself from bleeding out from the wounds his words had caused because any good doctor knew they needed pressure to stanch the flow.

  Eventually, the effort to look away seemed to be greater than looking at him. I couldn’t not look at him anymore. Because, as much as I theorized in my head, I didn’t have any real answers. And that left me baffled and confused and so fucking hurt. God, I hurt.

  I glanced down at my skin, my clothing, convinced the evidence of my agony was splattered across my hands, my shirt, in bright, red, dripping splotches.

  But no, it would’ve been too easy to see exactly where Wes had cut me. Because then, I could’ve fixed it. Sewn myself back together.

  This was internal. My heart.

  Thoughts spiraling, I fell into a nose dive again, picturing the certain death of any chance of a romantic future.

  How in the hell could I let any man into my life after this?

  Not only was he hurting me, he was hurting that adorable little six-year-old inside my house. And two cycles of paternal pain for her made two times too many.

  Love goes both ways, but in this moment, Love is a one-way street, headed in the opposite direction of me.

  Now, I had to try to find a way to live with the consequences. I had to try to find a way to pick up the pieces for both Lex and me and move the fuck on.

  God, the urge to break down in sobbing, uncontrollable tears was so strong—I actually could feel the hiccupping breaths waiting to escape my lungs. But I refused to let him see me lose control like that. It wouldn’t be easy to come by, but in the end, I’d still have a little dignity left.

  Fuck Wes Lancaster. Fuck him for treating me like a piece of trash. Fuck him for worming his way into mine and my daughter’s hearts and then changing his goddamn mind.

  My pain mutated to anger as I stood there and watched Wes stare back at me, his eyes locked with mine and bloodshot.

  I hope a goddamn vessel bursts and ruins all that interesting fucking color. I mentally spat on him. Asshole.

  I felt like such a fucking fool.

  “Well, I can’t say that I’m all that surprised,” I retorted. “I mean, this is what you’re known for, right? Fucking and forgetting?” I fought the urge to cringe at my words.

  They were awful, awful words, and I wasn’t even sure why I’d said them, but they were out there, hovering between us, and I saw the exact moment those words, my horrible words, slipped into his ears. His eyes creased down at the corners, and the air pushed out of his lungs in a quick, shocked breath.

  My heart interrupted my brain and forced it to order me to raise my arms and put them around him, but still in charge, my anger refused. This was not my fault.

  He had chosen to call it quits. He’d been the one to back out of this relationship like a fucking coward.

  Despite the pain pinching his eyes nearly closed, I shrugged, refusing to show any
more weakness in front of him. When he was gone, I’d drown the fire of my pride in a sloppy, tear-filled mess. But not now.

  “It’s not a big deal, Wes. I mean, I should’ve expected it, you know? What real relationship starts with an angry fuck?”

  “Win—”

  I held my hand up and stopped him before he could continue. If he wanted to play games with my heart, then I sure as shit wasn’t going to sit around and take it without putting up a fight.

  “It doesn’t. We were doomed from the start.”

  Sure, I would most likely regret these vile words later, but in that moment, all I saw was bright, flaming, motherfucking red. I felt the urge to scream at him, shove him off the porch, pound my fists into his chest. Anything to let this pulsating rage out of my body.

  All the while, he just stood there. Not saying anything. Not defending himself or making his own accusations at me. Where passion should have lived, instead sat nothing.

  Fuck this. I don’t have to stand out here and look at him. I don’t have to do anything, besides walk the fuck away.

  “Well, have a good night, Wes. I’ll see you at work Monday morning.”

  This fucking prick. He had the audacity to appear speechless.

  “I’m going to go back inside now,” I said, and I couldn’t stop the resentment from leaking into my voice. I had the door halfway closed when he stuck his hand in the jamb to stop it. Two point five seconds of visualizing the carnage I could create by crushing them later, I opened the door wide again.

  “What?”

  “I just…I’m sorry—”

  Never mind. “You know what? I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Winnie, please.”

  I ignored the pleading, desperate timbre of his voice and took a stab at inflicting some wounds of my own. “They won, by the way.”

  His swallow was rough as he tilted his head to the side in confusion.

  “Lexi’s team,” I explained. “They won. She even got to kick a field goal. She was really excited to tell you about it.”