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The boys run over, wrapping their stick arms around me. I squat down and hug them both so tight, holding on a little longer than normal.
“I love you boys so much,” I say, planting a kiss on each of their cheeks before they run back over to finish their dessert.
Chantelle gives me a warm hug, then pulls back to look at me.
“Make sure you take care of yourself, B. I’m here if you need to talk or hang by the pool or cry into some wine.” She smiles and I offer my attempt at one. “And if you two ever do decide to work things out, just know that I’ll have your back. I’ll stand with you when you go to speak to your father. Just talk to him. What can it hurt to ask?”
Her eyes search mine and I thank her, but I don’t promise her that I’ll ask him because I don’t think it’s something I can do. Maybe it’s my ego, maybe it’s my immaturity, but the thought of asking a man I love to love me back and have a life and family with me only to hear that no, he doesn’t want those things with me or doesn’t feel that way, sounds like absolute, soul-crushing pain.
When I leave, I take the long way home, winding my way down streets I never take. I don’t want to go home. I’m scared to sit alone in my house for fear that I will call him and beg him for another chance.
I walk for an hour. My entire body aches from the tension, lack of sleep, and the amount of pavement I’ve walked today. I finally round the corner to my building. The sun has completely set and the streetlights have come on. I take the final steps to my building, my head down as I pull my phone from my pocket to check the time when I see seventeen missed calls from my father. I panic. I didn’t realize my phone was on silent this entire time. I worry something happened to Chantelle and the boys before they made it back home. I slide my phone open to see a text from my father.
Dad: Call me now!
My chest clenches as my thumb moves to the call button, but a voice startles me. I look up and sitting on the steps of my building is Beckham. Disheveled, hair a mess, suit coat in hand.
“I told him.”
I blink several times, trying to make sense of everything that’s happening right now. I shake my head as if that will help me understand, my phone screen lighting up again as my father calls for the eighteenth time.
“Told who?” I ask, not putting it together.
“Your father. I told him about us. I told him everything.”
My mouth falls open, and a cold flush rushes over my body.
“What? Why? Is this—are you trying to get back at me for quitting?” I hate that that’s where my mind goes, but I never thought for one second that he would tell him.
That’s when I see it, the pain in his eyes. “You think I would do that to you?” He pushes up from the stairs as he steps toward me, his hands coming to cup my face as he looks down at me.
“Why?” I ask again, my voice shaking.
“Because I’m in love with you, Brontë, and I refuse to lose you.”
Chapter 22
Beckham
“Say something, anything,” I plead, my eyes searching her face for some sort of reaction. She stares at me, blinking, her face as pale as the moon in the shadow of the building.
Finally, she looks down at the phone in her hand that’s still glowing, her father’s name flashing on the screen.
“Are you going to answer it?”
She shakes her head and steps around me toward the stairs.
“No, I can’t even think straight.”
I follow behind her. “Can I come up?”
“Yes, you have a lot of explaining to do.” She holds the door open as she walks inside.
The elevator ride is silent. She stares at the floor, clutching the railing so tight her knuckles are white.
“You don’t look okay, Brontë.” I reach out to tilt her chin upward to look at me, but she jerks her head away just as the doors open. She steps into the hallway and I follow behind her till she unlocks her door and we step inside.
“Hey.” I grab her arm. “Look at me.” She hesitates and I pull her toward me. “I said look at me, Brontë.” My tone is harsh and commanding, but I don’t care.
