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Katie shook her head. “Look, your dad was a dick for doing what he did to your mom. But not every guy is like your dad. You won’t know what Brett is like until you go there with him.”
“I know that,” I said. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to take that risk. I have so much going on already. This is so much harder than I’d ever thought it could be. I’m starting to understand why my mom is the way she is.”
“It’s good to have insight into your mom’s life, but as much as Brett is not your dad, you are not your mom either. This is your life.”
I nodded. I was so glad to have Katie as my friend—she was such a voice of reason when everything felt impossible. I took a deep breath and ran over all she had said in my mind. Maybe Brett deserved a chance. He did deserve to know, and maybe I should tell him. The only problem was I had no idea how.
Chapter 23
Brett
When Erica called in sick again, I was irritated at first. I understood that a lot had been happening and that being the center of attention in the media, the way we had been for the past while, was hard. But Erica wasn’t the first person in history that had to deal with something like that, and she wasn’t in it alone. I was going through the same thing—if not more—and I somehow managed to keep coming into the office, to keep my shit together.
In my opinion, Erica was using an excuse to hide out in her apartment and not face the music.
After thinking about it for a while, I decided I was wrong. I was running on the anger of Friday night, and it was the wrong thing to do. I knew Erica, and she had shouldered the responsibility the moment the news had leaked to the press. She had come in and fought the journalists and reporters the same way I had for a couple of days in a row before she had said she started feeling sick. If she really was sick, it had to be serious for it to have gone on this long.
Maybe I had to swallow my wounded pride after she had shut me out of her apartment and go see her. The only way I was going to be able to show her that I really did care about her was by not giving up. I needed to convince her that I loved her. At first, I hadn’t believed that myself. I didn’t just fall in love. I had always fucked around, and I had never cared about the women. But Erica was different from any woman I had ever met, and even though I had tried to convince myself I didn’t feel anything for her at first, I was done trying to deny it now. The truth was that I did feel something for her. A lot in fact.
It was time for me to let her know by showing her that I would never give up on her, not even when she tried her best to push me away. After she had told me what had happened with her mother and how she had grown up, it was understandable that she was slow to trust men. She wasn’t the one who had been hurt, but being raised by a woman who believed men were the definition of evil had to have affected her somehow. All I had to do was prove to her that I wasn’t like that. When she had shunned me on Friday, I hadn’t expected it, and I had handled it wrong. This time, I was going to do right by her.
I took care of everything in the office I needed to handle urgently before I headed out. Shane could take over for me where he didn’t need me present.
Before driving to Erica’s place, I stopped and bought her food. There was nothing like a warm plate of food when you were feeling sick, and the chicken noodle soup I had taken her last time had gone down very well. I wanted her to know that I wanted to take care of her. That I wasn’t just in this for the sex and the good times, but that I was willing to stick out the bad times with her too.
When I arrived at her apartment building, I didn’t do what I had done before. I didn’t make my way into the building through the back entrance. Instead, I walked to the front door. I hoped the media would see me. I wanted them to understand how I felt about Erica, and that I wasn’t going to let a bit of bad publicity get between me and the woman I cared about. I should have gone public with our relationship when Erica had suggested it, but I had been a fool. I couldn’t change what I had done before, but I could change how I moved forward.
I was just about to buzz Erica’s apartment when the door opened and one of the residents stepped out. I slipped in through the open door to surprise Erica. It was partly because I wanted to surprise her and partly because I didn’t want her to turn me away if she knew I was at the door. Aside from our conversation on the phone this morning, the last words we had exchanged hadn’t been pleasant. I didn’t want her to hold onto that while making a decision whether to let me in.
