Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 97339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Brace yourselves, babies. Shit is about to get real!
Chapter 23
BRIANNA
“Brianna Fucking Lucas.”
Ahhh, shit.
My apartment door is flung open by my best friend, and I suck in a breath, preparing for the worst as she storms through my apartment. Her usual happy face is long gone, replaced with absolute rage, and it’s clear she just spoke with her brother.
I give her a tight smile from the kitchen, but her eyes don’t meet mine, they go straight to my stomach as if not really believing anything Carter had to say. But there’s no denying it now, I’ve been strutting around in nothing but my underwear all day. She can see my baby bump just as clearly as I can see the hurt in her eyes.
After sitting in my car and crying over the top of my steering wheel, I had to get out of there. Seeing him crumble to the ground like that, completely broken and lost, reminded me of the day he first broke up with me. I couldn’t handle the pain that came along with it. But the way he looked at me, the betrayal in his eyes . . . There’s no doubt about it, Carter Waters despises me. I went and did the one thing he always said he didn’t want.
I didn’t want him to find out like this. I’ve been wracking my brain for ways to tell him since the moment I peed on the pregnancy test, and out of all the different scenarios I came up with, that was definitely not one of them. If there was a way to go back and do it all over, to tell him in another way, I would do it in a heartbeat.
I’ve never felt rage like that before. I could see the wheels turning in his mind, judging the size of my bump, and I know he was thinking the worst—assuming I’d been sleeping around. Despite wanting to run at the first second, I couldn’t leave him without telling him the truth. I only wish I didn’t do it like a fucking psycho.
I’m almost positive he’s sitting in some filthy dive bar, drinking bottle after bottle of whiskey. Logan will probably have to go and scrape him off the sidewalk tonight or go searching through the hospitals just to make sure he’s still alive.
He’ll never forgive me for this, and even though it takes two to tango, I could have been honest with him and given him the chance to have a say. I stole that from him knowing what he would have wanted. I betrayed him in the worst way, and he has every right to hate me for it.
Carter never would have asked me to have an abortion, especially considering how I feel about having children, but he would have absolved himself of any parental rights and I would have truly being doing this alone. The second I realized I was pregnant, the babies became the best thing I ever did. They were already a done deal, already a permanent fixture in my life. I was going to be their mommy and nothing Carter said could have changed that.
The door slams behind Cass, and it’s so loud, I can hear it echoing right down the hallway. “So, it’s true?” Cass grunts, looking at me through tears as if I’m the worst person in the world.
My brows furrow as a large lump forms in my throat, making me feel as though I’m going to break. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, not needing to confirm what she already knows.
Cassie braces her hands against my kitchen counter, gripping the marble and trying to keep herself from shaking, her gaze locked on my protruding stomach. “How long have you known?” she asks, her voice breaking.
Letting out a breath, I walk around my kitchen counter and into the small living room, nodding my head for her to follow. Taking a seat on the couch, I pat the space beside me, welcoming her to sit, but I’m not sure if she will, and it kills me how that’s even a thought that enters my head. “I found out at four weeks.”
“But,” she says, her gaze flicking back to my stomach as she reluctantly drops down at the other end of the couch, keeping as far as the couch will allow. “How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
A tear escapes her eye, and I hate that I put it there. A moment passes before she finally finds the strength to lift her gaze to mine, and the betrayal in her eyes is like a knife right through the chest. “I get that you’re in a bad situation with Carter, but how could you not tell me?”
“God, Cass. You have no idea how much I wanted to,” I say as my own tears start to fall down my cheeks and drop to my chest. “I couldn’t. You love your brothers so much, and I love that about you, but I could never put you in the position where you would have to lie to them—to Carter. He needed to hear it from me, and if you knew . . . it would have torn you to pieces.”