“TIFFANY, THIS IS Branch Best.” Finn makes the introduction, his arm around Poppy. “Branch, Tiffany Standen.”
Tiffany, the woman of the hour, makes no secret of checking me out. She scoops her eyes down my body, licking her lips on the return trip. Her own body is smashed into a skin-tight white dress and a little tiara with white and pink feathers sits atop her reddish locks.
“Branch Best, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Happy Birthday,” I say, looking over her shoulder as discreetly as I can. A group of women walk in and I scan them quickly and then return to Tiffany when none of them are Layla.
“You could make sure it’s a very happy one,” she breathes.
Finn cackles beside me while I feel Poppy’s gaze settling on my features, waiting on my response.
Smiling awkwardly, I take a deep breath. “I think that lady over there is trying to get your attention.”
Turning to see a thin woman in a red dress in the corner, she gives her a little wave. “I have to talk to my party planner really quick. I hope we can catch up later.”
There’s no promise offered of a hook up later from my end. She’s fine to look at and I halfway think I’ve fucked her before, but surely one of us would remember that.
“See ya,” she says, waving at me over her shoulder.
She teeters away on heels so tall I wonder how long it’ll take her to wind up on that very round ass before the night is over. My guess is broken up when Poppy speaks beside me.
“Finn,” she says. “Will you get me a drink? Please.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Nothing too hard. It’s too early for that.”
He smirks. “First time I’ve ever heard you say that.”
She laughs, her hair brushing against her back as she shoos Finn away. Then she turns to me, her face sobering. “I didn’t know you knew Tiffany.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why are you here?”
She knows the fucking answer. She knows I’m trying to run into her randomly. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is the tone she used to ask the question.
There was no eagerness to it. No excitement. No hint this could be awesome. Nope, none of that. Instead, her eyes are narrow with a touch of something else that leads me to believe this encounter, should it happen, will be anything but awesome.
“Is Layla here with someone else?” I ask.
She takes a second, one too many, to consider this. “Not exactly.”
My jaw clenches, my teeth grinding together, as I try to prepare myself to see the girl I can’t stop thinking about waltzing in here with another guy. Surely Poppy would’ve just told me if she was seeing someone else.
“It’s not Worthington, is it?”
“No,” she huffs. “It’s not Callum. It’s no one, really. She’s . . . Fine. She’s alone, Branch.”
“Then why say that? You just about got someone hurt.”
“Forget it. It was a joke gone bad. Just . . .” She looks at the chandelier hanging above us in the penthouse of the Standen Hotel. “You need to give her some space tonight, okay? She doesn’t know you’re here and she just needs some . . . space.”
“Did I do something to offend her?” I ask, an odd sensation coming over me. “Did I hurt her or say something really stupid?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then why are you acting like I should stay away from her, Poppy?”
Very slowly, her chin drops until we’re face-to-face. There’s no joke on the tip of her tongue, no silly comeback that she always has ready to fire. In the vacancy lies a seriousness that has me forcing a swallow.
She considers her words. “She has some things going on, Branch. I’m sure she’ll talk to you, but just be gentle if you see her, please.”
Be gentle?
“Just between you and me,” I say, “she doesn’t like it gentle.”
“Branch!”
“Fine. I hear you. Be easy with her. Got it.”
Her arms plant firmly across her chest. “You are so not going to heed any of what I said, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Damn you.”
“I’ll be gentle, even though I think that’s the pussiest word I’ve ever heard,” I admit. “But if I see her, I’m going to talk to her. If she tells me to go fuck myself for some reason, I’ll probably do just that because I’ve been doing that for the last few weeks every time I think of her.”
“Nice visual.”
“I have it down to a science. I use the left hand for foreplay and the right to bring it home.”
“Oh my God,” she laughs, shaking her head.
“You rang?” Finn pops between us and pulls Poppy into his side and hands her a drink. “What are you thinking, Best? See anyone you know?”
“Not yet, but you know me. I make friends everywhere I go.”
Finn chuckles. “If that’s what you want to call them.”
“Speaking of, I’m going to mingle. You two kids behave.”
Poppy tries to shoot me a warning glance, but I avoid receiving it. Instead, I spin on my heel and wander about the penthouse that’s the stage for the birthday bash.
There are crystals everywhere, dangling off light fixtures and filling vases with big, drippy candles. Music plays through the sound-system, broken up by someone on a mic saying a deejay will be starting soon. I lift a mini-burger off a tray carried around by a man in a white jacket and look for Layla.
People begin to show up in thicker droves, yet the party is much more controlled than I anticipated. I meander through the throngs of people with the burger in my hand, saying hello to various people as I go.
Her giggle stops me dead in my tracks, my eyes glued to an oversized golden mirror on the wall ahead. I listen, my senses on high alert, waiting for the sound to come again.
Watching the reflection, bodies move behind me. The deejay is firing up an early-two-thousands hit when I see her.
A pinkish-orange dress hugs her curves, her hair hanging soft around her shoulders. She looks beautiful with her rosy cheeks and bright eyes. She radiates a simple elegance that I can’t look away from.
She catches me watching her, one hand flying to the base of her throat. Her eyes go wide and cause the lady she’s speaking with to ask her if she’s all right. I see her nod, telling them she’s okay, then excusing herself into a crowd to her left. It takes me a whole half a second to follow her, dumping the uneaten burger on a table.
Thanks to her heels and my athletic ability, I catch up with her right as she’s heading onto a balcony off a bedroom. The air is warm, thick with the scents of the city with twinkling lights sparkling on the river below.
“Hey,” I say, pulling the sliding glass door closed behind me. She stands at the railing, her back to me, and doesn’t respond to my greeting. “Are you okay, Layla?”
“I’m fine, Branch. How are you?”
“A little confused.”
She nods but still doesn’t face me. “The city is so beautiful from here. So peaceful.”
I stand next to her so close the fabric of our clothes touch, but our bodies beneath don’t. She sucks in a breath as I place one hand beside hers on the black iron rail. “It’s quiet,” I admit. “It’s hard to believe it’s Chicago. It reminds me of home.”
“What’s it like where you’re from?”
“Memphis is a city that feels like a town,” I tell her softly. “It’s nice and quiet for the most part and has that Southern hospitality thing going for it.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is.”
“Does your family live there?”
Turning my head, I take her in. The breeze rustles her hair, her perfume filling the air making me want to wrap her up and kiss the ever-loving fuck out of her. It’s a wild, strange phenomenon to want to simply kiss her.
“My family does live there. My parents live in the same house I grew up in,” I tell her, not sure why the questions all of a sudden. “I tried to buy them a new one when I signed the first contract, but they’re stubborn.”
“And proud, I bet.”
“My dad has an entire room devoted to me in the house. It’s like a shrine or something. It’s pretty awkward.”
She glances at me and we share a small, simple laugh.
“I imagine your dad is like a grown-up version of you,” she says. “Not as bulky, but more handsome in a Sam Elliott kind of way.”
“My mom would love that analogy. She has a major crush on him.”
“Every girl does, Branch,” she giggles. “He’s the epitome of getting sexier with age.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, making a face that causes some of the tension in her shoulders to melt away. The faint circles under her eyes grab my attention and a curiosity seats itself in the bottom of my gut. “How have you been?”
And that does it. Her face turns back to the city and I’m met with silence.
It’s an automatic response to place my hand over hers, just like it appears to be a reflex of hers to jump when we touch. Her head whips to the side where I’m just waiting to catch her eyes.
“Layla, did I do something to you?”
Her laugh is loud and full-bellied and filled with an anxious edge that has me withdrawing my hand from hers. She’s wiping tears from the reaction and catches her breath before even trying to talk.
My stomach flip-flops as I process this response, one I didn’t see coming and I don’t know how to categorize. Sorting through the memories from the cabin for the millionth time, I can’t put my finger on anything I could’ve said or done that would have been offensive or more stupid than usual.
“I’m glad you find me so funny,” I mutter, my gut twisted in a tight knot the same way it is when I’m standing at the line face-to-face with a cornerback.
“It’s really not funny.” She sucks in a hasty breath. “It’s not funny at all.”
“You know what,” I say, defense mechanisms kicking in, “I apologize for whatever it is. I’ll leave you alone. Have a good night, Layla.”
I head for the door, not bothering to give her a second to change her mind. I don’t even look at her over my shoulder. This is another girl playing games, a girl I just happen to let get under my skin in a moment of weakness.
My hand is on the pull when my name whispers through the air behind me. I freeze, processing the way it sounds like it was uttered on a whim, a last-second decision to call my name even though it’s clearly filled with a hesitancy to do it.
“Yeah?” I stay facing the glass, barely able to make out her reflection due to the brightness inside.
I wait, hand still primed to yank open the slider. My annoyance level is far too high, the irritation at myself slipping into anger. My mind is chastising me for even being here, for chasing down this girl who doesn’t want to see me, because if she did, she would’ve reached out. She could’ve planted a little seed with Poppy. My dumb ass can’t take a fucking clue.
The roll of the door just starts to rumble when she finally speaks again. “Wait.”
“Layla, we don’t have to do this,” I sigh, snapping the door shut. “I didn’t mean to bother you or put you in some weird position. I just wanted to say hi.”
Turning, I take her in. Her posture is defiant, her chin lifted towards the inky black sky.
“Trust me when I say I don’t want to do this.” Her confidence wobbles. “I need to sit down.” She moves quickly across the balcony and slides into a chair next to a small glass table. “You probably should sit down too.”
My stomach bottoms out, dropping to my feet, as I drag myself to the chair opposite her. My skin is coated with a cold sweat, every nightmare I’ve ever contemplated rolling through me like it’s three in the morning and I’m lonely.
“What the hell is going on?” I drop into the seat, wiping the sweat off my palms.
“I’m pregnant, Branch.”
Falling back into the chair, I blow out a sigh of relief that it wasn’t some STD talk. I hate those. The last time that happened a girl tried to extort me for ten thousand dollars until I volunteered to show her my regular screening and that I’ve never had any sort of venereal disease. Ever.
“What did he say?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Callum.”
She slow-blinks. “Callum?”
“You haven’t told him yet?” I ask, watching her work through a battery of emotions. My own are a little whirled as I realize my lusting over this woman has probably just had to come to a screeching halt. She has bigger fish to fry than my cock . . . and that’s pretty fucking big.
“It’ll be all right,” I say, as encouraging as I can while setting aside the fact that this is not how I’d hoped this conversation was going to go. “He’ll come around. But do you want some advice?”
She slow-blinks again, this time with her mouth hanging open. I take that as a yes.
“Take charge right away. Don’t let him start calling the shots or thinking he gets to say shit about your life.”
“Branch . . .”
We sit across the table, the moon shining just enough to illuminate her pretty features and I resent the fact that Callum is the one that spent that kind of intimate time with her. Fucker didn’t even appreciate it.
A wash of fear trickles across her face. My heart clenches, the do-gooder that’s buried so far below the surface I don’t see it much chooses this moment to come forward.
“You need help telling Finn? He’s gonna be pissed, Layla.”
“I know,” she squeaks.
“No, I don’t think you do,” I laugh, just imagining my best friend’s response to this little piece of news. “He might drive to Columbus tonight and kick the shit out of him.”
“Branch . . .”
“I’ll make sure he gets bailed out.”
“Branch.” This time it’s a command, a warning to stop talking and listen. “I need to talk to you.”
“We’re talking, Sunshine.”
Her throat moves with a hard swallow. She leans back in her chair, combing a hand through the side of her hair. “Um, so . . .” She releases a breath. “The baby. Um . . . Branch, the baby isn’t Callum’s.”
“Then whose is it?” I watch her face and realize . . . I’m better off not knowing. With a need to get off of the balcony and into the comfort of a mass of drunk bodies, I start to stand. “You know what, I don’t want to know.”
“The baby is yours.” She blurts the words like it’s a burden under the weight of which she’s being crushed. That if she just chucks it into the world, gets the offending words out of her mouth, she can breathe.
I stop dead in my tracks.
Replaying the statement, it makes no more sense than it did the first time.
She looks at me like she’s watching a man learn his fate after being tried for the most heinous of crimes. It’s a mixture of fear at the reaction, but also an acute curiosity.
“What did you just say?” I ask.
“The baby is yours, Branch.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I scoff, my chair going sailing back and smashing against the glass. “The baby is mine? Your baby is mine? No way.”
“I’m pregnant and the only person I’ve slept with is you.”
I laugh because that’s all I can do short of exploding everything within reach.
This has to be some kind of sick joke or game or attempt to piss me off for not calling her. That’s happened before, but not to this extent. Still, it’s possible.
“Layla, really,” I say, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. “If you’re pregnant—congratulations, but the baby cannot be mine.”
“I know it’s hard to believe—”
“Hard to believe? You know what’s hard to believe? That it’s you pulling this shit. I’ve had a lot of things pinned on me, but, believe it or not, never a kid. I never dreamed it would be you.”
The sky looks so dark, so foreboding as I look into it, wondering how the fuck I got here. How did I give this woman enough of a comfort level around me to claim she’s pregnant?
As her chair goes skidding against the rails, clamoring as it falls to the tile, I know—this is how it happened. She has that thing about her that’s just relatable enough to think she’s not like the rest of them. That she sees more than dollar bills and contract numbers. I believed that, and that is what is killing me most right now—I trusted her even when I knew better.
Her golden eyes dance with rage. “You think I’m making this up?”
“I don’t doubt you’re pregnant, but I have serious doubts it’s mine. I used a rubber,” I point out, thanking God for that little tidbit. “You’re on the pill. Explain to me how the universe pulled off me knocking you up under those circumstances. Hell, if it’s even a possibility, do you know how many kids I could have running around out there?”
“I have no idea how many potential offspring you have, Branch, and the fact that I know so little about you worries me too.”
“Didn’t worry you when you were coming all over my cock.”
“And it didn’t worry you when you stuck said cock in my vagina and told me how tight I felt wrapped around you before you went and got a condom,” she says flatly.
“Ohhh. That’s where you’re saying this happened. In that span of ten seconds I was in you raw?”
She glares at me. “I’m not saying I know when it happened. I’m just saying I know it did.”
“This is fucking bullshit.”
“You know what’s fucking bullshit?” Her arms drop to her side as her tone starts to shift. “That I decided to tell you this because it was the right thing to do, and I almost had myself convinced that we could figure a way to work it out. You know, as I’ve been sitting around trying not to vomit, crying myself to sleep over not knowing what’s going to happen, and how I’m going to handle it all and how you’re going to handle it all and what’s the best way to tell you and to . . .” She sucks in a breath, her cheeks as flamed as her dress. “Forget I said it. I wish I hadn’t.”
“Forget you said it?” I laugh angrily. “You just said I knocked you up.”
“And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? You knocked me up. We fucked and now this. That sounds so pretty, doesn’t it?” Her features sour. “You think I’m any happier about this than you are? You think I wanted to have a baby by you?”
Those words sear into my psyche, the emphasis powering into me. I may as well have taken a hit from the best lineman in the league because my stomach has been walloped hard.
By me? What’s that supposed to mean?
“You know what? You can do whatever you want with this information,” she says, walking a wide loop around me. “You have my word I’m not saying anything to anyone and I never will. If you don’t want to claim this kid, I’ll put on the birth certificate that I’m a whore and don’t know whose kid it is.”
“Layla . . .”
She shoots me the dirtiest look I’ve ever had someone give me. “If you want to see the baby after it’s born, I’d never keep it from you. I have a bit of class,” she glares, grabbing the door handle. “After a paternity test, of course.”
With the chilliest final glance she can muster, she yanks open the lever and walks out, leaving me standing in the warm summer night feeling as though I just stepped onto an iceberg.
Fuck.
My.
Life.