Chapter 8

Bain

“What do you want?” I asked and shifted the papers on my desk to one side. A collection of documents, really, signed lease agreements from folks who’d decided to rent out villas at one of my resorts for longer periods.

I removed my reading glasses – fuck, thirty and I needed a pair, god damn my dad’s shit eye genes – and pinched the bridge of my nose.

My brother sat on the side of the rosewood desk in my office, lazing in the leather chair like I couldn’t kick him the fuck out of here at a moment’s notice.

“Well?” I asked and dropped my hand. “I’m busy.”

“I haven’t seen you in a couple months,” he said. “Thought I’d pay you a visit.”

A couple months? No. Three months and two days, exactly, since the moment Hazel had stormed out of her hotel room. I’d ticked off every day mentally, much to my chagrin.

Since when had I cared about a one-night stand? A fling? Since, now, apparently.

Since I’d met a woman who was vulnerable, and sweet, and smelled of cherry blossom, and radiated good will.

That was what had gotten me about her. She gave a shit about people.

Through all of this, she’d given a shit about her friend and even my sleaze bag bro. But did she give one about me?

I pushed my executive chair back and rose, walking to the open window that afforded me a view of the beach, palm trees, and the wedding now taking place beneath them.

Paradise.

Empty without Hazel.

You don’t even know her. Yet I knew the curves of her body and the fears seated in her soul. What did it matter that I didn’t know her middle name or her favorite color? I understood what she was made of.

I’d had this damn argument in my mind over and over again.

Remain true to my brother, the only tenuous connection I had to my family. He was an asshole, but he was still my brother, after all.

Or go after her. Make her mine. Claim his ex-girlfriend.

“Fuck,” I said and turned my back on the wedding, the groom now holding the ring out to his bride. “You’re the last person I want to see, Jacob.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “We’ve never had a great relationship, why start now?”

“Aw, come on, bro. I mean, we haven’t had the worst relationship. We got on fine when we were kids, before you went and committed Grand Theft Auto,” he said. “In real life, not in the game.”

“Wow, that’s real funny, Jacob. You should be a fucking comedian, man.”

He shrugged his shoulders under a Lacoste polo shirt. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

Jacob was right though. Ten years separated us. He was twenty-two – same age as Hazel – and I was thirty-two. I’d changed his friggin diapers and built Legos with him. All that shit had changed the minute I’d gone away.

“What do you want, man?” I asked.

“To talk about Hazel,” he replied, evenly.

A lead weight dropped in my stomach. “Fuck off. Get out.”

“Dude, it’s not what you think,” he said. “I’m not going to rub it in your face that I had her first.” The smugness appeared – he’d inherited that from out mother. “Though, I did have her first.”

I bore down on him, and he shrank back in the chair, raising his hands.

“Dude, I’m fucking with you. Okay, okay, jeez, relax. I wanted to let you know that I don’t give a fuck whether you’re with her or not. I’m with somebody else, now.”

“Now?” I seethed, fumed; fucking smoke should’ve pulsed out of my ears. “You couldn’t have mentioned this at the time? You couldn’t have let it happen? You knew exactly what you were doing, Jacob. You fucked it up.”

“I didn’t know you were in love with the chick, for Christ’s sake.”

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t know.”

“You’re not even denying the love thing,” he said and leaned forward in his seat, balancing his wrists on the sharp edge of my desk. “Wow. Then, I guess it’s a good thing I’m here.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He’d flown out from New York, taking a break from his heavy ass-kissing schedule at Mom and Dad’s place.

“I’m marrying Carly,” he said.

“Carly? Who the fuck is Carly?”

“She’s the bride, remember? She was getting married. One of Hazel’s friends?”

Hazel. Fuck it, hearing her name was a shot to the chest. “And you’re marrying her?”

“Yeah, she got an annulment with her previous dude. Look, that’s not the point. She went over there to speak to Hazel like two days ago and yeah… she’s pregnant, dude.”

“You got Carly pregnant?” I laughed. “That’s great news for you, my man, maybe it will help you grow a couple hairs on that slick chest.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “No, not me, you. You’re going to be a father.”

The implications sank in piece by piece. My eyes widened, and I stared at him. The room zoomed in to a focal point on my brother’s face.

“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Wha- why? What the fuck? Why are you here telling me this?” I asked.

Jacob showed me his palms and affected an expression of purity. “Because I thought you deserved to know. And this is not the type of thing you tell someone over the phone, right?”

I paced toward him, then back again, circled my desk, made a grab for my desk phone, then thought better of it.

“She wasn’t going to tell you,” he said, at last. “That’s why I came. Carly found out about it from Hazel during one of their girly chats, and she told me that Hazel hasn’t decided what to do about it yet.”

“Do about it?” Christ, she couldn’t possibly consider getting rid of my child. My child. I gripped my forehead. How had this happened? And why wasn’t I more upset about it?

“Yeah, well, she’s not exactly flush with cash. She’s got a lot of shit to consider, according to Carly. Women stuff.”

I have to get to her and stop her from doing something crazy. But I couldn’t put that image together in my mind.

Hazel hadn’t struck me as the type of person who’d do something like that. Who’d make a decision this big and exclude me from it. Because she gives a shit.

“Hey, man, I’m just the bearer of news. I thought you should know. I owed you a couple favors, didn’t I? You were the one who got me the internship at Sterling and Stone for next year,” he said.

I shook off that information.

My baby. Hazel was pregnant with my baby.

She likely thought she couldn’t afford any of this. That she was on her own and that was that, but it wasn’t true.

I’d never been a man to back down from a challenge. To pussy out of a difficult situation.

And the thought of seeing her again made my stomach twist in the best possible way.

I swept my coat off the back of my chair and made for the door.

I’m coming, Hazel. You’re not on your own.