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Chapter 0009
BAILEE
I turned away from Alex and back to Nicole at the bar as she watched with a smirk. I needed to get out of here. “Ben. Where is Ben? I need to talk to my brother. He’s not home and not answering his phone.”
My brother, Benjamin Evans, the starting center for the Rangers, owned this bar, along with several others around the city. With this one being his first, it was his baby. If I ever needed to find him, this was the place to go.
“He’s at an away game,” Nicole said, and my chest sank in as all the air left my lungs. Of course, he was.
“When will he be back?” I asked, placing my hands on the bar as I leaned in, feeling panicked and desperate.
Brinley was at a sleepover, and I had wanted to use the time alone to figure out where we would go from here. I had hoped we could stay with my brother for a few weeks until I could figure something out, but I also hadn’t talked to my brother in a long
time.
Every time we spoke, he would always mention Alex at some point, and our conversation would die off into an awkward
silence.
I glance down as sparks shot up my arm, stealing my breath and making me feel weak. Alex lifted my arm where he had just grabbed it, softly rubbing the warm pad of his thumb over my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. My body was frozen from his unexpected touch, allowing him to lift my hand closer to his face to inspect it. It took me a moment to realize what I was doing, and I pulled my hand away. “Don’t.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m not making a move on you. I’m just making sure you can’t sue me for damaging your wrist,”
Alex said with a roll of his eyes.
“It doesn’t work like that.” I scoffed, offended by his insult.
“Yeah, well, rumor has it that you enjoy finding men with money to go after.” His smirk set me on fire, and if we didn’t have an audience, I would have tried to slap him again.
“Alexander Kingston, you could be the richest man in the world, and I still would have no interest in suing or pursuing you. I don’t want you anywhere near me.” I said, glaring at him from the comer of my eye with my lip curled up in feigned disgust before looking back at Nicole.
“I don’t know when he’ll be back.” Nicole said, grabbing a glass from behind the bar and mixing a drink. “They have a couple of games over the next few weeks. He might be gone for a while.”
“The team will be back on the 2nd,” Alex said, and I groaned in frustration that he was still talking to me and that Ben would be gone for so long. Three weeks?
I pulled out my phone, seeing that Ben hadn’t called me back yet, but I did have an unread text from the mom hosting the sleepover Brinley was at
“You have a kid,” Alex said, sounding stunned, and I knew he had caught sight of her picture on my lock screen. “I mean, I saw on the news that you have a kid, but… you really have a kid.”
“Yeah, I do” I snapped, irritated that he sounded bothered or maybe even a little disgusted by the fact
When we dated in high school, I told him I wanted a big family. So, it was insulting that after I had been married for the past six years, he would sound so shocked and almost disgusted that I would have a child.
Granted, signing those papers in Vegas on spring break during my first year of college had been the biggest mistake of my life, but Alexander’s disgusted reaction to knowing I had become a mother hurt.
If that’s how he felt about it, it was probably a good thing that he had destroyed our relationship and things ended when they
did
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Ch 001
#25 BONUS
I scanned the text message before rubbing my temples to see that the other mom had
she spiked a fever. “And she needs me right now, so I have to go.”
had asked me
pick Brinley up
because
I turned to Nicole, forcing a smile even though my nerves were multiplying as I thought of my sweet baby sick.
“Can you please just ask Ben to call me the next time y
you talk to him?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Do you need a ride?” Alex said, stepping closer, but I backed up.
“No. I need you to stay away from me.” I snapped.
One touch from him had already turned my mind into a jumbled mess of anger and frustration. It was best to keep my distance from him.
My phone buzzed again. This time, there were no words, only numbers, and my heart clenched, knowing my baby was suffering with a fever of 103.7.
“I have to go.
“Wait!” Alex called out behind me, but I kept moving through the crowd. “Wait! Bailee
I had waited for him long enough as a teenager. I didn’t need to hear anything he had to say now. He was dead to me.
