Billionaire Mountain Man

“Need any help?” I offered. I had to get out of my head.

“I’m done. Since when do either of us need help making coffee?” She set my steaming mug on the table, wrapped her long fingers around hers, and settled on the couch beside me.

“Ugh, since never. I just offered so that I would have something to focus on.”

She stayed quiet as her eyes swept my face, a worried look setting in. “What aren’t you telling me? You’ve been so quiet all week.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the quiet.” She still didn’t know who I’d been seeing, and I didn’t want to talk about James anyway.

“I don’t. I mean, I would. If it were a ‘we’re studying’ quiet, but this isn’t that. Talk to me, friend. How are things with the relationship?” She was ridiculously intuitive. Although, maybe it was obvious. I didn’t know anymore.

“It was never a relationship really.” Even though I’d found myself wishing that it was on more than one occasion.

“Okay, but you know who I’m talking about. How’re things going there?”

I knew exactly who she was talking about, but James was kind of a sore subject.

Then I remembered wishing that I’d talked to Heather more about not taking the bar exam, and everything just came tumbling out. “If I’m being honest, I don’t know. I don’t think that it’s going well, though.”

“Why not? You seem really into him.” She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.

“He’s just gotten really distant this week, you know? Last weekend everything was great. Perfect, really. Then he canceled our plans Monday night, and I’ve hardly heard from him since.”

“Maybe you should go see him? Find out what’s going on?” She blew on her coffee and took a large sip.

“I don’t want to do that. I think that maybe he’s gotten what he wanted from our so-called relationship. I’m not the needy girl who’s going to go pushing his boundaries.” My heart broke a little as I said the word

s, but I meant every last one.

“If that is true and he has gotten what he wanted, the least he could do is to tell you that himself, instead of leaving you hanging like a coward would.” I bristled at Heather calling James a coward. He might be many things, but he wasn’t that. Heather, of course, didn’t know that.

“He’s not a coward, Heather. He’s the furthest thing from it.” God knew why I felt the need to defend him.

Especially given that he had left me hanging, essentially taking the coward’s way out, if that was what he was doing. The evidence sure pointed that way.

“Well, then he should man up and tell you to your face so that you can be done with him. Move on to bigger and better things.”

Bigger and better things might have been out there, but bigger and better men? I wasn’t convinced.

“Yeah, I guess I’m going to have to talk to him about it at some point. I just don’t understand what happened. One second, he’s getting all excited about going at it bareback and whispering all kinds of shit, and the next—”

“Tell me that you didn’t! That’s too dangerous, Gabbi. You never know who you’re sleeping with until you know who they’ve been sleeping with. You’re smarter than that.” I was, but I also knew how often the team got tested and how careful he’d been with condoms at first.

He did have a daughter, though. He’d claimed that he had worn a condom that night with Harper’s mother, that he’d seen it in the trash the morning after, but that the mom had claimed it had broken.

Even so. “I have an IUD, Heather. You know that.”

My gynecologist had insisted on it when I’d had some intense cramping as a senior that made it almost impossible to study.

“Pregnancy is not a disease, Gabbi. STDs, those are diseases. Some of them serious, incurable ones.” She shook her head and looked at me like I was crazy.

“He’s clean,” I insisted.

“Did he show you a recent test? How do you know?”

I couldn’t give her the real answer. The one that involved my father’s strict policies for his active players.

“I just know. Trust me. He’s clean.” I expected her to give me the talk, but she didn’t.