Cease Fire (Blackbridge Security 9)

Honestly, I don’t want to stay and talk to him either. I can’t look him in the eyes after what I just forced him to do, but we do have to have some sort of game plan. Those details can’t have witnesses as we hash them out.

“Congrats, Daddy,” Beth says, lifting on her toes to press her lips to Brooks’s cheek.

He lets it happen, his lips tugging up in a fake half-smile.

I watch my best friend leave, terrified to turn back around and face the firing squad.

“My office,” Brooks growls, his anger nearly boiling over.

I nod, following behind him without raising my eyes to the other men in the room.

When I set this plan in motion, I didn’t even think about this part, the aftermath. I didn’t even consider telling Kit that I was pregnant. I mean, I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret forever. I planned to lie to everyone. I didn’t work through the details of any of that because I thought I had time to get my shit together.

Beth showing up unannounced was never part of the plan. Just thinking about her makes me think of asking for the key back that she has to my place.

My head jerks up at the snap of the door closing, making me aware that I walked all the way to Brooks’s office without a memory of the trip it took to get here.

“I’m so sorry,” I mutter, my fingers tangled in front of me, twisting together to the point of discomfort.

“For which part, Jules? For breaking my best friend’s heart? For threatening to out me to everyone? For coercing me to go along with this shit? For looking like a whore to everyone in that room?”

Tears well up in my eyes, and I just don’t have the strength to try and stop them.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Brooks hisses. “You’re upset because of how this makes you look. You don’t give a shit about anyone else.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, my voice broken as I look up at him.

Brooks is pacing back and forth, his unruly hair proof that he’s been running his hands through it since the second we stepped inside here.

“Don’t understand?” he scoffs. “I understand that you’re the most selfish fucking person in the world.”

“I am,” I confess. “I’m selfish for hurting him. I’m selfish for threatening you. I’m selfish for not being willing to lose the only person in my life that has always been there for me.”

“You lost him,” Brooks snaps, an angry finger pointed at the door.

“Beth, not Kit,” I correct. “I won’t lose her. I can’t.”

“But stabbing him in the back—” He smacks his chest with enough force to make me wince. “Making me stab him in the back makes all of this okay?”

“I never said that,” I sob. “But you don’t understand.”

“I fucking understand!” he roars. “You don’t want to lose your best friend, but that makes it okay for you to make me lose mine!”

Fuck. What have I done?

“You used my secret against me for your own gain,” he seethes, his voice lower, more ominous.

I take a step back, hands going to my lower body, feeling the need to protect the tiny thing growing inside of me.

“Fuck, Jules. Don’t look at me like that. I’d never fucking hurt you.”

His words don’t ease my wariness.

He sighs when I don’t relax, stepping across the room to put a little distance between us.

“Nothing really happened with Archer,” he says, his eyes downcast as if he’s ashamed to even be talking about it. I feel like the worst human on earth.

Our short, heated argument when I first arrived, escalated quickly. When he denied my initial request, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was desperate when I threatened to tell everyone about what I saw in the hallway if he didn’t go along with it.

I knew the moment I broke something in him, because I saw it in his eyes.

I’m fucking trash, the worst of the worst, but I’m going to be that terrible person with my friendship with Beth intact.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, looking behind me to find a place to sit.

I’m still shaking and feel weaker, both physically and mentally, than I ever have in my life.

“Apologizing for being homophobic right now is really a slap in the face, Jules. Save it for like-minded people.”

I gasp. “I’m not homophobic.”

He looks up at me, that very same brokenness I witnessed in the breakroom on his face. “Then what do you call threatening to out someone who isn’t ready. I mean, I’m not… whatever, but if I were, it’s the shittiest thing a person can do to someone.”

“Brooks.” I want to stand and go to him, to assure him I have no problem whatsoever with any relationship the man could possibly be in so long as it’s consensual and legal, but he doesn’t look like he’s ready for any level of comfort from me. “I panicked. When Beth saw the pregnancy tests, she grilled me about who the father was. I lied, and those lies just keep on building.”