Chapter 24
24
LEO
O wen once told me that having someone to play for fills you with another kind of drive. At the time, I didn’t believe him.
But knowing I was going to go home to someone proud of me was another type of feeling. Something I can’t quite describe.
Briar Crosby was going to be at home, hopefully proud of me, and somehow that counted more than the win ever would.
In fact, I was so excited to get home and see her that when the guys asked if I wanted to go out after the game for our usual celebrations, I told them no. I wanted to get home and spend time with her, and I know she’s not going to want to go out after how social she’s been in the last few days.
I think about the list tucked into my bedside table and wonder when the perfect time to draw her a bath is.
“Okay Leo, don’t fuck this up. Everything’s good,” I tell myself as I breathe deeply, getting out of my car.
The elevators are unreasonably slow tonight, and I tap my foot, counting the seconds down in my head.
When I’m finally at my floor, I walk briskly to my door, dropping my keys as I go to unlock the door. And when I’m in, all I can smell is garlic bread.
My mouth instantly starts watering as I come out into the kitchen to find fresh garlic bread sliced up on the counter, along with a large bowl of pasta and salad.
My stomach growls, and I look around, looking for Briar and Elara, but I don’t see either of them. I don’t hear anything, either.
Heading down the hall to check if they’re in Briar’s room, I stop as I walk past the office, hearing a hushed voice.
“You’re not doing this,” I hear her say, and as I push the door open just slightly, I find her standing in the middle of the room, facing away from me with her hand on her hip. “I get to live my life, Tony.”
She pauses as he says something, I assume, which clearly isn’t good as she throws her head back with a groan.
Closing the door again, I wait, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping.
A couple minutes later, I hear her angrily hang up, and the door is thrown open.
Although I’m not standing directly outside of the door, I’m standing close enough for it to be a surprise when she sees me, and she steps backward, nearly losing her balance.
“Are you okay?” I ask as I catch her, steading her. It’s when I’m in front of her, close enough to really see her face in the dim light that I realize her eyes are shiny, tears running down her beautiful face.
“Yeah,” she says, turning from me and continuing down the hall without a second glance.
“Briar,” I start, following her.
“Dinner is in the kitchen, help yourself. If you can make a plate for Elara, I’ll be out in a bit,” she informs me, not turning back.
“Briar, wait,” I tell her, finally catching up to her.
“What? ”
My face pinches as I tilt my head, looking her over. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ll be better when I have some time alone. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She tries closing the door on me, but I stick my foot in, preventing her from doing it. “Leo, I’m really not in the mood,” she sighs, her shoulders slumping.
“I want to help. However I can,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You can’t help. I have an obligation to you. I’m fulfilling it. That’s it.”
I ignore the pain in my chest at her words and instead focus on what she means by them. “What did he say to you?”
Her dark eyes meet mine, filled with pain. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
“I do.”
I don’t want to force her to do or say anything she doesn’t want to, but especially if it involves me in any way, which it sounds like it does, then I need to know.
I want to protect her from anything I can, including him.
After studying my face for what feels like ages, she bites her lip, looking to the side. “He saw the article about us and threatened to use you against me in court.”
Confused, I gape at her. “What do you mean use me against you in court? Why is there talk of courts?”
“He wants to fuck with me. Threatened to take me to court to get full custody of Elara.”
“I thought,” I begin, but her eyes flicker behind me to Elara’s door, and I realize she can probably hear us. I lower my voice and say, “I thought he didn’t want anything to do with her?”
Briar’s face is grim as she nods. “He doesn’t. He just wants to fuck with me. He knows I don’t have the money to fight him.”
“But you do,” I tell her, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans. She does have the means to fight him, because I’ll do it .
She shakes her head. “You do enough, Leo. Money doesn’t fix everything. I’ve told you that.”
“But it’ll fix this,” I argue.
I get it. Money isn’t going to fix all my problems. If the designer purse tucked into my closet upstairs is any indication, Briar isn’t exactly someone you can buy. In fact, she’s made it clear that she’s only agreed to this at all because it would have been financially irresponsible for her not to have. Not when there was so much money on the table and I had agreed to pay for Elara’s college education.
Giving her an offer she couldn’t refuse was the entire point of the deal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel awful about it.
I don’t want her to feel stuck. I don’t want her to feel anything other than relief. I’d give her that money without any of this. She’s Owen’s sister. If I knew she was struggling, I would have done anything I could to help.
And that was before I knew her. Really knew her. It was before I asked her to help me, and before I asked her to agree to this dumb fake dating scheme. It was before I realized that I may actually like her, and before I realized how big of a heart she really actually has. How much she hides behind her thorny exterior.
Briar Crosby was always something to me, but recently she’s had me wrapped around her finger, her thorns dug into me.
Briar chokes, breaking me out of my thoughts, and I instantly reach for her, pulling her into a hug.
Closing the door behind us, I back her up until she’s at the bed. She sits, and I take a spot next to her, pulling her back into me as her body starts to convulse with sobs. They rip through her with a fury, so hard I start to think about what I’m going to have to tell Elara when she eventually opens that door and asks what happened.
One of the strongest women I’ve ever met in my entire life, and also one of the scariest, comes apart in my arms, and I have no fucking clue how to make it better.
So I just let her.
I let her cry, grabbing my shirt.
I let her hit her fist against my chest before grabbing it, interlocking her fingers with mine and bringing it to her lap, squeezing it.
And I let her cry without interruption.
Twenty minutes later, after we’ve sat in silence for a couple minutes, my cheek against the top of her head, she turns to me.
“Sometimes I just feel so alone,” she whispers. “I’ve never really had a support system.”
I bite my lip, debating on whether I want to say this or not. I don’t want to ruin the progress we’ve had, but I also want her to know that people have her back.
“Do you not have anyone, or do you keep to yourself, and not allow anyone in?” I ask her, instantly regretting it.
She thinks for a moment before looking at me, and I hate the hurt in her eyes.
“All I’m saying is that I know your brother. He would take a bullet for you, Briar. He would do anything for you. Your family loves you, and I don’t want you thinking anything different.”
She shakes her head. “My family is complicated, like any family. Owen is really the only one there for me, and even then he’s had enough burdens in his life. I don’t want to burden him with my issues.”
“You’re not a burden, Briar. You’re a person. A person going through something terrible. And if I could, I’d take all the pain away. But I can’t. I’m also only one person.” I tell her, pinching her chin between my fingers and forcing her to look at me. “You deserve more of a support system, and I really think that you should talk to him a little more about what you’re going through. ”
As much as I would love to be her knight in shining armor, as much as I want to swoop in and save the day, she deserves to know that she has a whole team behind her. I can’t be the only one. What if she has issues with me? What if I fuck up? What if she has to vent because I forgot to load the dishes in the dishwasher again? Or I accidentally blow up the house on Thanksgiving because I was experimenting with fried turkeys again?
Briar deserves someone more than me to support her, and I’m not going to make her think anything different in the name of trying to get her to fall for me.
She deserves better than that.
She looks away, and I know that the conversation is done for now.
“Did you know that there’s a type of whale that can live up to two-hundred years old?” I say changing the subject.
Her eyes meet mine again, curiosity in them. “Where did that come from?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Just a fun whale fact I learned recently.”
“My brother did tell me that you loved whale facts for some reason.”
I shrug. “It started with a bottle cap.”
“A bottlecap?” she asks, pulling away a bit to look at me better.
“Yeah, one of those caps that have interesting facts on them. I don’t know, I’ve always found different facts interesting. I saw one about whales and so I kept looking them up.”
“You’re an enigma, Leo Warner.”
But she smiles when she says it, and that means more than anything.
Briar and I talk for a while longer, sharing some other interesting facts we’ve learned about animals as we go, and when Elara knocks on the door, opening it just a touch, her eyes are wide, as if catching us doing something naughty.
“Can I eat now?” she asks, looking between us.
“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry Bub, I lost track of time.”
“It’s okay,” Elara shrugs. “It’s okay.”
I smile. Some of the things that come out of that kid’s mouth just takes me by surprise.
“I’ll go get your dinner warmed up,” Briar says, standing. But I pull her back, stopping her from leaving.
“I’ll do it. You stay here for a second,” I tell her, heading out into the hall. Elara follows me as I make my way to the kitchen, grabbing a plate and filling it with pasta before putting it into the microwave. A minute later, it comes out, and I place it in front of her. “Your mom needs some time to relax, okay? Is there anything I can get you right now?”
Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head.
“Alright, I’ll come check on you in a few, and if you want we can play video games, okay?”
She nods.
Making my way back to Briar’s room, I find her sitting on the bed still, a vacant look on her face.
“Good girl,” I tell her with a smile. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear, but the way her cheeks pinken does something to me, and I have to hope and pray that she doesn’t notice the tightness of my jeans.
“Wha—what?” she sputters.
“You stayed where I told you to. You don’t usually listen to me.”
She watches me as I head to the bathroom, grabbing a bubble bath from under the sink and starting to fill the tub. Pulling over a stool, I place the book she had sitting on the counter on top of a towel .
Looking around, I study the work I’ve done, but it’s missing something.
Without a word, I head back out into the bedroom and out into the hall, and a second later, I’m swinging the hall closet open, rummaging around until I find the box of candles from a brand deal I did two years ago. Grabbing two that look like they may be the same scent, I head to the kitchen, opening my junk drawer and getting the lighter I’ve used for special occasions and definitely not weed before heading back to Briar’s room.
Elara watches me go, a look I can’t quite place plastered on her face the entire time.
It looks almost like hope.
Lighting the candles, I set them on the counter, and when I back up, I look through the door to Briar, who's watching me intently.
Stepping out of view, I take my phone out quickly, snapping a photo and sending it to my group chat with the guys.
Owen responds immediately.
OWEN (pookie)
Get me out of this chat, please.
Rolling my eyes, I head back into the room.
“Get in the bath,” I tell her simply.
“Are you going to ask please?”
I don’t want to, but I do. “Please?”
She studies me for a couple more moments before letting out an exasperated sigh. Getting up, she enters the bathroom, looking at the tub as if it’s her lifeline.
“I’ll leave you to unwind,” I tell her, heading back out the door. “Do you need anything?”
“No,” she shakes her head.
I nod, heading out the door.
An hour later, Briar’s footsteps are heard coming down the hall. Elara is on one side of the couch, a remote controller in her hand, while I’m on the other, losing to a six-year-old.
She wanted to play Lego Star Wars, which was great. I love that game. I’m quite good at it, too.
It was a bit of a learning curve for her, that’s for sure. She was having trouble with it for a little while, but the second she got the hang of it, she started following me around, killing me over and over again.
We’re on the same side.
“I just want your heart,” she told me with a completely straight face. She smiled at me, and it took everything in me not to text Briar and ask if she raised a psychopath.
But no. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her. She’s just six.
“Hey,” Briar says quietly as she appears. She leans against the wall, watching us for a second as Elara uses the fact that I’ve been distracted by Briar’s lack of real pants to kill me once more, collecting the coins that come from my demise with an evil chuckle.
“Hey,” I tell her, giving up on playing for the moment. “There’s some food on a plate in the fridge for you.”
Her eyes flicker to the fridge before back at me. “Thank you. I, uh, can I talk to you for a moment?”
“You’re going to have to ask her,” I point a thumb to her daughter.
Elara thinks for a second, her chin perched between her thumb and pointer finger. “I’ll let him go. But make it fast, mom. He hasn’t been pulling his weight, and we have to beat Vader.”
What is with this kid ?
Briar smirks, and I roll my eyes, getting up and following her into her bedroom. “You okay?” I ask, watching as her wet hair drips down her shoulders and down her chest. Her gray shirt is wet, and her nipples are pebbled, poking through her shirt.
Fuck.
“I just wanted to thank you.”
I nod simply. “Always. Is there anything I can do to help you with him?”
I know she’s going to say no, but it’s worth a try.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, but I can deal with it on my own, thank you.”
It’s my turn to shake my head in return. “You’re not dealing with this alone, Briar. You can keep it from your brother, from your parents, from everyone, but I already know, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but there has to be something.”
She folds her arms over her chest, covering herself, and for a moment I’m sad. “Fine.”
“Can I have his number?” I ask her.
“No.”
“I promise I won’t call him right now. I just want it. For, I don’t know, the future.”
Biting her cheek, she looks into my eyes, trying to tell if I’m being truthful or not. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid and make this harder on us.”
I nod. “I promise.”
“Fine.”