Chapter 39
HOLLY
No.
No, no, that can’t be right.
That would mean… it was Dexter.
Dexter was the buyer.
The shark.
The one who outbid us and took the building.
The smile slips from my face as if someone actually pulled a rug out from under me.
He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t do that to me.
He would not go behind my back.
He wouldn’t have.
Except I hear him, crystal clear, in that voice, his confident, firm, detached business voice.
“Good. Thanks for taking care of the purchase.”
“Sure, no problem.” Keith chuckles. “When are ya gonna tell her?”
Yeah, Dexter. When?
“Keep your voice down. Holly doesn’t need to know. She’s still going to get what she wants, and her sister will be nearby.”
Holly doesn’t need to know?
“Contractors are already looking over the bottom floor of this place for her and the kids.”
The bottom floor. Of this building.
My ears start ringing, and blood rushes hot through my veins. I grip the doorframe so hard my knuckles burn.
That bastard. That controlling, manipulative, smooth-talking bastard.
After everything we’ve been through. After I’d specifically told him that I didn’t want his help, how important it was for me to do this on my own.
And he decided to go behind my back and do it anyway?
I live by three truths.
One: Never let yourself get attached. Once you do, you give someone the power to break you.
Two: Respect is not optional. Without it, you cannot call it love.
Three: If there’s no trust, there’s No. Reason. To stay.
Keith says something about “stopping in somewhere for the cure,” probably a drink to ease a hangover, and steps out. I barely catch a glimpse of him.
I’m already moving.
Dexter closes the front door and turns, just in time to find me standing in the hall, hands balled into fists at my side, white-hot rage seething under my skin.
His eyes lock on mine.
He knows.
He knows I heard everything.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
Yeah.
“When were you planning to tell me?!” My voice is shaking, but I don’t care. “Was it going to be before dinner? After sex? Before or after you completely stabbed me in the back?”
“Holly—” He steps forward.
“Don’t. Don’t start with ‘It’s not what you think.’ I know exactly what I heard. You control freak!” I exclaim, “You control-zilla! You… you monster!”
“Monster?”
“Yes! Monster!”
“Let me explain—”
I cut him off. “You promised, Dexter! You promised. And I trusted you to honor your word. You looked me in the eye and said you wouldn’t interfere. That you respected what I was trying to do.”
“I do respect it.”
“You bought our building, Dexter.”
He says nothing.
I blink, already knowing, already hating that I know. “I know it’s not just our building, Dexter. You’ve been buying others, too.”
Then, quiet and unflinching, “Yes. I have.”
That confirmation slices clean through me. “You did the one thing I asked you not to.”
He exhales hard through his nose. “I wanted to help, and you wouldn’t let me.”
“With good fucking reason!”
He steps toward me. “You’re carrying my child.”
“And I came to you. I wanted to be a mom. I asked you to be a donor, not a decision-maker. We agreed. You said you’d stay out of it.”
“Do you really think I can just let you move across the world and raise our kid without being involved?”
“Let me?” I poke him in the chest. “Let me? You don’t get to ‘let’ me do anything. You don’t own me.”
He doesn’t flinch. But he doesn’t argue.
I go on. “If this was such a dealbreaker, then why agree to it in the first place? That contract was your idea. You set it up. You signed it. You told me you could handle this. And now, what? You override me? I don’t get a say?”
“Forget about the contract. This is about you and me.”
I laugh one biting, bitter sound. “No. No, it’s not. It’s about you. You made a decision about my life behind my back because you couldn’t stand not being in control.”
Before he can answer, I turn and storm down the hall.
I rip his button-up off my body and throw it on the bed, already yanking my own clothes on. “I can’t believe I actually considered giving us a go.” I spill the words into the empty room, shaking my head. “That maybe I could trust you. That maybe we could be more than just co-parents.”
I feel him behind me before I hear him.
“You did?” he asks.
“Obviously! I thought we were on the same page,” I say without turning around, my arm stuck in the wrong hole. “I thought, for a minute, you might actually be different from Dean.”
His voice turns hard. “Holly—”
“He broke every promise,” I go on, arm finally punching through the right hole. “He only cared about himself.”
“For fuck’s sake. Don’t lump me in with that asshole!”
“Why not?” I tug the fabric into place and fumble frantically at the buttons, fingers trembling. “You both lied. You both betrayed me.”
“I made the wrong call, yeah. I wouldn’t have done any of this if I didn’t—” He cuts himself off, jaw tight, eyes blazing.
“If you didn’t what?!” I snap, looking up. “No. Finish it! Don’t you dare stop there.”
His chest heaves once, then again. “I don’t do this. I don’t say it. Not to anyone.”
“Say it.”
“You really want to hear it?”
“Yes!”
“You want the damn truth?!” His voice breaks on the word.
“Say it! Say it!”
“I wouldn’t have done any of this,” he snaps, the words ripping out of him, “if I didn’t love you.”
Silence detonates between us.
I just stare at him. My ears ring, a thin high sound, like pressure after a door slams. I can hear my own breathing and the small, uneven hitch in his.
“Fuck it, I do. I love you,” he repeats, somewhat calmer this time but no less intense.
“You think I’d let you crawl under my skin, wreck my sleep, make me question every damn choice if I didn’t?
I wouldn’t have bulldozed into your plans if I could let you go.
I can’t.” His brown eyes are shaded by something disarming and irrevocable and haunting, unnerving enough to disappear into.
His voice splinters into a ragged breath. “I need you. Here. With me.”
I blink, turning away and tug the next buttons through. “That wasn’t the deal.”
He steps forward, carefully. “Look, everything has changed. You know that. We didn’t want it to, and we weren’t planning for it to. But it has. And I think we should talk about it before you disappear across the ocean.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Holly.”
“I don’t even want to look at you right now.”
I get the buttons down, uneven, scan the floor for my cowboy boots, scan under the bed, but can’t find them. Doesn’t matter. I’m perfectly content with marching out of here barefoot if it means getting away from him faster.
I turn and head straight for the door, my legs shaky and barely holding me.
“Please,” he says, following. “Don’t walk away. Just stop. For two seconds.”
I whirl around to face him. “People who don’t back up what they say don’t have a place in my life.”
“So that’s it?” he asks. “You’re just gone?”
“I’m going back to my apartment. I need space. I need time.”
I open the front door.
“Holly…” His voice cracks. It’s barely a whisper.
I falter, caught for a moment, before I look back at him. He’s not angry now, not defensive. Just… broken. I still, but I can’t stay.
“When I’m ready, you’ll hear from me. Not before.” My tone is flat and final. “Until then, stay away.”
He says my name again, and steps into the hall after me.
For years, I laughed at Shelby when she said Dexter and I would end up married. Rolled my eyes at every movie that insisted best friends were love stories waiting to happen. I told myself that I didn’t believe in that kind of thing. Thank God I kept my guard up.
I keep walking.
I’ve already lost enough tonight: The building. The dream. The future I thought I was building.
But none of it hurts like this.
Because when I close the door behind me, I know the truth. I didn’t just lose the life I believed in or the love I was never brave enough to reach for.
I lost something worse.
I lost my best friend.