Chapter 28 Lainey
LAINEY
I heard footsteps on the stairs and assumed it was my mother coming to check on me. But when the door opened, Brandon stood there with his hands in his pockets. I was laying on Wren's bed probably looking like a total wreck, but he had a smile on his face that almost made me cry again.
"Hey," he said quietly.
I sat up and wiped my face even though I knew I looked like a disaster. "What are you doing here?"
"Your dad called me this morning." He moved into the room but didn't sit down. He stood there looking uncomfortable, holding a teddy bear and a chocolate bar. "He said you were having a rough day and you could use a friend."
"That's an understatement." I had to remind my father at some point that Brandon could not be my go-to comfort anymore. It was sweet of him to do this, but I knew there was an undercurrent there I had to discourage. I had no intention of going back to Brandon after everything that had happened.
He gestured to the chair by my desk. "Can I sit?"
I nodded, and he pulled the chair over to the bed and sat down. We looked at each other for a moment and I saw the boy I'd fallen for when I was fifteen. The one who'd taken me to prom and held my hand through my grandmother's funeral and talked about our future like it was a sure thing.
Before everything went wrong, we really were pretty happy together.
"I'm sorry," I said. "About everything… about how things ended."
"Don't apologize." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and set the bear and candy on the comforter next to me. "I'm the one who screwed everything up." He sounded genuinely sorry. "I knew it the instant you didn't show up at the altar, and I felt like I broke everything."
"You did break something."
"I know." He rubbed his face. "And I've been trying to figure out how to fix it, but I don't think I can."
"No." I pulled the blanket tighter around myself. "You can't."
I picked up the teddy bear and hugged it.
I thought about all the years we'd spent together.
Movie nights where we'd argue over what to watch and end up falling asleep on his couch.
Road trips where he'd let me pick all the music and never complained even when I played the same song five times in a row.
We had so many good memories together, and now it was over.
That's what I'd lost when he cheated. Not just the relationship but the friendship underneath it. The person who knew me better than almost anyone.
"I told him off," Brandon grumbled and rubbed his face with both hands. Then he looked up at me with an apologetic expression.
I looked up. "What?"
"Kade—he was standing outside when I drove up... I told him he was a piece of shit for treating you like this and that he needed to leave you alone."
My stomach dropped. "Brandon—"
"I know you probably didn't want me to do that." He held up his hand. "But I couldn't help it. Lainey, I may have messed things up with you, and that's on me. But you're literally perfect. You're a treasure, and he's treating you like trash. He needed to be told how bad he's messing up."
"You didn't have to do that." I felt heat creeping up my neck. I was embarrassed enough as it was. I covered my face and groaned, and Brandon pulled my hands down.
"Don't be embarrassed." He leaned back in the chair. "He's the one who should be embarrassed. Calling you names and denying you exist and then showing up here like he has any right to see you."
"He's not that bad, Bran." Why was I defending Kade when Brandon was probably right?
"He's a total douche," Brandon said with conviction. "And he doesn't deserve you. You're smart and talented and way too good for some rich playboy who can't make up his mind about what he wants."
I looked down at my hands. "Then why did he come here?"
"Because you mean something to him." Brandon's voice softened. "I'm not saying he deserves you or that you should forgive him. But guys don't drive thirty-five minutes and pound on doors and get yelled at by angry fathers unless they actually care."
His eyes met mine and the intensity in his expression made me pause. He was right. Kade was trying, and as much as I wanted to hate him and be angry with him, I couldn’t stay mad. It wasn't his fault he got caught up in news reporters trying to make him look bad and sucking me along for the ride.
"I don't know if that makes it better or worse."
"Neither do I." He stood up and moved toward the door. "But I want you to be happy, Lainey. Even if it's with some billionaire jerk who doesn't know how lucky he is to have you looking at him the way you used to look at me."
My throat tightened. "Brandon—"
"I mean it." He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "You deserve to be happy. And if he makes you happy, then figure out a way to make it work. But if he doesn't, then tell him to go to hell and move on with your life."
I stared up at him and his puppy dog eyes, wishing things had worked out differently.
But there we were, a broken wreck of a relationship with no hope for a future.
I couldn’t change that any more than I could change the fact that I was pregnant with Kade's baby and staring down the barrel of life as a single mother.
He left and closed the door quietly behind him. I heard his footsteps down the hallway and then the front door opening and closing. He was gone, and I was alone again with my thoughts and my phone that wouldn't stop buzzing.
I pulled it out and looked at the screen.
Fifty-three missed calls. A hundred and twelve text messages.
My Instagram notifications had stopped updating because there were too many to count.
Between Kade's desperation to hear from me and news reporters trying to get in touch about the fundraiser and God only knew what else, I wanted nothing to do with my phone right at that minute.
I knew I should turn it off completely and hide from the world until this all blew over. But I couldn't stop myself from opening Instagram and scrolling through the chaos.
Most of it was normal stuff the algorithm put on my feed, but slowly it was being consumed with people tagging me.
Some of them were for the fundraiser, but a lot of them were people I knew, commenting on Kade's posts and Internet gossip accounts' posts of the images being shared in the tabloids.
That took no time at all. Some of my old friends from high school helped it along quite quickly, even.
But when I went to Kade's official account, I was shocked. His most recent photo showed him standing in front of my bakery with his arm stretched out taking the selfie. His smile was as dazzling as ever. It almost made me smile too, but I was too teary-eyed to feel that smidgen of warmth right now.
I clicked on it and read the caption.
"Honored to partner with Lainey Rowan's bakery 'Bake Me Happy' to bring an incredible cancer research fundraiser to life.
If you haven't tried her cupcakes yet, you're missing out.
Best in Nevada. Maybe the best in the country.
Support local businesses. Support good causes.
And support talented bakers who deserve all the recognition they can get. "
The post had been up for twenty minutes and already had over two hundred thousand likes. Comments flooded in. People asking about the bakery. People saying they'd come to the fundraiser. People defending me against the gold digger accusations. And the hashtag made the waterworks turn on full bore.
"#ThinkImInLove" was listed at the bottom with a smattering of other tags meant to boost my bakery's visibility. I didn't know if he meant he loved me or if he was trying to tell his friends he loved the cupcakes, but it made me bawl.
He'd posted this after Dad had turned him away. It was like he went straight to the bakery and took the picture just to post it. Why would he do that?
I zoomed in on his face. He looked tired. His smile didn't reach his eyes. But he was there, standing in front of my business, telling the world I was talented and worthy of recognition.
Maybe hiding from him wasn't going to be so easy after all.
And what would he think when he found out about the baby? Because it didn't seem so cut and dry now.
Waiting until after an annulment to get this off my chest was starting to sound harder and harder every day.