CHAPTER 28 ALEXIS
I’m lucky enough to wrap my final scene for the day—for the year, actually, since we’re going on hiatus until after the Christmas break to accommodate my wedding—at four-thirty, so I’m done earlier than I was expecting.
But my dad doesn’t have to know that.
Gregory helps Danny sneak back to my trailer, and he shows up a little before five. I lift to a stand when the door opens, and I spot him with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and when he looks up and his eyes meet mine, I feel a sense of relief that he’s here.
Except he looks…nervous. Stressed. Anxious. Something.
Sort of the way I’m feeling, I suppose.
He’s twitchy as he makes his way toward me, and Gregory closes the door behind him as he seals us into privacy.
“What’s wrong?” I ask immediately as I meet him halfway across the room.
“How’d you know?” he asks softly.
“Know what?”
“That something’s wrong.”
“It’s all over you,” I say, alarmed that he’d even ask that. “What is it?”
He clears his throat. “Don’t be mad.”
More alarm bells ring. “About what?”
“I told Cooper and Rush about the blackmail. And my mom.”
I cover my face with my hands. “Oh my God, now your mom knows we’re sleeping together.”
“Babe, she probably put it together when you were there Thanksgiving weekend and we shared a bed,” he says.
“Okay, I’m not mad, but why’d you tell everyone when you told me not to say a word?”
“My dad blabbed to the media this morning about how we’re mending our relationship.
” He starts pacing around my small trailer rather than taking me into his arms. “I think it was his way of showing he’s not backing down.
He’ll talk to the media if we push him to do it.
That’s why I told my mom, anyway—so she knew I wasn’t genuinely getting close with that asshole again.
And I told Rush and Cooper because I trust them and needed some advice because I feel like I’m handling everything wrong. ”
“You’re not handling anything wrong, Danny,” I say quietly. “This is uncharted for both of us.”
“Yeah, it is. Rush thought I should see what I could find out about my dad to push back at him, and he gave me his private investigator cousin’s info. Long story short, she found something on my dad.” His eyes are down toward the ground, and then he glances up at me.
It’s plain to see he’s suffering here.
I’m just not sure why quite yet.
“What did she find?” I whisper, a little nervous to hear the answer.
He clears his throat. “He’s dying. He’s got nothing to lose by blackmailing me for all I’ve got. And I’m not sure there’s anything more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.”
“He’s…”
“Dying,” he repeats, and he’s stone cold as he says the words. “Stage four lung cancer.”
I walk toward him and wrap my arms around his waist. “Are you okay?”
“I, uh…I’m not sure,” he admits as he holds me to him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
He’s quiet a beat, and I rest my head on his chest. His heart is beating steadily, and I think of how warm that heart is.
How loving and giving. How kind and wonderful.
This man is holding me in his arms after professing his love to me when I’m going to marry someone else.
He’s committed to waiting for me until we can start living our truth.
So whatever he’s feeling, I need to be here to help him through it.
He rests his chin on top of my head, and when he speaks, his chest rumbles with the sound of his voice.
“When you found out your dad was sick and in the emergency room, you ran to be with him. When I found out my dad is sick…I felt nothing. Or not even nothing, but worse, I had this sense that everything happens for a reason, and then I felt like I could use this news to get him to fucking stop what he’s doing to me.
What does that say about me?” His voice comes out pained, and I get the feeling that he feels worse about his reaction than he does about the actual news.
“It says you’re perfectly normal, and you’re entitled to feel absolutely however you feel,” I say softly. I pull back a little to look up at him and lift to my tiptoes to press a kiss under his chin. “It says he’s hurt you deeply, and you don’t owe him a damn thing.”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t I want to help him?
” he asks, and there’s a hint of desperation there like he thinks he has to feel a certain way even though he doesn’t.
“Shouldn’t I feel sad about it? He’s my father, and instead of feeling bad about it, I don’t.
I just want him out of my life, and apparently, there’s a surefire way that he’ll be out of it within the next year. ”
“Oh, Danny,” I say quietly. “If he had been there for you your entire life and was a good man who treated you the way a son should be treated, then you’d feel differently.
But he wasn’t. He did terrible things to your mom, to you, to your sister, and now to me.
Nobody would judge you for feeling any type of way about him after all he’s put you through. ”
“Thank you,” he says, dropping his lips to mine for a beat. “I just keep wondering how I can use it to get him to back off of us.”
“What are you thinking?” I ask. I pull out of his arms to allow him to resume his pacing. I head over to the couch and sit as I watch him.
He presses his lips together. “I’m not sure yet.
I think he’s probably after my money to set his family up once he’s gone.
He made up some dumb story and chose to blackmail me rather than making amends and just fucking asking for it, so that tells you the type of person we’re dealing with.
I guess I could offer to pay off his debts in exchange for him erasing that tape.
I just…I still feel like he could do a lot of damage with the time he has left, and he doesn’t care if it lands him in prison or whatever because he’s going to die soon anyway. ”
“God, what a horrible way to live out the final days of your life,” I murmur.
“Yeah. But it’s what he has chosen.” He sighs. “What do you think I should do with it?”
“Does his family know?” I ask.
“That he’s sick?” he asks, and I nod. He shrugs. “No idea.”
“If they don’t, then you know one of his secrets that he doesn’t want getting out just like we don’t want that tape getting out.”
He nods. “It just…it feels so wrong to use his illness against him.”
“More wrong than planting a video recording device in his son’s bedroom and catching him banging his secret girlfriend?” I point out.
“Touche,” he says. “What do you think about getting Gregory’s opinion on the whole thing?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I mean, on the one hand, it would be like admitting to my own father I’m banging the bad boy of baseball. On the other hand…I think he already knows.”
“He definitely already knows.” He offers a little chuckle, and I laugh, too, before I grab my phone and shoot a text to Gregory asking him to come on in.
Gregory raps twice at the door before I head over to open it, and he slips inside.
“Ma’am?” he asks, looking between Danny and me.
“We have a little, uh…” I glance over at Danny. “A situation.”
“A situation?” he asks.
“My estranged father planted a video recorder in my bedroom,” Danny begins. “I didn’t know, and he caught a private conversation between Alexis and me that’s quite damning along with…other activities.”
Gregory clears his throat, and I blush profusely, the heat curling around my neck. “And he’s using it for…”
“Money,” Danny says. “He’s already taken a hundred grand with his blackmail to take the tape public, and a friend suggested I hire a private investigator to look into what secrets he’s hiding that I can hold over him.”
“And what turned up?” he asks.
“How do you know I hired the PI?” Danny asks.
Gregory gives him a look. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Mr. Brewer. Of course you took the shot. Now tell me what you found out so I can take action.”
“Take action?” Danny repeats. “What are you, MacGyver?”
“No, sir. I’m a private security guard for the most famous pop singer in the world, and my job is to disarm any potential threats to my client. This is a threat.”
Danny draws in a heavy breath. “Stage four lung cancer. He’s got nothing left to lose.”
Gregory nods once. “Would you like me to take care of this for you?”
“How?” Danny asks.
Gregory’s eyes dart quickly between us. “Do you really want to know?”
“When he asks that, the answer is usually no,” I say dryly.
Danny purses his lips for a beat in thought. “I’ll handle it myself.”
“The offer is on the table should you want to take it,” he says.
“I appreciate that, Gregory. And all you do for Alexis, too. More than I can ever say.”
My chest warms at his words, and Gregory politely nods.
“Gregory?” I say, and he turns to look at me. “I’d like to stay the night with Danny at his hotel.”
“What about your father, ma’am?” he asks.
“Make something up. I don’t care what it is.”
He nods again, and I’m thankful for his discretion and protection.
“I’ll follow you there and stay at the same hotel, and I’ll take care of your father,” he says.
I shoot him a grateful look, and then I turn to Danny. “Ready?”
He nods, and I pull my hoodie up, put on my sunglasses, and follow Gregory outside, where he helps me duck discreetly into Danny’s car.
And then we make the trip toward his hotel in Long Beach, his hand on my leg as we taste the first bite of freedom we’ve had in far too long.