Tycoon

“We sometimes don’t get the family we choose, even the kids we have, or how they sometimes come. But you choose who you marry. Who you spend your life with,” he says, trailing off.

There’s silence between us, my heart pounding madly as I wonder if we’ll make it work. If Miranda will let him go. Give him joint custody. If he’ll really let me take care of his kid and let me love him like one of mine. Like we would also love ours, his and mine.

We seem to eye each other hungrily from across the car.

I wonder where we stand.

A conversation away from him being mine to hold again, mine to touch again, to love as hard as I want to and can.

“Do you want to take this talk elsewhere?” he asks softly, watching me. “Preferably after I’ve had a word with Miranda?”

I smile shakily, and God, I’ve never been so eager to send him to Miranda, and I nod so fast I almost get dizzy as I wipe away the moisture from my face, and I quickly get out of the car.

I hear Christos step out of the car as Cole and Miranda walk forward.

“Where the fuck were you two? The evening is a huge success and nobody can find you two!” Cole demands.

Miranda and I lock eyes, and she lifts her nose up in the air, gloating. Her eyes saying, who got him in the end, little bitch?

“Hello, Miranda,” I say politely, keeping my gaze away from Aaric as he walks up behind me, and that’s when I notice Cole’s shoes.

My eyes widen in recognition, and as I pull my gaze up, it snags on the ankle of the woman’s leg standing beside him. On the ink tattoo on Miranda’s ankle.

“Nice shoes,” I say as I look up at Cole, and then at Miranda, a little bit too stunned by the snotty look she keeps wearing. “Nice tattoo, Miranda. I have a feeling I’ve seen it before. Maybe at the corporate restroom of Christos and Co.” I smile at her as genuinely as I can, and I look at Christos, who’s wearing a puzzled frown. And then something flickers, and I see it in his eyes.

I walk away, not glancing back.

“You two. We need to talk,” I hear Christos growl behind me.

Christos

Present day

“I’m not marrying you to pretend a happy life. That’s not what I want to teach my child. I will be there for this child, regardless. As an uncle, or as a father,” I tell Miranda.

Miranda purses her lips, too proud to say a word to me.

“I was about to let the girl of my dreams go. Jesus!” I growl. She tilts her chin up, and I glare down at her before I turn to look at my younger brother. “And you. You motherfucker.”

“Come on, Aaric. You didn’t love her. She’s insisting the kid’s yours because she’s got this idea of you being better than I am. A better father figure. More responsible. She knows you want a family, and I don’t.”

“Yeah, well now you might get one. Fucker.”

I pace, still reeling, before I spin around to point a warning finger at him. “Don’t you ever—ever—fuck in my corporate bathroom again. Lock your damn office door—or take it somewhere else. As long as I pay the rent, you screw around elsewhere.” I glare at them both, then move around to watch the spot where Bryn disappeared.

“If it’s mine, I’ll be the father you were to me. The damn best,” Cole says behind me.

I shoot him my blackest look. “If you don’t, I’ll personally make sure that you do.”

“Miranda, hell, I know I’m a bit more c’est la vie than Aaric, but even if Aaric is the biological father…I can—well, be there for the stepfather role.”

I glance at Miranda as Cole waits for her reply, and she tips her chin up, raises out her left hand, and points at her empty ring finger.

I keep staring out the window, unable to see Bryn, remembering how fast her tears streamed, how warm they felt falling into my palms.

Choose me.

Did I ever not choose her? Can I ever not choose her?

Damn me, did I ever have a choice of anything other than her?

Bryn

I head home and replay the scene over and over in my head, and not only the moment when I realized my secret-restroom lovers were Cole and Miranda. No. Not that mind-boggling, what-the-ever-living-fuck moment.

Also, before that.

Years before that.

Wondering when I sat in the back of his car, fighting for Christos, why I couldn’t have been braver before he even met Miranda, so that things would have not come to be this complicated. Wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t been afraid of falling for Aaric years ago. Wondering if I could have rescued us from heartbreak, like I’ve wondered for years what would have happened if I’d called my parents that night.

I’m retracing all the steps I have taken—and all the steps that led me here—trying to figure out where I went wrong, which step is preventing me from achieving the one outcome I want and seem to be waiting on bated breath for. The outcome where Christos and I finally have a chance to be together.

I’m circling it all in my head like you’d replay a shocking moment or a favorite one, remembering our times even while fully aware that there is no changing what is now, no changing those past moments, aware that I only have choices in my future ones, and perhaps that is not even possible at all, when I get a call from Cole.

“Hey. Just wanted to call and say I’m sorry.”

I don’t know how to reply. I’m surprised that he’s calling me considering he has more important things to talk about with his brother.

“I planned to come through,” he continues.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” I ask, completely baffled.