Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 87255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I can’t be Mrs. Brewer.
Tears fill my eyes once again.
There’s no way to escape this. Things will get progressively worse as the hours, and days, go on. And I have no idea what it will do to Renn or his family’s business deal, but I’m sure it’s not good for them, either.
Oh, Blakely. How do you get into these things?
I promised I’d do better. For me. Yet here we are.
I married a proverbial bachelor, one of a few men more popular than Edward DiNozzo. It doesn’t matter that Renn is a good friend or that he’s been nothing but kind to me. Too much is on the line. He’ll have no choice but to save himself.
And I can’t blame him.
There’s little chance we end up anything more than enemies when this is over. We might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Fine,” I say, lifting my chin. “I guess I get cleaned up, get dressed, and go file the papers because, either way, this has to end.”
Renn
I sit on the bed and hold my head in my hands.
Dammit, Renn.
My lungs fill with air, doing their job and keeping me alive. But, somehow, it doesn’t feel like I’m breathing.
I jump back to my feet and pace across the room.
The enormity of the situation hangs over my head—I married Blakely Evans last night. The burden of the event sits heavily on my shoulders—it was my job to protect her. The responsibility for the fallout lands squarely on me—and I don’t know what the fuck to do.
And for the first time in my life, I care.
I go back and forth across the bedroom, my footsteps falling hard against the floor.
When I usually wake up in some kind of scandal, I take a shower and have breakfast—an omelet, if I can find one. Festering bullshit doesn’t bother me. There are always two sides to every story, but I don’t often care if my side is told. No one listens, anyway.
My suspensions are always a spectacle. But things happens when you get a group of aggressive, competitive men on a field and hand them a ball—and I get paid to win games. Sometimes, when I do what I’m told, the powers that be decide it was the wrong move. Someone must publicly pay for that—and it’s not going to be team management. It’s interesting to get punished by the same people who requested the behavior, but there are NDAs to keep players from talking about that.
And the outcry against my social media snafu was amusing. Sure, I inadvertently posted a picture not meant for public consumption. My dick should not have been in my Social Stories for six minutes. Got it. But the same people chastising me only do it to be on the right side of the conversation. If it were socially acceptable to post dick pics, they’d be all for that, too. Yeah, me accidentally sharing a picture of my own body is so awful. Please.
The night I was carted away from a bar in handcuffs? That made a terrific headline. I bet the tabloid downloads the following morning were off the charts. But the part of the story that got left out, and the one I didn’t mention to anyone but the police, was the guy I sent to the hospital had just physically assaulted a woman in the bathroom. He wanted to fight—maybe not me. But when you swing at a woman, you lose the right to be selective about who swings back. So, yeah, I’m the bad guy. Fine.
But this time, it’s not just about me. It involves Blakely, too. While I might not care what is said about me, I care—a lot—about what is said about her.
My hand clutches my stomach. Don’t get sick. There’s no time for that.
I stop next to the bed and rest my head against the wall. So many thoughts, ideas, and possibilities swirl inside me. I don’t know which to grab. There are so many moving parts … but only one that really matters.
Her.
I glance at the door. Should I check on her? Should I see if she’s okay?
“I need a few minutes alone.”
“Dammit, Renn,” I mutter, smacking the wall as I shove off it. “Think, asshole. How do you manage this?”
“But then it was the accusations, the headlines—the paparazzi used to camp outside my work … That was really, really hard … It’s left me with wounds that haven’t healed … Like being made a joke of in public. Like having a fear that when I love someone, they’ll leave.”
I run my hands through my hair and tug hard.
I haven’t looked at anything besides what Astrid sent me this morning, and that was bad enough. If Blakely thinks it was bad with DiNozzo, she has no idea what’s about to come her way.