by Amy Brent
“Gage. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Your father didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I said.
“Then, how did you find me?”
“You aren’t the only with resources,” I said and peered into the small peephole. “Open up. You owe me that much.”
A small part of me expected her to tell me to go away. She had put all this effort into hiding away from everyone, but I was surprised when the door opened. I was even more surprised to find Amber standing there with a large, pregnant belly.
Chapter 24
Amber
The first knock on the door poured an icy bucket of fear over me. There were only a total of three people who knew the truth and knew my location. I set my book down on the coffee table with an uneasy stomach. I waited to see if the person on the other side knocked again. It was probably a salesperson. They seemed to come through this quiet and upper suburban neighborhood all the time.
It was private. It was far away from the city bustle of Bozeman. More importantly, it was far away from Scott who had returned to Colorado Springs to wait me out patiently. He didn’t know where I was, but he still had those photos. It was only a matter of time in his eyes for me to make up my mind, but hiding out seemed to the best at the moment. Even if it killed me not being able to pick up the phone to call Gage, to let him know that I missed him more than anything.
The person knocked again. Insistently. Louder than the first time.
I grabbed my cellphone from where it was charging on the breakfast bar. Just in case. I knew my time was limited with hiding. Scott had PI’s that were good at finding people. He had done it when I had stayed with Gage at the beginning of the year. After a few months out of the spotlight, not returning anyone’s phone calls, I knew that Scott was seething mad.
I waddled across the living room with one hand curled around my seven-month belly in a protective gesture. A little girl. I wanted to tell Gage, but after a few months of silence, I was sure he had moved on in frustration. I never gave either one of us the opportunity to talk about the situation. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be the one who shamed my father with scandal because of my own lust and need for Gage.
Resting a hand against the door, I peered through the tiny peephole to find an undeniable pair of icy blue eyes peering right back at me. My heart skipped as Gage tilted his head back to stare right back at me through the door. He looked worn out, from the shadows beneath his eyes, to the rough beard covering his face. His lips stretched into a thin line.
“Open up, Amber,” he said. “I think you and I need to talk.”
“Gage,” I started, shaking my head. I had no idea how he found me. My father had sworn to keep my location secret until I figured out a plan on what to do. It’d been a few months, but here, Gage was standing outside my front door. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Your father didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said.
“Then, how did you find me, if he didn’t tell you?”
“You aren’t the only with resources,” he said, peering into the peephole to catch my eye. “Open up. You owe me that much.”
I took a deep breath to contain my emotions. I did owe him that much. I owed him more than a disappearance. More than anything, I wanted to throw myself into his arms. Even if he was visibly pissed. A small part of me was flattered that he hadn’t let us go, not without wanting to see me one last time at least.
I slid the lock back to open the door. Gage’s eyes skimmed over my face before settling down on my pregnant belly that was visible through the sleeping shirt I was wearing. His eyes widened in disbelief before looking up at me again.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes,” I said. I reached out to grab Gage’s arms and pull him inside. “Please, come inside. I don’t want—”
Gage yanked his arms back from my hands. The gesture stung deeper than I expected it to. I deserved his anger, though. I peered out the front door nervously in search of the SUV’s that were supposed to be parked there. The neighbors were undoubtedly listening in on our conversation, too. I never had visitors.
“What is going on?” Gage demanded. His eyes were fixated on my belly. “Is this why you left without a word? I’ve seen the headlines, Amber. Is it true?”
“What headline are you talking about?” I asked nervously. “There are so many of them, Gage. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they aren’t true. You should know that by now.”
He shook his head at me in disbelief. “What am I supposed to believe, Amber? You disappeared without saying a word to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was the only thing that I could think to say, but it wasn’t enough. I knew that it wouldn’t be, judging from the way Gage’s eyes floated down to my pregnant belly again. I glanced over Gage’s shoulder by standing on my tip toes, scanning the surrounding street and bushes for any signs of Scott or his PI.
“Please, Gage,” I said. “Come inside. I’ll explain everything if you just come inside to talk to me about it. I don’t want this leaked to the press.”
A tense moment passed before Gage stepped inside, much to my relief. I shut the front door quickly to lock it as well. Gage glanced around the living room, taking in the autumn decorations Ethan and I had placed throughout the house the previous weekend. He looked over at Ethan’s Spiderman Halloween costume, hanging on the back of a chair before turning to look down at my belly again. A vein flickered in Gage’s temple. I placed a hand over the swell of my stomach, in a protective gesture.
“How far along are you?” Gage asked.
“Seven months,” I replied, gesturing to the couch. “You can sit down if you want. It might be better if you do, so we can talk.”
Gage didn’t budge from where he stood rigidly next to the coffee table. His jaw clenched as he tore his eyes from my belly again to look me straight in the eye.
“Seven months?”
I nodded timidly. “Yes, Gage. Seven months along. It’s a girl, too.”
“It’s mine,” Gage stated matter-of-factly. “Right? We were together seven months ago. We were in Florida together about seven months ago. Of course, this baby is mine.” He paused to give me a long and hard look. “Is this why your father has barely spoken two words to me about you? The only times we talk are through my contracts.”
“I asked him not to tell you,” I said. “It was the only way I thought that would protect us from everything.”
“Protect us from what?”
I sat down on the edge of the couch while Gage paced in front of me. He ran a hand over his face in aggravation. Guilt tugged at me. Telling him the truth would put both of us at risk, but all I longed to do was to feel Gage’s arms around me again. I craved that more than anything in the world. I had to tell the truth.
“If you sit down,” I started, twirling a piece of hair around my finger anxiously. “I’ll tell you everything. Starting from Florida until now. I don’t want you to wake Ethan with all your pacing.”
“Fine.” He took a seat in the recliner across from me. “Start from Florida because I honestly want to know what the fuck happened. I can’t even wrap my mind around any of this right now, Amber.”
I sucked in a long and deep breath while rubbing at my aching ribs. “I got a phone call from Scott while we were in Florida. Not on my cell phone, but through the hotel line. He had hired a PI to track me down. This investigator followed us around for a while apparently, because there are photos of us together.”
Gage’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Photographs of us being intimate?”
“Yes,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes. “Many of them were of us being intimate. The last photograph he had was of us on the beach in Florida. So, Scott called to tell me that if I didn’t leave you and drop the divorce, he’d leak the images to the press.”
“Fuck.”
“I know. Trust me. I wanted to tell y
ou the truth, but I wanted to see the pictures for myself. Scott never bluffs when it comes to threats. I told him that I had left you because I didn’t want to ruin my father’s career. He’s already so disappointed in my life at the moment.”
“And you dropped the divorce?”
“I dropped the agreements,” I said. “I’m still legally married to him at the moment, until I figure out what to do.”
“What about the baby?” Gage asked harshly. “Our baby, Amber. How could you hide something like that from me? You know how much I wanted to start a family with you.”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant until I came back from Florida,” I said, startled by the intensity in Gage’s voice. “I just knew that this was something that Scott would see as bait. I was trying to protect you and my father. You have to understand that.”
“Don’t play the victim in this situation, Amber. You could’ve told me. We were together, for Christ’s sake.” He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “This involved me. I was going to propose to you in Florida. I had a plan to tell your father, and none of that would have changed if you just told me.”
I sank back against the couch cushions in disbelief. Shock filtered through me numbly. He was going to propose to me? I stared across the coffee table at the man I had imagined being with since I was a teenager. We would’ve been engaged by now. We would’ve been enjoying our first child together. That possibility had gone out the window the moment I decided to believe Scott’s words over Gage’s love and care for me. It made me sick to my stomach thinking about it.
Hurt flashed in Gage’s eyes as he rose from the chair on unsteady legs. I pushed myself up and off the couch to grab Gage’s arm before he reached the front door. Desperation washed over me as I looked up at his cold and stony face pleadingly.
“I’m sorry,” I cried, trying to keep my voice low to not disturb Ethan. “I didn’t know any of that, Gage. If I would’ve known—”
“That was the point. It was supposed to be a surprise.” Gage shook his head at me as he untangled himself from my hands. “I can’t do this, Amber. I know why we are in the situation we’re in at the moment. You chose to believe your ex-husband’s words over mine. You chose to trust your future with him, rather than with me.”
“Gage—”
“That’s exactly what it is,” he said flatly. “I hope you figure it out, Amber. I can’t deal with this when you are the one calling all the shots, without even telling me a word.”
“I was just trying to protect my father and you!” I exclaimed as he opened the front door. “That’s all I was trying to do, Gage. Not to hurt you, or anyone else.”
“You did, though. That’s what you don’t understand.”
Freeing himself from my hands, Gage stepped out into the dark night without looking back at me. I gripped the side of the door with tears streaming down my face as I watched his tall and trim figure disappear into the shadows across the street. The SUV’s, my father’s security team, were back in their usual spots. They followed Gage’s retreating form down the street.
I closed the door with a shaky sob. The world gave out beneath my feet, and I sank down to the ground. Curling up into a ball, I tried my best to stifle my cries with the back of my hand. Gage was right. All of this was my fault. I had chosen to believe my ex-husband over Gage. Now, I was stuck in a home all alone, with my son sound asleep upstairs and a newborn baby on the way. I had done everything I thought I could do to protect my father, but also Gage and our little family.
So much for that, Amber. You’re the one that shit all over what you could’ve had.
I pressed my forehead against the carpeted floors. I had no idea how I could even fix it in the long run. There was no going back to the past, even though I wanted to go back to Florida that morning to hang up on Scott. Let him leak the pictures. Let him run his mouth all over the television. I would’ve at least had Gage throughout all of it, along with our baby girl, Lily, and Ethan. We would’ve had each other.
Chapter 25
Gage
“This costume sucks, Dad.”
I bit back an exasperated sigh as Lily picked at her Frozen dress with a frown. She adjusted her blonde wig, full of massive amounts of coarse blonde hair intricately braided, with a frown as well. I zipped up the last part of her dress before taking a step back.
“You said the dress from Frozen,” I said. “This is what I picked up at the store.”
“Yeah, but every girl in my class is going to have the same type of dress,” Lily said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She rolled her eyes at me dramatically. “It’s going to be lame, Dad. I’m going to look the same no matter where I go tonight.”
I did my best to contain my irritation, even though little things like this were starting to wear me down. Marcie had been one of those moms who understood what her daughter needed, or what she desired to do. She would throw Halloween parties in our house for all of Lily’s friends, but that had changed over the years. Our house wasn’t even decorated for Halloween as it once was. Lily never brought the topic up, and I never bothered climbing up into the attic to sort through Marcie’s boxes of decorations.
“You’re beautiful, no matter what,” I said, grabbing my wallet and keys. “Get in the truck if you want to get candy. I get half of your stock because I’m driving you everywhere in Bozeman to get the best candy spots.”
“I don’t think so. You have to get your own candy.”
“We will see about that.”
The entire population of Bozeman was out and about when I managed to find a parking spot in a busy suburb where the middle class lived. It was the same place that I had taken Lily for years because of the impressive turn out. We often walked away with a couple buckets full of candy. I spotted Raychelle waiting for us on the corner as a string of kids darted by her, eagerly dressed up in various costumes.
“Isla from Frozen,” she said, taking in Lily’s costume with a smile. “I’ve seen a couple of those walking by. Come on, now. Let’s get a photo.”
She held up a camera, but Lily shook her head. “No, Aunt Ray. I look the same as everyone else. Mom would’ve made a special costume. Even Amber would’ve done it.”
“Lily,” Raychelle said sharply. “Don’t act ungrateful in front of your father. He has done everything he can to make sure that you are okay.”
Lily looked at me through narrowed eyes, full of tears. I sighed. “Go on, Lily. Find your friends. Please just try to have a good time and not make a scene.”
She didn’t protest. Darting down the sidewalk, Lily headed in the direction of a small group of friends that were waiting for her. The group took off together. Raychelle and I strolled behind them at a slow pace to give them space, but to keep an eye out for them as well.
“I should’ve offered to help with the costume,” Raychelle said guiltily. “I knew that Lily is getting to an age where she wants to be cool and fit in. Wearing the same costume counts as lame to her.”
A headache pounded in my head. To fight of the chill clinging to my fingers, I shoved my hands deep into my coat pockets with a sigh.
“She’s getting to age that I don’t even understand,” I said. “This is where I wish Marcie was the one here to help her go through everything. I don’t have a fucking clue about what I’m doing.”
Raychelle patted me on the shoulder. “You’re doing all that you can do, Gage. It’s not easy being a young girl. It wouldn’t be easy no matter which parent was standing here.”
“It doesn’t feel that way sometimes.”
“And Amber?”
My throat clenched at that. I focused on the various decorative and plastic spiders hiding in the sticky cobweb along the shrubbery of someone’s house as we passed by.
“I thought you had found her,” Raychelle remarked, frowning. “Am I right? I thought that was what you had said a few weeks ago. I never got the chance to ask again.”
“No point in asking,” I replied, b
itterness swelling in me again.
My mind flashed to her pregnant and swollen baby with our child growing every single day. I couldn’t get past her keeping that sort of secret from me. It was too much. It hurt too much.
We stopped on the corner of an adjacent street. I watched as Lily walked along with her group of friends, talking with a smile on her lips. All traces of her discontentment were gone now.
“What is going on?” Raychelle asked, frowning. “Don’t bother lying to me about it, either. I’ve read some interesting headlines about the Roselynn family.”
I shrugged my shoulders indifferently. “That’s why Amber claims she went into hiding, to protect her father’s political career. Her ex-husband has been blackmailing her.”
“With what?”
“With our relationship,” I stated coldly. “He has photos, from what Amber told me. He threatened to give them to the press to ruin her father’s career, and to destroy our relationship as well. That is the story that I got when I found her here in Bozeman.”
“And you’re still upset with her?” Raychelle slapped me on the shoulder, hard. She glared at me when I rubbed at my shoulder in surprise. “What is wrong with you, Gage? That poor girl is being blackmailed, and you’re upset with her?”
“She didn’t tell me the truth,” I replied defensively. “I would’ve done everything I could to protect her. She made that decision without me.”
“It’s also your hand in this too, Gage. It takes two consenting adults to get into this sort of thing.” She gave me a hard look then. “What else is there? Something else, I can see. What is it?”
I let out a pent-up breath through my clenched teeth. “There’s a baby, too. My baby according to Amber.”
“A baby?” Raychelle whispered, eyes widening. “Oh, Gage. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know, Ray. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
“No, I mean, what are you doing here? You need to make this right if you truly love her. Do you think Marcie would be proud of you for acting like this if she knew about it?”
