Faking It(53)

I can’t remember which book it was, but I read once that it was better to do a thing than to be scared of it. I was scared to talk to him, but I was even more afraid of losing my self-respect. No matter what my dad said, or what justification Braden thought he had, part of me was just done with letting other people make decisions for me and tell me how I should feel.

I felt heartbroken, but I felt pissed off, too. I deserved a man who didn’t lash out like a child. Sure, there was probably more to the story, but not everything needs context. There were more than a few sides to most people as well, but that didn’t mean that every side had to be tolerated and accepted.

Tough talk, Alyssa. I thought I was right, but I had to call Chantelle. The first thing I did in that conversation was tell her that I was sorry for how absent I had been. My time with Braden had been an all-consuming black hole. Nice for the most part, but not something I had dipped in and out of.

Not surprisingly, Chantelle had seen the video.

“I wanted to make sure you called me first,” she said. “I figured you had a lot to process.”

This was a level of insight for Chantelle that I did find surprising. Oh hell, we both loved to gossip, I was no better than she was. “Your restraint is admirable,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to call him,” I said. “We have to talk.”

“And say what?”

“Not sure. Maybe nothing. Maybe I need to call him just to hang up on him.” Yeah, I’m sure that would just destroy him. He would spend the rest of time wallowing, whining about the time when Alyssa Edwards hung up on him. Yep.

“Ha! Do it. Maybe, if you’re going to talk to him again in the future, maybe the real conversation isn’t the first one. Maybe it’s a couple of times away. Just go with your gut.”

My gut was telling me to throw up. My gut was telling me that I should be in tears. My gut was telling me that I wanted to throttle Braden and put an end to his fighting career once and for all. The best way to do that would probably have been just to tell my dad. He would have had Braden out on his ass in the blink of an eye.

But I wanted to figure this one out for myself. I couldn’t let my dad do everything for me. Not forever.

After a couple of drinks with Chantelle, I went home. Dad was out somewhere so I had the place to myself. After wandering through a few rooms like Citizen Kane, I laid on my bed upstairs and entertained a brief fantasy of Braden throwing pebbles at my window. I would open them and give him a piece of my mind. He would be abject and apologetic, then I would throw down a rope and he would come up and tell me it was okay.

Some fantasy. He was probably out with one of the bimbos from the video. I had been a fool to think I could trust him. I focused on the pain, telling myself that it would remind me of how stupid I had been the next time I believed something a handsome, pushy, unstable man told me. No matter how attracted I was to Braden, he was never going to be who I needed.

I had been crying for a few minutes, staring at my phone but unwilling to make the call, when I heard the doorbell ring.

Figuring it was just a package—my dad basically had all of the city’s independent booksellers on speed dial—I brought my face back to something like non-crying normalcy and went downstairs.

When I opened the door Braden was on the porch.



Chapter 10



It had been a hard day. I had taken a few steps that I was happy about, but none of it was going to undo the idiocy I had caused at the hotel.

Braden Dean, my tombstone would say one day: Could not get out of his own way.

I sat in Alyssa’s driveway for several minutes before walking up and ringing the doorbell. It would have been so simple to turn around, find another woman, and drive away to my new life, whatever that would mean. My agent had assured me that the video would blow over. It would even lend an edge to my image. Notoriety was easy to play up, and in the coming showdown with Vlad it would make for great press. Taciturn killer tangles with hothead bad boy womanizer idiot who can’t get out of his own way.

In any case, I knew how short people’s attention spans were. That video would be replaced by another video. Within a week people would have something else to fuss over and I would fade from their memory until it was fight time.

I didn’t want to fight with Alyssa, and I didn’t want to get defensive. For the first time in my life, I wanted to own my mistakes and take my lumps like a man.

That said, the walk to the door still felt like it was a trek across the Himalayas. Or maybe to the moon. It was a long, long way, and my heart grew heavier with each step. Maybe I had actually lost something precious to me. I would know soon. Too soon.

When Alyssa opened the door I lit up with what I hoped was a big smile. It faded when I saw that she had obviously been crying. I have never felt like such a piece of shit. If someone else had made her cry I would have snapped his neck. Maybe she needed protecting from me, and the only way I could be sure was to leave her alone for good. But I had to try.

“Alyssa,” I said, “I know you must hate me right now.”

She crossed her arms and nodded. “I think you might really be underestimating how I feel about you right now, but nice try.” But she wasn’t slamming the door in my face, so I soldiered on.

“And that’s okay. Even if you never speak to me again, I need you to know that, however much you think you hate me right now, I hate myself a lot worse. A lot of people say they’re their own worst critics, but they don’t have a clue how other people actually feel about them. I am definitely my own harshest critic. I have barely slept since we talked. I can’t eat, I don’t want to train, it’s all falling apart, and the responsibility is completely mine.”