Waiting for Always (Beautiful Surrender #5)(10)
Author: Ava Claire

The anger in me was slowly becoming rage. I felt the heat of it searing the soles of my feet. The flames licked my legs. Fury scorched my belly. My heart was already ash. When I spoke, my voice was dark as brimstone. "You’re really going to stand there, look me in my face after what you’ve done, and still lie to me?"

Her face narrowed in confusion as she eased forward. "Baby, I have no idea what you’re-"

"Stop right there."

She froze, her eyes widening like she’d hit some invisible trip wire. The slightest movement on her part, and all hell would break loose.

She was caught.

The curtains fell. The show was over. I saw it in her face, the quivering of her lips as she struggled to find her next words.

"Let me explain," she eked out, crestfallen.

It took massive self-restraint to not reposition the stack of papers. Tell her to speak up so the whole world could see how psychotic she really was. Instead, I bided my time. Quietly rejoiced in my small victory…the game was over. "No more bullshit?"

She chewed on her bottom lip, color returning to her face. The color of shame. "No more bullshit."

"Just so we’re on the same page," I growled. "What exactly are you explaining to me?"

She shuffled forward like a doomed woman taking her final steps toward her fate. "It’s bad enough that you know, that you see-" She choked on the word and covered her face, drawing a sob-filled breath. "That you see what I’ve become."

If she was expecting pity or mercy, she was barking up the wrong tree. She could cry every tear she could muster, tear out her hair, fall to the floor wailing for my forgiveness, and she’d come up wanting. "This was no accident, Delilah. You made your bed, now lie in it—admit what you’ve done."

Tears turned her eyes to glass. It shattered as she looked down at her stomach, clutching it with both hands. "The baby’s not yours."

"I didn’t catch that," I seethed, glaring her down.

She snapped her head up, her eyes wild and crazed. Cheeks drenched, mouth open in a silent cry of pain.

"The baby’s not yours!!!"

It was a screech that stabbed my ears. Cut out my heart. I turned my back to her, unwilling to let her see just how much it hurt. "But you went on national television and told the world I was the father. You screamed that I was the father to anyone that would listen. Logan Mason, billionaire playboy who wants nothing to do with his child, right?"

"Do you remember that little Vietnamese place near Golden Gate Park?"

I tilted my head in her direction, genuinely caught off guard. "What?"

She advanced, her steps hollow and heavy. "The hole in the wall with the sticky menus and the picnic tables indoors?"

My throat knotted, the breath I wasn’t aware I was holding festering. My silence was my reply. Of course I remembered the place. Huge bowls of pho and piping hot tea. She’d talk about her past and with each return trip, each bowl, I’d get closer to telling her something about mine. But then the paparazzi got wind of us, and I realized that the girl who talked about growing up in a trailer and feeling so alone was just a shadow. A trick of the light.

She was right beside me, her voice low and pleading. "Please let me at least explain why. It’s because I love you, Logan. I-I thought that if we had this baby, this one perfect thing that was ours, maybe you would love me, too." She gripped my arm, her touch filled with desperation. With a hope she had no right to feel. "I know I shouldn’t have lied about the baby. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were."

It was almost sad. Heartbreaking, if I still had any pieces that I wanted to waste on her. There never was an us, or a ‘way they were’. She brushed the surface, but I never let her in. I never loved Delilah James.

I got what I wanted—the truth. I owed her nothing.

"This is where we part ways, Delilah. From this moment on, you don’t exist to me." I ignored her gasp. The way she snatched her hand away like I’d just shot an electric current through her system. I didn’t even want to see if the gravity of what she’d done had sunk in. I could feel her pain, and the only way to make her feel mine was to be silent. Pretend there wasn’t a part of me that cared about her once.

The elevator sounded and I breathed in. Exhaled. I pushed a hand through my hair and tightened my tie. Vindicated, I strode to the counter and picked up the small disk, sliding it into my pocket.

All the noise in my head was finally silenced. The ache of what I lost was easier to bear.

And then I saw the white shirt of mine that Melissa wore, balled up in one of the chairs. I rooted myself in place, fighting the urge to bring the wrinkled thing to my nose and inhale her scent, to hold it in my arms and-

And what? I made my choice.

The proof of Delilah’s lie burned a hole in my pocket.

I made the right choice.

Tit for tat.

But if this was right, why did I feel like I was holding a grenade?

Chapter Six

Melissa

Life without Logan was unbearable.

The seconds stretched into minutes that fell into days. When I finally looked at my calendar, I realized it had been a whole month since I’d even heard his voice. Inside, I was dying the slowest, most painful death. Death by heartbreak.

I went through the motions. I got up in the morning and made myself presentable; I did my job. I smiled. I pretended that every time my phone beeped or a new email landed in my inbox I wasn’t praying that it was him. And every night when I curled up in bed alone, I fought the urge to reach out. What would it change? He chose revenge over me. He needed to hurt someone, more than he needed to start over with me.

He was willing to give me up.

And that was the thing that haunted me. He said he loved me. He’d been inside me, a part of me. He claimed me as his—and then he’d just tossed me aside.

I’d wanted Stacia to step up as the Logan Mason Sucks co-chair, but she declined the position. She encouraged me to reach out to him. She brought up his past, how desperately he must have wanted the baby, stress over work—but it was all irrelevant. What it all boiled down to was that we were done. Finished. He let me walk away.

I waited for the tone in the Delilah James baby watch stories to change. For whatever diabolical plan he had in store to come to fruition. But he was still the enemy. Sitting at the top of his multimillion-dollar building, strutting down the street to his company, living his life like he could care less about Delilah.

Like he could care less about me.

A big fat tear welled in my eye and slid down my cheek. I looked at my face, puffy and blotched, blonde tangles spilling over my shoulder. I snatched up my brush and went to work, yanking and tugging until I tamed my locks. I welcomed the jolts of pain, a pain that had nothing to do with my heart.