Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires #1) - Lucia Jordan Page 0,31

her hand in his pants, thinking that it would be funny. But why wouldn’t he have told me about this? After all that we had already gone through, why wouldn’t Tim have explained what happened? Instead, he covered it up and hoped that I would never find out about it. I started to full-on cry. I just couldn’t believe that he would do this to me again, not now after things had become so wonderful between us.

I heard the front door to the office open and saw Max walk back in. I quickly turned all three monitors off and grabbed my stuff.

“Hey,” Max said as I walked out of the office. He could see that I’d been crying. “Everything okay?”

“No,” I said. “Max, can you please take me home?”

“Sure. You want to go to the mountain house or Tim’s apartment here downtown?”

“No, neither of those. I want you to take me to Kate’s.”

Max looked at me and immediately knew something was up.

“Brooke, do you want to call Tim first and talk to him before you leave?” he asked.

“No.”

Max sighed and then put his arm around my shoulders as we walked out together. I wanted to tell him what I saw and to hear what he thought of the matter. But every time I opened my mouth to talk, it just ended up being a sob. So I rode the rest of the way in silence. Max was good about not pushing for information. He would listen if I wanted to talk, and he would just drive if I didn’t want to say a word.

When we got to Kate’s, he walked me to the door and gave me a hug before he turned to leave.

“I won’t be into the office tomorrow,” I said as he turned around. “I’m just not feeling well right now. Can you let Tim know?”

“Sure,” Max said as he gave me a reassuring smile, but I had a feeling he knew that I wouldn’t be coming back at all.

“What happened?” Kate asked when she sees what an emotional mess I am again. Even Nick got up to come and give me a hug.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said as I walked back to my old room at her place.

Fortunately, I still had most of my stuff here. I plopped down onto the bed face-first and cried into the pillow. I could hear Kate and Nick standing at the doorway watching me, but I would talk to them later. Right now, all I wanted to do was purge my emotions. I cried so much that I wore myself out and ended up falling asleep.

When I woke up, it was already evening, and I tied my hair up into a knot on the top of my head, changed into pajamas, and splashed some warm water on my swollen eyes. I looked at my phone and saw dozens of missed calls and texts from Nick. When I listened to them, he sounded frantic and panicked. His messages looked confused and scared. I didn’t read or listen to them all.

“Hey,” Kate said as I finally emerged from my room and sat down on the couch next to her. Nick was sitting on her other side. “We’ve been worried about you.”

“I’m okay,” I lied.

“You don’t look okay,” Nick said. “No offense.”

I laughed, but it wasn’t because I was happy, it was because I was sickly amused at my own sad state of affairs. Nick was a nice guy, and he and Kate were good for each other. Things just seemed easy for them. Things never seemed easy for Tim and me.

“Ready to tell us what happened?” she asked.

I nodded and spilled the whole story.

“I can’t believe that prick would do the same thing to you all over again,” Kate said angrily. She was fiercely protective of the people she cared about, and I was honored to be one of those people.

“Maybe it wasn’t his fault, though,” Nick said. “Maybe the chick just shoved her hand down in his pants. It’s not like we can always help what happens when that piece gets touched. You can’t really blame the guy from having an uncontrollable reaction to someone stroking his cock.”

“Very helpful,” Kate said as she rolled her eyes at him.

“No, I’m serious,” Nick continued. “How would you have felt if it were you and me? If some girl did that to me and my pecker had a reaction that I couldn’t stop in time, would you just run off and