leave me?”
“Of course not,” Kate said.
Nick turned his hands out in the air by his shoulders. “Well then, see what I mean?”
“It wasn’t just about that, though,” I said. “It was more about the fact that Tim didn’t tell me about it and tried to cover it up from me. He must have known that I would find out someday. But instead of just telling me what happened and showing that it was an innocent reaction to a crazy woman who can’t seem to keep her hands off of him, he lied. I mean, he didn’t actually lie, but he also didn’t tell me the whole truth, so it’s essentially the same thing.”
“I agree,” Kate said. “He should have just told you if he didn’t have anything to hide.
“Not if he was scared that it might make you run again and block his number again,” Nick said.
I didn’t think I’d ever heard him engage in such a long conversation with me before.
“I’m telling you; I think you girls might have this one called wrong. I think this guy might really be in love with you, Brooke, which is why this shit matters so much to him. Most guys wouldn’t bat an eye at it.”
“Well, if he loved me,” I said, thinking back to the first time I left, and this being the same thing all over again, “then he would be upfront and honest with me about things.”
Instead, he chose to hide it again.
15
Chapter Eleven (Tim)
As soon as I got back to the office, I knew something was wrong; I just didn’t know what it was. Max had messaged me, saying that he was giving Brooke a ride home to Kate’s apartment because she wasn’t feeling well, but I knew that wasn’t really what was going on. If Brooke hadn’t been feeling well, she would have sent me a text, and she wouldn’t have gone to Kate’s. I was stopping back at the office to pick up a few things that I needed to bring home and then would head straight over to Kate’s to check on her. I had called and sent Brooke text messages, but when she didn’t answer any of them, it started to feel a bit too similar to the last time.
When I got to my office, I grabbed the paperwork that I needed and went to shut down my computer. It was weird that my monitors were turned off, but my computer was still running. I pressed the button to turn my screens back on so that I could power-down the whole system, but as soon as they lit up, all I could see were three monitors covered with pictures of Chelsea and me. The erotic looking ones that showed me standing in front of the camera with a rock-hard cock in my pants were in the forefront of the screens.
Shit.
I closed each and every one of them out until I could see the email that they had come out of. The photographer wasn’t trying to cause trouble, but she inadvertently caused a whole mess of it. I grabbed my keys and headed out of the office toward Kate’s apartment. On the way, I tried calling Brooke again.
“Brooke, please listen to me. I’m so sorry. It’s not at all what it looks like, I swear. I just didn’t tell you about those pictures because it wasn’t anything at all, and I didn’t want you to get upset again. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Brooke. I just didn’t want you to get mad at me again for something I didn’t do. I’m on my way to Kate’s apartment now to talk to you.”
She still didn’t answer me back.
When I got to Brooke’s apartment, Kate answered the door.
“Hi, Kate, can I come in and talk to Brooke, please?”
Kate looked at my sympathetically but didn’t move out of the doorway. “I’m sorry, Tim,” she said. “But Brooke doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Please,” I pleaded with her. “I just need to explain what happened.”
“I’m really sorry,” Kate said as she starts to close the door.
I put my foot in the door to stop it from closing all the way. “Kate, please,” I begged her one final time.
Nick showed up behind her shoulder and tapped her. Kate turned to go back inside, and Nick stepped out to talk to me, closing the door behind him.
“Hey man,” he said, “I feel for you, I really do. I know you’re in a tough spot. But Brooke isn’t going