Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires #1) - Lucia Jordan Page 0,38

no. Don’t you dare say it,” she said as she shook her head at me.

“I’m in love with Tim,” I said as tears welled in my eyes.

“Fuck.” Kate had a way with not overly complicating words when she was exasperated. She was also super cute when she got frustrated. The sides of her nose would flare and make her sparkling nose ring look like it was moving.

“You can’t love him, Brooke,” she said. “He’s no good for you.”

I sat down on the side of my bed, and Kate sat down with me. “I can’t just choose not to love him, Kate,” I cried as I put my face down into the palm of my hands.”

“I know,” she said while she rubbed my back. “But then why don’t you just answer his messages and go back to him again then?”

“Because he has to know that he can’t keep things from me like he’s been doing. He has to know that unless there is trust between us and unless he actually values me as a person, then we can’t be together.”

“So you’re willing to just sit here alone in misery until Tim somehow figures all that out on his own?”

“Yes,” I pouted.

“Damn girl, that’s a tall order for a guy like him. I’m just not sure that Tim’s ever going to figure that out without you coming straight out and telling him,” she said.

“I can’t tell him. It doesn’t work that way. It won’t mean anything if I hand feed him what he should be doing if he truly cares about me. If I have to sit here alone forever, then I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do.” I could feel myself wallowing in my own self-pity.

“You’re never going to be sitting here all alone,” Kate said as she hugged my shoulders from beside me on the bed. “You know I’ll always be right here with you.”

I looked up and saw her smiling face, and it made me cry even more. Kate was the greatest friend, and even if I didn’t have a great boyfriend, I did have her. That was more than what most people had.

“Ice cream night?” she asked.

“Definitely,” I said as I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand.

We both got up and went to the freezer. Kate was an ice cream fanatic, so there was never any shortage of flavors. I took out bowls and spoons, and she took out five different flavors. While we were scooping, there was a knock at the door. Kate went to go answer it and returned to the kitchen shortly with Nick.

“Hey, Nick,” I said. “I thought you were staying at your place tonight.”

“Yeah, I was, but then I missed Kate and wanted to come back,” he said as he kissed Kate and smiled.

Again I thought about how they were the greatest couple.

“Uh oh,” he said as he saw all the ice cream. “Does this mean the date with Scott didn’t go well?”

Kate laughed at how perceptive he was. “The date with Scott went fine,” she answered him as I continued to scoop ice cream. “But Brooke is in love with Tim.”

“Oh shit,” Nick said as he rubbed his chin with his fingers and thought about the magnitude of that. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then; I wouldn’t want to interrupt your ice cream night.

“Nonsense,” I said as I walked around and took out a third bowl and spoon to hand to him.

“You’re not interrupting anything. Stay and join us.”

18

Chapter Thirteen (Tim)

“A date?” I asked Max in disbelief while we were working on the stained-glass piece that would inlay the shower door of Brooke’s bathroom inside the container home.

“Yeah, blind date,” Max answered. “Young guy, pretty good looking with blond hair.”

“You’re not helping, Max,” I growled.

“Sorry,” he chuckled. “I just thought you would want to know.”

I did want to know, but I also didn’t want to know about it. Brooke just needed to hold on a little longer. We were making so much progress on her new modular dream home, and once she saw it, she would see how much I loved her. All of the little things that she talked about, the minimalist style, go-green sustainability, the colors of autumn, hell, even her favorite insect of bumblebees, were included in the design. I had special ordered violet and moss green bedding for her. Max and I were painstakingly laying pieces of stained glass in the shape of bumblebees. Everything that she had ever said, I