“Just take a deep breath, love. It’ll be okay. I promise,” I reassure Becca as I take her hand in mine and walk to her door to let Stella and Cade in.
She walks with me hesitantly, and I know she’s nervous. I can tell she feels guilty about picking Austin as her date to the gala. She probably feels responsible for being the one to bring Austin back into Stella’s life. She might not have said the words, but I can tell with how she’s almost shrinking herself. Her shoulders are down, chin tucked into her neck, and she’s walking slightly behind me. My thumb strokes across the back of her hand as I unlock the dead bolt and open the door.
Not a single word is said right away. Stella locks eyes with Becca. Stella’s red-rimmed eyes are empty, glazed over. Fire burns in me to beat the living shit out of Austin for putting that fear in her.
Stella launches herself at Becca, throwing her arms around her neck and shoulders. I release Becca’s hand as she raises both arms, hovering them above Stella’s back. A sob bursts from her, and she cries into the crook of Becca’s neck.
Becca remains frozen, her arms held in the air. Slowly, she lowers her arms and wraps them around Stella. “I’m so sorry, Stella.”
Stella juts her head back, eyebrows creased.
“I will make him pay. Somehow, I will make him pay for what he did.”
“What are you sorry for? You didn’t do anything, Becca. You didn’t know that was him. And the likelihood was astronomical. So, seriously, don’t feel bad at all. And, yes, he most definitely will get what’s coming to him.” She glances back at Cade, whose jaw looks wired shut—it’s clenched so tight.
“You got that right,” Cade says, voice low.
A knock on the door makes Stella jump a little, and it breaks my fucking heart to watch her go through this shit.
Cade looks through the peephole and then opens the door. Brooke, Sophie, and Rose walk in with saddened eyes.
It’s crazy to think how tight-knit this group is. And honestly, it’s all thanks to Stella. She is the glue that holds us all together. Which is why we are all so affected by Austin being here.
Becca looks over the group, one by one, before saying, “We can sit in the living room, and I can get food, too, just let me know what and when.”
With that, she turns to me and offers me her hand, which I happily take, and we walk to the living room. My heart leaps out of my chest at her tiny gesture.
God, she owns me, heart and fucking soul.
Everyone finds a place on one of the sofas. Becca sits down in what I imagine is the same spot she always does—on her large dusty-blue sofa. I sit next to her. And Brooke sits beside me.
Cade and Stella take the love seat. Sophie sits on the recliner with Rose on her lap.
Becca shifts, clearly uncomfortable, and says, “I don’t know how to start this. But I guess I can tell you how we met and everything I know about him.”
Everyone nods in agreement, and Becca does exactly what she said. She tells us that he was a random guy on the street that she picked for a bet with Sophie for Becca’s date to the gala.
Austin told her that he was an intern at the Carver Firm. He picked a hell of a lie. It’s not like he would’ve known that Becca knew the Carvers. But still, he really shit the bed on that one.
Becca said she didn’t ask Cade about it sooner because she didn’t want everyone asking about Austin right away. And she was just using him to try to convince me to move on, which definitely didn’t work.
Because when I saw them together, my first thought was not,I’m going to go date someone new. It was,Holy hell, I’m going to kill this guy if he touches her.
She tells us that something always seemed a little off about him, but nothing she could actually place. And when she invited him to the club, telling him Cade and Stella were going, he said he couldn’t go. She says she assumed it was because he’d be meeting Cade. It didn’t even cross her mind that it could’ve been because of Stella.
“That’s it. He didn’t really give me a lot of information about himself. Mostly just spoke about his spot at the firm,” Becca says.
Stella reaches up and runs her fingers over the scar on her cheek that his hockey ring gave her.
Cade puts his arm around her waist, and then he picks her up and places her on his lap, wrapping his arms around her like a seat belt.
Brooke crosses her legs and says with an eerily calm and smooth tone, “I think I’ll cut his penis off. Can we drug him? Or can you guys hold him down?”
I laugh. I’d be so down with that plan.
Cade glances up. I nod once at him, and he does the same. We both agree that when we see him, his body is going into the ground.
Silence hangs in the balance between us, and no one really knows what to say.
