Page 61 of Christmas with Brother's Best Friends
I want someone to hold me.I want everyone to leave me the hell alone.
I want a plan. A future. A version of this that makes sense.But all I have is a pounding heart, a baby I wasn’t expecting, and a silence so heavy it swallows me whole.
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Max
“You guys won’t fucking believe this.”
Josh and I immediately look up as Ryan storms into the office. Concern hits me as I see the pissed off look on his face. Something bad happened.
“What happened last night? You never got back to me after you told me you found her,” Josh questions Ryan as he stands from his desk.
Ryan strips off his black coat and tosses it into his office chair. “Emma might go to San Francisco and work for Vincent Bradley.”
I swivel around to face them, my eyes narrowing in thought. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
Ryan crosses his arms over his chest. “I worked for Vincent when I got out of undergrad. He treated me like shit for years until I finally left and came back home to start SyncUp with you guys.”
“Oh, yeah. That asshole,” Josh replies. “She wants to work for him?”
“She went to a meeting with him last night, and she’s seriously considering his offer,” Ryan tells him, eyes darting back and forth between us. “She can’t work for him. He’ll mistreat her. He’ll do worse to her than he did to me. I can guarantee it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask him. “How could he do worse?”
Ryan drags his hand through his hair as he sits in his seat. “When I was there, he acted like a damn womanizer. He had girls come in and out of his office. I know for a fact that he slept with two assistants. You really think he won’t try to make a move on her?”
“She’s not going to sleep with him,” Josh assures him.
“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried that he’ll hold something over her head because he wants to sleep with her,” Ryan replies with disgust written all over his face.
Wariness stirs within me at the thought of that. If Vincent is as bad as Ryan has described him to be, it wouldn’t be out of left field for him to make such a move on Emma. I don’t want her anywhere near someone like him.
“I don’t want her to leave New York City,” I admit. “I don’t like the thought of being so far away from her that I can’t immediately go to her if she needs help.”
Josh and Ryan nod in agreement. It sucks that we haven’t been around each other much, but at least we know that she’s not too far away. For now.
“But… we can’t tell her what to do,” I say with a sigh. I don’t want to be the asshole who tells her what she can and can’t do. I’m not going to clip the wings of someone who likes to fly.
I refuse.
Ryan scoffs. “We can’t just sit around and do nothing.”
“We can’t do much else,” Josh replies with a half-hearted shrug. “It’s not our place. She was clear on that.”
Ryan grinds his teeth and shakes his head. “I tried talking to her, but she didn’t want to hear me out. Something is up with her.”
Josh nods in agreement. “It did seem like something was wrong. I’ve never seen her act like that before.”
“She said it was because you were with Stacy, but I just don’t think that’s the whole truth,” Ryan says as suspicion seeps into his voice. “There must be something else.”
I wish I could’ve seen her last night like they did. Maybe I can get through to her, but that means going against our agreement.
Honestly, I don’t care about the agreement right now. Not when she might be in trouble.
“I think I’m going to work from home today,” I say as I stand from my desk and grab my things.
“You just got here,” Josh replies as he flashes me a confused look.
