Page 95 of Backup Plan

I can’t believe Liam would be such a coward to not even give this a real shot with me. To fight with me. Instead, he’s simply giving up, and I’m just supposed to accept that this is over so I can win against Brent.

What good does it do me to win if it means I don’t get to celebrate the victory with Liam? I mean…a win is the judge telling me I can move to San Diego, but now I can’t seem to figure out why the hell I would possibly move there.

I sit in my car in the parking garage as I try to figure out where to go. What to do.

I walked out after I called him a giant coward. I wanted to say more, but the tears were stinging behind my eyes, and I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.

Haven’t I lost enough over the last year?

Good God, it’s been one hit after another.

I think about calling Everleigh. After all, it was her who I turned to when I found out Brent was cheating. I escaped to Las Vegas with the boys for a few days while the media coverage blew over. He’s not famous or anything, but he is a local realtor with his face plastered all over city buses, billboards, and park benches. Everyone knows his jingle from the radio. “Stop paying too much rent. To buy a house, you gotta call Brent.”

He was so goddamn proud of that jingle when he paid an exorbitant fee to a marketing company to write it for him. I always thought it sucked, and I’m in freaking marketing. It should’ve sent a silent signal to me that he didn’t use Langford to write his jingle, but Langford also would never have slapped his face all over the city because what if he were caught doing something inappropriate like making out with some chick with huge tits that wasn’t his wife at a basketball game on the Jumbotron?

Right.

Anyway.

I can’t turn to Everleigh this time.

And so I fight back tears like I have so many freaking times over the last few months, and I put the car in drive until I end up at my mom’s house.

I sit in the driveway and stare at the front door. I can’t seem to make myself move out of the car.

My mom is the best. We’ve always been close, even more so after my dad died right before Sammy was born. It’s been eight years. Hard to believe.

I realize I haven’t seen her as much as usual since we moved into Liam’s place. It’s a little further from my mom’s house, and with the divorce and everything else going on, things have been busy, to say the least.

My mom sold the house they’d shared and moved into this little place. It was what she could afford to buy with the profit she made from the sale of their bigger home, but it’s tiny. Still, it’s hers, and she’s very proud of it.

And now I’m about to ask the unthinkable.

It’s silly. I’m sure I have other options. I’m sure Everleigh would give me a place to stay.

But that would mean admitting the truth to her that I fell for her little brother.

And now that it’s over, I’m even less inclined to clue her in.

I finally force myself out of the car, and it’s one step at a time toward the front door. I ring the bell. I wait for her to answer. And I fall into her arms as the dam finally bursts clean open.

“What is it, my Lucky Penny? Are the boys okay?” she asks, holding me tightly despite my lack of any sort of information regarding why I’m falling apart.

“They’re fine,” I manage to gasp.

“Then everything will be okay,” she says. “Come on in. Let’s get you some tea.”

Tea is her answer to everything.

She makes me a cup as I slide into a chair at her kitchen table, steeping the old classic lemon zinger in hot water with a spoonful of sugar just like she did for me when I was a kid.

After she sets the steaming mug in front of me and I’ve calmed down enough to be able to form sentences, she sits across from me. “Talk to me, Penelope.”

I sniffle, and she reaches for the box of tissues on the counter and sets it beside me.

“Well, I went and fell for Liam Bradley, and he just ended things with me because of freaking Brent.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, patting my hand. “Wait…you fell for him? I thought you were just staying with him.”