Chapter 33: The Renegade Billionaire: Chapter 33

Cinnamon fills the air as Blissy walks around the room holding warm cookies under everyone’s noses. It’s one week before Christmas, and the Chug is as busy as I’ve ever seen it.

“Why are there so many fucking people here?” Grey grumbles, echoing my thoughts.

“Christmas is as big around here as anything.” Blissy drops a cookie and a napkin onto Grey’s desk. “But this is the first week folks are allowed to plan their booths for the Cozy Cup Festival.”

“The what now?” Sage asks, handing Grey his third cup of coffee in the last two hours.

“Maybe you should cool it with the coffee.” Grey’s eye twitches at my comment. “How the hell do you sleep with this much caffeine in your system this late in the day?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m slipping him some decaf when he isn’t looking,” Sage whispers.

Grey’s long pointer finger shoots out in Sage’s direction. “Don’t do it.”

Sage grins but winks at me, and I know he’s one hundred percent messing with Grey’s caffeine intake. He also loves working here. He’s become a social butterfly in town, and everyone genuinely seems to care about him.

“Now, tell me all about this Cozy Cup Festival.” Sage leans in and rubs his hands together as if he’s about to get the best gossip known to man.

“It takes place after New Year’s, but we spend the week after Christmas getting ready, and every business in town has a booth. We mix them up, so all the tea drinkers aren’t on one side of the park and coffee drinkers on the other. It started as a way to bring people together, but it’s turned cutthroat in recent years. Everyone’s divided these days,” Blissy laments and Grey goes back to working on his computer. “Maybe you boys’ll be the ones to bring everyone together again.”

“Us?” I ask, pointing to me and Grey.

“Yeah, you,” she says with a scoff. “What other boys am I talking to?”

“I don’t own a business here,” Grey complains.

“No, but this one does,” she says, pointing to me. “And it’s all-hands-on-deck for this event, so you’re in it to win it, Greyson. It’ll be good for ya anyway. Rumor ’round town says you’re the neighborhood grinch, and no one likes a grinch.”

“I’m the grinch?” Grey actually sounds offended. “I’ve hardly talked to anyone. How can I be the grinch?”

She shrugs. “Well, it’s not hard next to this one here.” Again, she points to me.

“I have a name, Blissy.”

“Yeah, it’s Santa Claus. Don’t think I didn’t hear about the donation made to that church you were serving food at with Madi. You have to stop handing out checks with your name on them if you don’t want to be identified.”

She clucks her tongue and walks away as if I’m the neighborhood idiot.

“Just how many donations have you made this week?” Greyson asks in a low voice.

I roll my eyes, but because he’s probably already checked the account, I say, “I made another to the shelter and the school where my mother and sister are. I paid to rebuild the barn that burned down in Maine. I made one to the theater group in town—they’re trying to restore the old theater on Main Street. That was just good business.”

“And?” he says with a smirk. He knows me too damn well.

“And I filled the bin at the fire station with new toys, bought a hundred turkeys to be delivered by the food bank, plucked all the wishes from the wishing tree at town hall and bought everything on them, and went to the superintendent of schools who found a list of kids who might not have Santa visit and I bought a bunch of shit for their parents to dole out however they saw fit. You happy now?”

“I am.” He sits back with a smug expression. “Are you?”

“You know I am.”

“It shows.”

“Good.”

“I’m not trying to fight with you, Braxton. You look happy, and I’m happy for you, but we have a little problem.”

He has my full attention. “What’s that?”

“Your dad hasn’t shown up at the elder care facility for almost a week. Mr. Coop called this morning to let me know.”

“Fuck me. He’s coming for us, isn’t he?”

Grey doesn’t have to answer me. We both know it’s a certainty. The only unknown is when he’ll arrive and what kind of bomb he’ll drop on us.

The front door opens, and I glance over to see Madison standing in the doorway, sadness filling her expression.

She shakes her head, just once, and my stomach hollows out—she’s not pregnant.

“Shit,” Grey curses beside me.

He’s the only other person who knew we were waiting for…something.

I’m not prepared for the wave of sadness that washes over me. Am I mourning a child that never existed?

“You fell in love with the idea of the baby, Brax. By the looks of her, she did too. Go, get her out of here, and I’ll look into Alistair, then start researching this…festival.”

I barely register his words as I stand and walk toward her. My legs are heavy—weighed down by regret and an aching sense of nothingness.

Grey’s right. I wanted there to be a baby.

“Are you okay?” I whisper when she tucks her face into my chest.

“I don’t know. How can I be relieved and sad at the same time? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does though. To me, it does.” She tilts her head up to search my face, and I know the instant she finds the same warring emotions in my expression. Her lips fall into a frown, and she nods.

“It was too soon anyway.” She’s trying to talk away her feelings, so I don’t push, but she needs to understand that they’re valid too. Whatever she’s feeling is valid.

“It doesn’t make it hurt less though. Someday…” I can’t get the rest of my words out.

“Someday,” she agrees.

Together, we stand in an embrace, surrounded by people but lost to our own world.

“I love you.” I mentally count seconds every time I say those words.

She nods but doesn’t pull away. “I love you too.”

Her declaration knocks the air from my lungs. I’m still replaying it when a voice I don’t care to ever hear cuts into my joy.

“Isn’t that sweet,” Harry snarls. “You know, I figured out who you are.”

Greyson steps to my side and takes Madison from my arms. Today is not the day for her to fight her own battles.

As soon as I know he has her out of harm’s way, I turn to this asshole, fully aware that everyone in the Chug is watching.

“Couldn’t have been too hard to figure out, since I never hid who I was.”

“And you’re okay with that, Mads? You love someone whose family put you on blast for months on end?”

I step into his space, anger boiling in my veins. “Alistair may have been the one to print it, but he was publishing your lies, your betrayal. As far as I can tell, you’re the only shit stain in the building, and I’ll be damned if I allow you to disrespect my fiancée in any way.”

“Oh, shit,” Sage mutters. “You’re kind of supposed to ask her before you publicly claim her.”

“Fiancée? You’re going to marry this fucker? Do you even know who his family is? They’ll ruin you, Mads. You don’t belong in that world.”

I take a step to the left, blocking his view of Madison.

“And what? You think she deserves you? All you’ve done is hurt her. If anything, I’m the one who doesn’t fit in her world, not the other way around. But the difference between you and me, Harry, is that I’ll give up my whole fucking world just to spin in her orbit while you only try to drag her down to make yourself feel better. You’re not a man, Harry. You’re a fucking sleazeball who never deserved her.”

“Hell yeah,” Blissy shouts, and people around us clap and cheer. It’s fucking weird. It’s like we’re in some shitty reality television show, but I don’t care how much mud I have to sling. His will never touch Madison.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he hisses, the stench of cheap whiskey and cigarettes clinging to his breath.

“I’m sure we’ll find out. Now I’m going to ask you to leave, and if you ever set foot in here again, we’ll get a restraining order against you.”

“Madi,” he bellows. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to choose his side.”

“Go to hell, Harry.” She doesn’t shout it, there’s no venom in it. Her tone is flat, indifferent, and I know firsthand how much harder apathy hits. “I’m done listening to your sob stories. I’m done being your punching bag. I’m just done with you.”

“You’ll regret this,” he shouts, pointing to everyone in the room.

The door opens behind him, and Cian stands there, his face turning red. “The one time I bring my girls out, and this is what I gotta deal with?”

Harry turns toward Cian’s voice. At least he has the good sense to shuffle back a step.

“Out. Harry. Now.” Elle stands behind Cian, holding the baby, and just the flash of Pepto-Bismol pink makes my chest squeeze.

When I turn to check on Madison, she’s gone. Grey points toward the office, and I don’t waste one more second on the oxygen thief.

Madison is my priority.

She’ll always be my priority.

I find her in the closet, of all places. She’s rearranging paper and boxes only to put them right back where they started.

“Madison,” I say from the doorway. She doesn’t turn around.

“I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute, I’m looking for…something.”

I enter the room and softly close the door, then meet her at the closet. Wrapping my arms around her from behind, I trap her arms at her sides and hold her.

“I’m not jealous of Elle,” she says shakily.

“I know.”

“It just caught me off guard.”

“I know that too.”

“How can I feel so happy for someone else but also so sad for something I’m not even sure I wanted?”

“I don’t know, but I get it. I do. I had that instant ache in my chest when I saw the flash of pink, but my sadness doesn’t distract from my happiness for them. It’s just life, sweetheart.”

“Yeah.” She turns in my arms and rests her cheek on my chest.

I’ve never felt more content than I do standing in this closet, holding her close.

After a long moment, she pulls away. “I need to go see Elle and Keela. Will you come with me?”

My chest expands three sizes. “I’d love to.”

Together, we go in search of her best friend and find her at a table next to Grey. He’s holding Keela in his arms with an odd expression on his face. I haven’t seen him hold any child except for Sage, and we were kids ourselves when he was that little.

There’s a strange rightness to seeing an adult Grey holding a small pink bundle. When he sees me staring, he stands up, and you’d think Cian was about to combust by the way he lurched forward as if he thought Grey would drop her.

Grey scoffs at the big guy. “It’s not my first rodeo.” Then he hands her to me, but he never takes his eyes off the baby.

“You okay?” I ask him, then lower the baby so Madison can see her.

The expression on Grey’s face has my shoulders tensing up—he’s made a decision about something.

“Fine. We’ll move here, and move the company here, and then I’m going to get one of those.”

“Ah, excuse me?” Madison asks. “You’re going to get what?”

I’m too stunned to speak.

“A baby.”

“They don’t exactly come made to order.” Cian stands guard as though he believes Grey might take his little girl and run.

And truthfully, right now, I’m not entirely sure he won’t.

“Can you take her?” I ask Madison, then gently shift Keela into her arms.

Once she’s settled, I return to Grey, but his expression hasn’t changed.

“What do you mean? How are you going to get a baby? And why are you going to get a baby?”

“It’s time,” he says without any further explanation.

“Time for what? You understand why we’re a little taken aback here, right?”

“You’re happy here. Sage is happy here. I’ll get a baby and be happy here too.”

“That’s a little backward. How about a wife, or Jesus, I don’t know, a girlfriend first?”

“I don’t need one.”

Cian chokes on a laugh. “Actually, ya do, mate.”

Grey is clearly frustrated with this conversation, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s the equivalent of someone counting out loud for patience.

“I realize I need a woman to actually carry a baby, but you can pay people to do that these days. I simply need to find a carrier.”

“Oh my God.” Savvy slaps her forehead so loud it draws all of our attention. “Please don’t ever call a woman’s body a carrier again.”

Grey shrugs. “I’m getting myself a baby. Maybe a girl this time.” He closes his laptop. “I know what to do for the Cozy Cup Festival. We’ll get on it tonight.”

We all stand dumbstruck as he packs up his stuff and waltzes out the door. He has an actual spring in his step too.

“Well, that was⁠—”

“Fecking weird.” Cian’s watching the door too, but I can’t refute his statement. It was fucking weird.

“I think he’s feeling a little lost with all the changes lately.” Even as I say it, I know it’s more than that.

“A baby isn’t going to fix that,” Savvy says. Is that concern I hear in her tone?

“She’s beautiful,” Madison whispers, drawing me back to her.

And when I take her in, holding that small baby girl, I see my future.

“Why did he say you’re moving your company here?” Cian asks. “Is that for real?”

I nod. “I brought it up to him after Sage said he wanted to join the football team.”

“He has a real hard time letting go, huh?” It’s concern in his tone, not judgment, and it’s all I need to hear to know that Grey is going to find his way in this town too because he’ll have a support system we’ve never had before.

“It’s hard not to get baby fever after holding her,” Madison murmurs while snuggling the tiny little girl.

“Someday.” That one word carries the weight of a promise.

Madison lifts her shining gaze to mine. “Someday,” she says, a happy smile lighting her face.

Ace may have sent me here to make a difference, but perhaps I misunderstood the assignment. Maybe the difference wasn’t for the town.

Maybe the difference was for me.