Page 39 of Bad Boy Husband

There had to be a way to stop this from wrecking the rest of my goddamn life, but if there was, I couldn’t think of it. I really didn’t know how to fix this, but I also couldn’t just flop down on the couch or go to bed early, so I paced the living room. Up and down. Up and down.

Finally, I grabbed my phone and hit a contact I hadn’t used in a while. Trent picked up on the second ring, and it sounded like he’d been waiting to hear from me—waiting and getting more and more livid while he had.

“Tell me the truth and give it to me straight,” he growled into the phone. “Are you fucking her?”

“What, who? Sadie?”

“Collins,” he ground out. “Are you sleeping with her while you’re engaged to my sister ?”

“Fuck off, man.” I groaned and rubbed the back of my head with the palm of my hand. “Not you, too. No, of course, I’m not. I wouldn’t fuck Collins with your dick.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He grunted, pausing for a long moment. “Then what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Before we get to all that, you should know that I love Sadie. I’m in love with her and I have been since that summer. I tried to end things with her. I would’ve left it alone, bro. Really, but…”

“But then our parents got involved,” he finished for me on a harsh sigh. “You were given an ultimatum and she ran out of time to put her own marriage off.”

“Exactly.” I was surprised he wasn’t arguing about any of this, especially considering how pissed off he’d been when he’d picked up the phone. “I’m not sleeping with Collins.”

“So you said.”

“Yeah, but she’s telling everyone we hooked up back in Dallas and that we’ve been seeing each other ever since. She showed up that night I was supposed to meet you at Golden. I thought you had set me up?—”

“What?”

“Yep.” I took a brief moment to process the fact that it honestly didn’t sound like he’d expected that. “Did you send her?”

“The fuck, man? No. Why would you even ask me that?”

“I wouldn’t have been at that bar if you hadn’t asked me to meet you there. No one else knew I was going there.”

He groaned. “Collins asked me to meet her and Carson for dinner. I figured you and I could grab a drink first. Hours before they were even supposed to get there.”

“And then?”

“They canceled.” He let out a string of muttered curses. “Only after they encouraged me to invite you to join us. They were pushing me to get you there, apparently so you and I could clear the air, and I think… I think I fell for it.”

“But you canceled on me.”

“Yeah, because I got held up in a meeting. With Carson.” He grunted. “Shit. What did Collins do?”

I sighed. “She came onto me. I turned her right the fuck down. Sent her ass packing, but she must’ve had somebody filming us while she was flirting with me because she came to my office today with pictures of us together that night.

We were just talking, but the pictures make it look like we’re close. ”

“Fuck.”

“Our entire interaction at that bar lasted less than five minutes. I told her to fuck off then and I did the same today when she demanded that I break it off with Sadie or she’d go public with the pictures.”

“What the hell…” he muttered, trailing off. “Are you serious?”

“Desperately,” I confessed. “Carson called Sadie and told her the whole sordid tale Collins has been selling. It sounds like he might’ve sent her the pictures too. I’m not sure, but Sadie just left. She’s upset and she doesn’t believe me.”

Trent fell silent for a beat, his voice low, confused, and angry when he spoke again. “You’re sure you love her?”

“I’ve loved her almost half my life,” I said, scrubbing my hand over my face. “There’s never been anyone else for me. She’s the reason for a lot of stuff I did back in the day. Breaking up with the love of your life will do that to a guy.”

He sighed and paused. “You said she left? Because of Carson?”

“Partly because of him and whatever he told her about me, but she spoke to Collins too. Apparently, Collins sold her some shit about how sorry she was for what we did. Whatever those two are up to, it’s coordinated. I just don’t know why they’re doing it.”

“I might,” he said grimly. “As it happens, I spoke to Carson today myself.”

I froze. “What?”

“Yeah, he called me. He said he needed me to talk to Sadie urgently. It was weird, but he kept pushing me to reach out to her. He wanted me to tell her all sorts of shit about you. I told him to get a life. Obviously.”

I blinked, utterly stunned for the first time in a while. “He asked you to do what ?”

“I know. That’s why I thought it was so weird,” Trent said.

“He sounded desperate, though. Like he was trying to sell me something and it was killing him that I wasn’t buying it.

He kept talking about how Sadie ‘deserved better,’ how you’d fuck it up again.

Which, okay, it’s not a stretch, but even I thought it was off, the way he was acting. ”

My heart thudded. “Why now? Why today?”

“Because Carson’s broke,” Trent said flatly. “I just found out, but it was from a mutual friend. I trust her. It sounds like he tanked his family’s company. Made a bunch of bad investments. All that egotistical shit. They’re trying to sell assets to stay afloat.”

“And Sadie’s inheritance…”

“Exactly,” Trent said. “When she marries you, she gains access to it, but if you split?—”

“She keeps it,” I finished for him, my stomach sinking all the way to the ground.

“He’s using Collins to tear us apart so he can play white knight, ride in and save her from the player she married.

If we get that far, but if we don’t, she’ll still walk away from this trusting him. He’ll be next in line, so to speak.”

I felt sick. Furious. Frustrated.

I had finally built something with Sadie that felt solid. We were sharing a home, talking about a future. This past weekend, it had even felt like she might be falling for me again, and now it was splintering apart because of people who didn’t even have anything to do with us.

“What about Collins?” I asked, seeing red as I stared into the dark hallway. “What’s her angle?”

All I wanted to do was race after Sadie and tell her the truth, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not yet. I had to find out exactly what that truth was first. This situation we were in wasn’t just a mess.

It was a setup and I was done playing by their rules. When I made my first move, I would be changing the game entirely.