Taking Chances (47 page)

“Hey babe!” He
called from the wall of punching bags. After a quick word and instruction to
the guy punching and kicking it, he jogged over to us and grabbed Liam out of
my arms, swinging him up above his head and pulling him back down for a loud
kiss. Liam squealed and chuckled. “How’s my little man doing today?” Liam was
still giggling as Brandon wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me in for a
long, slow kiss.

My body
instantly warmed and it took Bree’s high-pitched laugh to bring me back to the
gym.

“And how’s my
wife?” His husky voice made my insides tighten and wish for our bed.

“I’m great.” I
smiled softly, my cheeks flushed. “How’s it going today?”

Brandon’s hazel
eyes hardened for a quick moment, and lost all expression as he forced a smile,
“Pretty good, we got a group of guys that came in and signed up for memberships
together.”

I frowned at
his expression, “How many?”

“Eleven.”

“Eleven? That’s
great Brandon! Why do you not seem happy about that?” There were days at a time
that no new members came at all, eleven in one morning was unheard of.

“I am happy, so
what brings you here?” He kissed my forehead and blew a raspberry on Liam’s
belly, Liam slapped down on Brandon’s head and dissolved into a fit of giggles.
We definitely had a happy baby.

“Well Bree and
I have to go do some wedding stuff, but we were wondering if there’s any way we
could talk you guys into lunch?”

His rugged face
softened and his hand dropped to my hip, giving it a small squeeze, “I can’t
leave Harper, Aaron called in this morning, so it’s just me and Konrad until a
little later. He can go with you though.”

“I can go pick
up some sandwiches from down the street and bring them back?” Bree volunteered.

Brandon’s gaze
flickered to something behind us, then to Konrad, and his face tightened again,
“I’ll go grab my card, Harper can you come wi–”

“Blaze.”

The familiar
voice had my body tensing and Brandon exhaled a curse. Turning slowly, I kept
my eyes on Brandon’s piercing hazel ones until I knew I needed to look ahead. Carter.
My heart clenched and tears pricked my eyes. Why was I crying? Oh wait, that’s
right.

“Oh Blaze, no.
Don’t cry.” He stepped forward and brought his hands up, probably to wipe the
tears, but I slapped his hands away.

“Don’t touch
me.”

A flash of hurt
crossed his face before it slipped into his signature stone face. “Can we
talk?”

“Why are you
here Jason?”

“He’s one of
the eleven from this morning.” Brandon’s deep voice made its way through my
body and helped calm me.

I leaned my
back against Brandon’s stomach, and he wrapped the arm that wasn’t holding Liam
around me again. “Why? Why would you drive
all
the way over here to come
to this gym? I know for a fact you have all this on the base.”

“I’ve been out
for a month Blaze, my time there ended and I decided not to re-up.”

“Then why are
you still here?” I knew I was being rude, but seeing him again brought back the
ache from losing his friendship, and the reason why it was lost.

“A good chunk
of us were all getting out within a few months of each other. We’re renting out
a few houses in San Diego.”

“What about
your wife?”

He snorted and
shook his head, “She drained my bank account when I was in Afghanistan, when I
got back she was gone and there were papers for me to sign for the divorce on
the table.”

“I could have
told you something like that would’ve happened. You really thought you could
marry a base whore and she’d stay with you?”

“Harper.”
Brandon warned.

I looked up at
his face and felt like a scolded child, “I’m sorry Cart– Jason, that was rude.
And I’m sorry that’s what you had to come back to, she didn’t deserve you
anyway.”

Brandon flexed
his grip on my hip to let me know that was better. He couldn’t stand Jason
Carter for obvious reasons, but of course he was still as polite as could be to
him, just as he’d been with Chase.

“Carter,” I
sighed when a grin crossed his face from me using his last name, “why are you
here
though?” I made a loose circle with my finger, indicating the gym. There
were tons of fighting gyms around San Diego, it was too much of a coincidence
for him to choose this one.

“I uh – one of
the guys that got out before us was already a member here before I moved, he
told me the owner’s name and I figured I could come here and talk to Brandon,
see if he knew how you were. I didn’t know if you guys were still together, or
if you even spoke anymore. But you’re my best friend Blaze, I needed to see you
and this was my best shot. I was waiting for him to be done training that guy,”
he nodded his head toward the wall of punching bags, “and then you were here.”

“That right
there, what you just said, is a perfect example of how little of friends we
actually are. We haven’t spoken in over a year and a half, and even though you
kind of lost the right to know anything about my life, if we were friends at
all, you would have known that if you found Brandon, I wouldn’t be far behind.
You don’t know anything about me anymore, and I don’t know anything about you.
So much has happened in the last year and a half with me, and you’re clueless
to all of it. That’s saying something.”

Carter glanced
down to Brandon’s hand on my hip and sighed, “Well it’s obvious you are still together.
And you’re right, I don’t know anything about your life now. But that doesn’t
change anything, you’ll always be my best friend.” He said softly.

Liam started
getting fussy, so I turned and took him from Brandon. When I turned back
around, Carter’s eyes were wide and his jaw was dropped. He hadn’t even
realized Liam was there until then.

“You have a
baby?”

The corners of
my mouth curved up slightly, “Yes, and Brandon and I are married.”

He looked at me
quickly, then to Brandon and Liam and back to me. “Holy shit.”

I rolled my
eyes at him and hitched Liam higher up on my hip, “It was nice to see you
Carter, but I have to go feed him.” Bree handed me the diaper bag and I turned
to go to Brandon’s office.

“Blaze wait,
can we talk sometime? I – I’ve missed you. We need to catch up. I know you’re
mad at me for what I did, but I hate not having you in my life somehow.”

“Is your number
still the same?”

“Yes.” There
was so much hope in that one word it was almost sad, but at the same time, I
understood. If he had never crossed the line at that party, I would have craved
our friendship too.

“I’ll think
about it Carter, and I’ll let you know.” Without another glance in his
direction, I grabbed Brandon’s hand and walked to his office.

“Are you okay
Harper?” Brandon asked as soon as his door was shut.

“Yes, I just
don’t understand why he’d do this, and after not talking for so long. He could
have just tried to call.”

Brandon took
Liam and sat down in his chair, sitting Liam on his lap so he was facing me
while I got the food out of the bag. “But he knows you would have ignored the
call. You’ve got to hand it to him, the guy has balls for coming to my gym to
ask about you.”

I laughed and
kissed his cheek before pulling up another chair in front of them. “So I’m guessing
that’s why you looked pissed off when I came in?”

“Yeah, I knew
he was still in there, but I didn’t know where and I didn’t want him to see
you. I’m sorry, I know that’s immature, but he’s not my favorite person in the
world.”

“Babe, I’m
surprised you let him even become a member. I would have escorted him out as
soon as I’d seen him.” I smiled at Liam as he took another bite of baby food.

“The thought
crossed my mind.” He laughed softly, “Are you going to talk to him?”

I leaned back
into the chair as I got another scoop of pureed carrots, “I don’t know. If that
night at the party wouldn’t have happened, I would in a heartbeat. But he
changed things, I don’t think we can go back to being friends you know?” I
shook my head, “God I still feel so stupid for not seeing it sooner.”

He smirked at
me, “You
were
the only person who didn’t get it. Even with Bree
constantly saying something to you, you were so sure she was wrong.”

“He was my best
friend! He treated me like every other guy in Sir’s unit.”

“Oh okay,” he
scoffed, “‘
my
Blaze,
my
girl, I couldn’t just let you go to
California without me’.”

“Brandon Taylor…were
you jealous of Carter?”

“Me? Jealous?
Of my girl running away from me to throw herself in some random guy’s arms? Not
even close.”

“Hmm,” I fed
Liam another scoop of nastiness, “I seem to remember yelling at him and telling
him to leave before running into
your
arms and kissing you.”

He smiled wide,
“I don’t remember that at all, you may need to remind me how that went.”

His eyes had a
wicked gleam in them as I leaned over Liam and stopped less than an inch away
from his lips, “Brandon.” I whispered low and sultry.

“Yeah?” He
moved closer and I backed up a fraction of an inch.

I smiled when
he growled and lightly brushed my mouth over his lips before sitting down,
“Well if you don’t remember it, I guess it never happened.” I said cheerfully
and went back to feeding our son.

“Tease.”

“Oh yes, that’s
me…the tease.” I winked and sat up for a chaste kiss.

“And to answer
your question,” he began after a few silent minutes, “I was never jealous of
Carter. I knew if you were that clueless about his feelings that you didn’t
share them.”

My stomach
dropped knowing what he must be thinking about. I’d never shared Carter’s
feelings, but he’d known all along that there was something between me and
Chase. I remembered listening to him telling Liam the morning of our wedding
that Brandon knew it was a matter of when, not if. I took a deep breath in,
held it for three seconds and then exhaled slowly.

“If you want
your friend back Harper, I would never stop you. But if he tries anything
again, I won’t stop myself from hitting him this time.”

“Thanks babe,
but I’m really not sure if I even want him back in my life. You saw how he was
after those few weeks of hanging out, and all those drunken voicemails he left
me of the women he was with and stuff like that. That wasn’t my friend, he
completely changed when he got to California, and I don’t know if that was a
temporary thing or if that’s who he really is now.”

“Well I guess
you won’t know if you don’t talk to him.” Brandon offered.

“Do you
want
me to talk to him?”

He gently
grabbed my chin and tilted it up, “I want you to do whatever you want to, I
just didn’t want you to think that I would be mad if you were friends again,
and I know you miss the way you guys were before you moved.”

I nodded, “Well
I can see if he’s still here? We can all talk?”

“If you want me
there when you talk, that’s fine.”

“Brandon,” I
sighed and took off Liam’s bib, “you’re my husband, of course I want you there.
If he has a problem with that, then that tells me all I need to know.”

A flash of
relief crossed his face and he smiled warmly at me, “Well then, we’ll be right
back.” He stood up and kept Liam facing forward as he strode out the door with
him.

I put
everything away in the diaper bag, texted Bree back what sandwiches we wanted
and sat in my chair just as the guys came back in.

Carter looked
at me, then back to Brandon, “Uh, what’s going on?”

“You said you
wanted to talk,” I gestured toward another chair, “so let’s talk.”

“I kind of
hoped we could talk alone?”

“Anything you
say to me, I will tell him, so you might as well just say it in front of both
of us.”

He looked
uncomfortable, but sat down and wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of
his shirt, “I don’t, um, really know where to start.”

Well
I
do,
“What happened to you? The Carter I knew didn’t go to strip clubs and screw a
bunch of girls, he didn’t go and get wasted all the time, and he certainly
didn’t marry a base tramp that he had just met.” I turned to look at Brandon,
“I’m sorry, but there’s really no other way to describe them.” Looking back at
Carter, I continued, “You were the first guy to make fun of those kinds of
girls, and then you married one? Even without that though, you turned into such
a douche Carter.”

“I know, trust
me I know. It wasn’t the best few months of my life.”

“And yet you
continued to keep doing all of that, and for whatever reason you felt the need
to always tell me what you were doing. I just don’t understand.”

He opened his
mouth, eyed Brandon warily and quickly shut it again.

“Just say it.”

“It’s just,” He
exhaled loudly and sunk further into his chair, “I had to pull a lot of strings
to move here with you, you have no idea how hard it was to do that. I get here,
and you’re with someone and my hopes of being with you were completely thrown
out the window. I mean, I obviously was wrong, but I’d always thought you knew
how I felt about you and thought you felt the same. So you can imagine how
pissed off I was when I found out how wrong I was.”

“We were just
friends though, I don’t know how many times you and I both said that.”

“No, to
you
we
were just friends. Yes, you were my best friend, but that wasn’t it for me. You
don’t realize how much time I spent with your dad talking about you. He knew
exactly how I felt, he knew why I wanted to follow you to California, he was
the one who helped get my transfer pushed through.”

“Sir did?” I
deadpanned, “The same guy who wouldn’t let me wear women’s clothes?”