We were just too different. My world and his world would never meet. There was just no overlap. He was lucky that his mother was so meddlesome, in fact. It was better that he found out I was the wrong choice right now instead of everything blowing up when we had a baby to raise. We would be at one of his fancy functions and it would not take even two seconds for him to realize that I was more of an embarrassment than an asset. I couldn’t hang off his arm and look nice, schmoozing with strangers. I had not gone to the same schools that they had, had the same upbringing, made the same money. They would clock me in a second, and I would just make him look bad.
Enough of that, and he would be calling his mother up again to set him up with an oil heiress or something who he actually had something in common with. It was better this way. He could go ahead and hurry up, go live the life that he was born to live. And me? I would live the life that I was born to live too.
The buzzer rang, scaring me half to death. It for sure was not my mother, and I hadn’t ordered a pizza or anything. I stood up and answered the intercom.
“Yeah?”
“Oh my God, Brenna, you’re here. Please, let me up.” I almost started crying again. He sounded so earnest, so desperate. I believed that he was worried and he wanted to see me. I believed that he loved me. I loved him. That wasn’t the point though. Love just wasn’t going to be enough in this case. It was like that sometimes. In some cases, other forces were stronger. I would never be the picture-perfect wife that a man like him needed at his side. Sooner or later, no matter how much he loved me, he would realize that I was only slowing him down. At that point, no amount of love, no baby, nothing would be able to bridge that gap.
“I am buzzing you in.”
I paced small circles waiting for him. This was it, the breakup speech. It was cliché, but he had to know that it was me and not him. I wished that I could be that person for him, but I just couldn’t. His mother was right and he needed to stop fighting her. One day, when he and his perfect wife were raising their perfect child, grooming him or her to be a perfect heir or heiress, he would probably thank her. I would move on quietly. I didn’t want anything from him. In no time, I would just be another woman from his past, just like it had been before we met up again.
All I wanted was one thing. The baby.
In my defense, I never planned on becoming one of those surrogates who went back on her contract and kept the baby. This has started as a surrogacy agreement, but it was something very different now. Now, we were just a couple that hadn’t worked out but happened to have a baby on the way. The baby, however, unlike most babies was tied up in a contract. It was probably going to take forever to get out of it. It was going to be a nightmare.
What the hell was I thinking? Going up against a billionaire? That was basically a guaranteed loss, but I was banking on the love that Charlie and I shared, whatever was left of it at that point, to give us an amicable breakup. Hopefully, since his child was involved he wouldn’t completely ruin me in court. Not completely, just a little. I could probably take just a little, as long as I got to have my child. They were innocent in all this. The baby was going to be the purest, and truest thing that came out of this relationship, and I did not, I was not going to lose them.
I was already a mother. I loved this baby even though we hadn’t met yet. Charlie wouldn’t take them away from me. I could deal with split custody. I could deal with anything that wasn’t total isolation from me and my side of the family. My side of the family was basically just me and my mother. I didn’t want to deprive her of the chance to meet her first and probably only grandchild.
Mom would have to find out about this whole mess now. She knew some things. It was kind of hard to come up with an explanation for the care center without outing Charlie as my boyfriend who had money. Now he was going to be my ex who had money. She didn’t know about the baby yet and she didn’t know how our relationship started as a surrogacy arrangement. That was going to be fun to reveal to her.
And I had totally quit my job already too.
Whatever. I would get through it. I always did.
The doorbell rang. My hands shook as I answered it. Charlie walked in.
“I thought it would be more of a fight to get you to let me up,” he said. I swear I went over what I wanted to say to him. The words completely died in my throat.
“Yeah… sure,” I stammered, closing the door. I didn’t usually get nervous around him. The last time I could remember it happening was our first night having sex when he took my virginity. We were probably tied for nervousness then. I held back a laugh.
“Why did you follow me here?”
“I wanted to see whether you were okay and to give you an apology. My mother was completely out of line saying what she said about you.”
“Yeah, she was,” I said.
“I can’t blame you for leaving.”
“Is that all you came to do?” I asked, crossing my arms. I tried to collect the pieces of the speech that I had prepared to give him. Seeing him had scrambled my brain.
“I wasn’t upfront with you about who I was and the kind of money my family had. That was selfish of me. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want anyone to know about the title. They’d treat me differently and I just wanted to be me. Just Charlie.”
“Would have been a good way to get friends,” I quipped.
“Friends who only wanted to be around you when they needed connections or wanted to ride the private jet?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You have a private jet?”
“I was planning on telling you. I swear.”
“When?”
“Actually, I had it all planned out.” He paused and sunk his hands into his pockets looking sheepish. He looked so much like the boy from seven years ago I almost cried again. “I was planning on telling you when I finally asked you to marry me.”
My brain shorted. “When you what?”