Alpha Billionaire Series

MARK

The weather in Chicago was almost as uncomfortably hot and muggy as it had been in Atlanta. I had hoped coming north an having a cooling lake breeze would have helped to ease my mood slightly. I had been increasingly short-tempered as the temperatures stayed in the high nineties, and neither my bad attitude nor the weather seemed to be willing to break. Coming to Chicago had happened without much planning. One minute it seemed like I was having dinner with Peyton and Karen, learning that Brooke was attending graduate school and working in Chicago. The next minute I was clearing my schedule and booking a ticket. I had to rearrange some of my schedule, but my colleagues were all accommodating.

I had even gone as far as contacting an old colleague in Chicago who happened to have a practice in the medical offices at Chicago Memorial. He had reached out to me months earlier regarding sitting on a panel at an annual obstetrics conference and wanted to gauge my interest in participating in a women’s health initiative committee. My interest had been little to none previously. That hadn't changed, but it seemed like a good way to explain why I suddenly needed to travel.

I didn't need a cover story, i I wanted to go to Chicago I could just go. But something in me required a reason to be in the same city with Brooke. Even though I knew it wasn't a legitimate reason. I was going to find and confront Brooke. I still needed answers.

I didn’t understand why she felt she needed to run away to Chicago. I was convinced she was running away from me, but why? She had always been trying to escape from Atlanta. At least that's how Karen had always put it whenever the topic of Brooke and college had come up. It was what I had been told about the time Brooke spent in Scotland.

If she had ever once mentioned wanting to continue her education, I would have encouraged her and been supportive. She never gave me that opportunity. I wasn't her parents trying to keep her at home.

Did she automatically assume that I wasn't interested in her looking to continue her education, to find out what it is that she wanted to do with her life because I was older? Is that why she got so angry with me? What were the stories she was telling herself? I was here to set the record straight.

I paid the driver, tipping him handsomely, and hit the roof of the cab letting him know I was out. With a hitch, I slung the strap to the case with my laptop over my shoulder. I paused only slightly to look at the doors of the hospital. They looked like the doors to every other hospital I had ever been in. They looked like the doors to my building in Atlanta. Only, this time I didn’t know if I should expect to see Brooke on the other side.

What did I expect to happen as soon as I stepped through those doors? Would I see Brooke and have to explain that I was here to have lunch with a colleague?

The excuse sounded even thinner, now that I was standing in front of the building. I feigned interest in being on the committee on women’s health. I was here to pick my colleague's brain over what all of that would encompass. In all honesty, it was a conversation that could happen over the phone or a series of emails. I didn't need to be here in person.

But I did, how else was I going to find Brooke and get her to talk to me. I stepped into the air conditioning of the hospital lobby. I scanned around looking for the information desk. At first, I completely missed it, overlooking what appeared to be a birthday party going on.

As I approached the information desk, I noticed that the party wasn't for a birthday, but a baby shower for one of their workers. Balloons displayed the words congratulations, a flag banner announced this was a baby shower.

It didn't seem like something that was appropriate for them to be holding in the lobby where all patients could see. If this were my hospital, that's something I would definitely be speaking to their superiors about. But this wasn’t my hospital. And those weren't my employees.

In the middle of the group stood a woman I had memorized in minute detail. I saw her smile every time I closed my eyes. She was so lovely, it hurt. Seeing her in person hurt just as much as her memory did. Maybe more so. Her hair cascaded in thick waves around her shoulders. It looked so soft and touchable. I knew it smelled of lavender and roses.

Her eyes sparkled as she smiled and laughed with her co-workers, other women wearing similarly colored scrubs. It was the hospital equivalent of a uniform, all ancillary workers wore one set of colors, and nurses and doctors wore different colors. She hadn't seen me. I positioned myself next to a marble column and a large fern in the lobby that looked more like the elaborate entrance to a luxury hotel than it did the entrance to a hospital. The reality of what I was doing struck me as questionable at best. Who was I to go chasing after some woman simply because she stopped talking to me?

I wanted answers. That didn't mean she wanted to provide them. As I stared at her, a tightening in my chest reminded me that I missed her on such a visceral level, muscles tensed along my shoulders and I felt the desire to rage and scream, and a the same time. I wanted nothing more than to just pull her into my embrace, rain kisses down on her head and face and nec and tell her how bad it hurt that she was gone. She was missing from my life like a hole in my very essence, a hole that wasn't closing up. A hole that wasn't healing, that was becoming a painful festering wound.

I was torn between sucking it up and cauterizing the wound, sealing off any chance of properly healing, or falling to my knees in front of her and begging for forgiveness. It didn't matter that I didn't know what I needed to be forgiven for.

I closed my eyes and realized I was being a fool. If I went over there and demanded answers right now, I would look like nothing but a pitiful idiot. Brooke didn't want me. I needed to accept that.

As I resigned myself to my fate, I readjusted the strap on my shoulder and turned to head towards the elevators and up to my colleague's office when I noticed her posture.

As an obstetrician, I knew that stance entirely too well. Especially as she raised her hand lovingly across the top of her stomach, circling around the curve of her belly and holding low before bringing in the second hand to cradle her abdomen as though she was pregnant.

“Fuck,” I bit out under my breath.

This baby shower was for her. Not one of the other women standing around. The mess of emotions inside me coalesced into a granite-hard knot of indignation. Karen had said Brooke left for Chicago in what felt like a hurry. That she was just rushing off to some graduate program so she could live with a friend.

I had assumed the entire time the friend Karen meant was Angela. From the look of how she was standing, and my best guess from this distance— Brooke looked like she was pushing her stomach out. Her back was arched a little too much—I doubted she was as pregnant as she was making herself look.

How many men had Brooke been seeing while she was sneaking around with me? Who was this guy she had followed to Chicago? Had he gotten her pregnant before or after they got here?

I didn’t know if that explained any of her odd behavior or not. She had been furious with me for no known reason, and now she was pregnant in a distant city with a different boyfriend. No wonder she had agreed to sneak around with me. I was probably just some guy on the side for her to toy with.

I couldn't see or think straight. There's no way in hell I was gonna be able to have a civil conversation with any person. I had no interest in anything right now other than getting Brooke out of my sight. I turned and walked out of the building and climbed in the first cab I found.

Back at the airport, I managed to cool down a bit. I texted my colleague and let them know that something had come up anc I wasn't able to make it to Chicago after all. I will give them a call in the next few days. After all this, this had turned into nothing more than a pretense for me to basically have my heart and my a*s handed to me. No one else needed to know I had even flown up for the afternoon. Content is property © NôvelDrama.Org.