Love after Betrayal: An Interracial, Billionaire Romance Read online

  "Maya, I was with Gunner for almost twenty years. That's over half my life. I was married to him for twelve of those years. I don't even know how to imagine being with someone else. To be honest, it terrifies me. I've only been with one other man besides Gunner—"

  "Get outta here!" Maya exclaimed, cutting her friend off. "You never told me that. One? Really? A thirty-five year-old woman in New York City who's only had two lovers. You are some kind of collectible. You won't find that in this city. Hell, you'd be hard pressed to find that in a nunnery!"

  "Ha ha ha," Bria said sarcastically. "Men have never been my priority. I had goals; dreams. And besides, I had Gunner and—"

  "And now you don't," Maya interjected. "Don't waste the pretty Bria. It's time to get back on that horse honey and ride, ride, ride. Or, let him – whomever he turns out to be – ride you!"

  Bria blushed. "Maya!"

  "Don't ‘Maya' me!" Maya said, crossing the expanse of Bria's large bedroom to sit next to her on the bed. "I'm not saying be with someone. All I'm saying is maybe a little fling or flirting is just what the doctor ordered. It could be fun. No entanglements. No commitment. Just fun. Think how refreshing that could be."

  "I don't know if I could do it," Bria said, putting her forefinger to her lips. "I don't know how to do 'just fun.'"

  "Which is all the more reason you need to give it a shot. Trust me, it's one of the best things you can do for yourself; not only as a woman, but as someone still nursing a broken heart."

  "I don't know Maya. I'm used to being in a committed relationship; not ... I mean, what do you talk about if there's no chance of a future. Gunner and I—"

  "Forget about Gunner! There is no more Gunner. There is no more ‘you and Gunner.' There is no more 'us,'" Maya clarified, putting air quotes around the word 'us.' "There's only you: Bria. Your needs. Your wants. Your desires. And honey, there are men out there who live to fulfill every one. It's some of the best sex you will ever have."

  "I can't even imagine sleeping with somebody I don't care about," Bria said.

  "Alright, then imagine this: you see some hot guy. You decide you want him. He wants you too. So you give in to it. Now don't tell me something like that has never crossed your mind."

  "I'm not a prude Maya. Everybody has fantasies."

  "But imagine acting on them."

  "You make it sound so easy," Bria said, scrunching her lips to one side.

  "It is easy – and uncomplicated, and freeing and fun. And the funny thing is, it can be the best kind of relationship too. Because it's uncomplicated, you can talk about things you'd hesitate to talk about with someone whom you were hoping for a future with. You don't have to be guarded, or intimidated, or tense with trying to impress. You can just ... be."

  A small smile creased Bria's face. "I never thought about it like that."

  "That's because you over think everything."

  "I'm an attorney. I'm paid big bucks to over think," Bria quipped.

  "Yet another reason not to over think when you're off the clock. You can release tensions you didn't even know you had. And did I mention how amazing the sex is?"

  "I don't know," Bria said with all her doubts coming back at the thought of being intimate without commitment. She had never done it before. Except that one time when she and Gunner were on a brief break; the only one they'd ever had, and, she'd never told him about it. Hell, it was something she even forgot half the time!

  "I'm not saying let just anybody in your panties. In fact, you don't have to let anybody in at all. But I am begging you to at least start putting yourself out there. Life is passing you by Bria. You're way too young and gorgeous to hide from life. It's not normal, and I won't stand for it any longer. You're divorced. What you had with Gunner is over and done with. The ink is long dry on the paperwork. It's time for you to dry your tears too and rejoin the living. If you don't, I'm calling an escort service and having you some ‘D' personally delivered!" Maya threatened.

  "You wouldn't!"

  "Yes hell I would!" Maya insisted. "Now are you ready to get dressed, or do I need to make a phone call?" she finished, holding out her iPhone.

  "I don't know whether to strangle you or hug you," Bria said.

  "I'm lovable, so I vote for a hug," Mia smiled. "Since we're on the subject of your ex, I've always wanted to ask, what made you decide to get a divorce so fast? When I left your apartment the day that you declared you ‘knew what you wanted,' I could have sworn that you had decided to fight for your marriage. Next thing I know, you had an ex-husband instead of a husband."

  Bria looked down at her fuzzy pink socks. Gunner had bought them for her, along with the rest of the fuzzy socks she had. She remembered opening the anniversary gift and bursting out in laughter at the sight of the multi-colored stacks sitting at the bottom of the bag. He knew her so well; well enough to know that she never wanted anything extravagant for an anniversary gift. The fuzzy socks were perfect. She loved them. The sight of them made her ache for him and those days when they were stupidly in love. It seemed so long ago.

  "Bria," Maya said softly and touched her shoulder. "You're thinking about him, aren't you?"

  Bria flexed her toes inside of her socks, biting her lip to hold back the sudden urge to cry.

  "No," she lied. "I was just wishing that I could wear my fuzzy socks to the Christmas party."

  "Liar," Maya said.

  Bria brushed at a runaway tear. "My father cheated on my mother every chance he got. Even at five and six-years-old, I knew."

  "I remember you telling me that."

  "That's why I decided to divorce Gunner. I asked myself how long it would take me to forgive him; that’s if I could forgive him. Then I asked myself if I could ever trust him again. The years stretched before me. I saw what that kind of pain did to mama; it made her old before her time. I'm convinced that the years of stress brought on by the relationship she had with my father is what brought on her stroke. In my opinion, she died from a broken heart as much as she did from the heart disease. I don't have it in me to make that kind of sacrifice for a relationship Maya – not even with Gunner. That's why I divorced him, and I didn't need therapy or a year or two of thinking about it to cut the cord."

  "Well you shocked the hell outta me! I bet Gunner’s head is still spinning at the fact that you served him with divorce papers so fast," Maya chuckled. "I know it's not funny, but I still laugh when I think about it."

  "When you're done, you're done," Bria said. "And I was more than done."

  "I heard that," Maya said. "Now, you have exactly two hours to get all this dredged-up misery out of you and transform yourself into a come-hither siren. So let's hop to it mamacita!"

  Bria laughed and shook her head. She cleared her throat, relieved to feel it loosening up again and the pain settling back down.

  Maya swung her hips back to Bria's closet. She pulled a deep royal-blue dress out and draped it across her body. She arched her eyebrows at Bria.

  The dress was beautiful. It shimmered slightly in the light. It was low cut, a little too low for Bria's taste. That's why she'd never worn it. She shook her head at Maya. "I'm not wearing that to a company function!"

  Maya rolled her eyes and hung it back in the closet. "Why'd you buy it if you never intended to wear it?"

  "Because I like the color," Bria replied. "I'll just wear this," Bria decided, holding up the open-back, black dress Maya selected earlier. If she was honest with herself, she didn't really care what she wore. She just wanted Maya to leave her alone about her wardrobe, the party, everything. She looked up and saw her friend eyeing her closely.

  Maya sat on the bed beside Bria again. "Alright girl, we've been best friends forever. I can tell when there's something on your mind that you don't want to share. Out with it."

  Bria looked back down at her socks. The smile on his face, the joke in his eyes, his laughter – everything about Gunner reverberated through her as she focused on the silly socks. Her loneliness closed in
around her and suffocated her.

  In spite of her earlier bravado, she wondered if she'd made a mistake divorcing Gunner. Maybe she should have taken some time, gone to therapy, tried to work things out. Now there was the very real possibility that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life.

  "Bria?" Maya prodded.

  Bria moved her long, thick curls out of her face, tucking them behind her ears. She chewed her bottom lip, wondering just how to voice her thoughts. This was hard to admit, even to Maya, to whom she told practically everything. She took a deep breath. "I think I made a mistake divorcing Gunner.”

  She kept her head lowered, but risked a quick peek at Maya, fully expecting her friend to chew her head off. She was surprised to see understanding instead.

  "Go on," Maya said.

  The floodgates opened at Maya’s understanding. "I'm thirty-five, bitter and scared to death that I'll never be able to trust a man again. I gave so much of myself to Gunner. I don't want to go through that again. But I don't want to be alone either Maya," Bria confessed, her voice breaking. "Maybe I should've stayed with Gunner. I know he fucked up, but couples recover from infidelity all the time. I know he loves me. What if I overreacted by filing for divorce so quickly and cutting him out of my life? What if – in spite of what he did – what if he's the only man I'll ever be able to love Maya? He swore it would never happen again. Maybe I could have forgiven him; could have found a way to work it out." She grabbed Maya's hand and held it tightly in her own, a warm tear spilling on their clasped fingers.

  "Oh Bri. Honey I'm so sorry ... sorry for not getting just how terrified you must be. Because that's what this is Bria. It's your fear talking. And you have every right to be afraid. I ain't gonna lie, it's a jungle out there. But remember why you divorced Gunner. The years stretched ahead, remember? You didn't want to wind up like your mom, remember? There are good men out there, but like anything worth having sweetie, you have to work to find them. It starts with putting yourself out there. Slowly. Take your time. There's no rush."

  "But that's just it. There is a rush! I'm thirty-five. I want a family. The two eggs I probably still have rolling around in me are gonna dry up any day from now. I'm running out of time. That's a simple biological fact. And it’s so fucking unfair! Men can have babies until their dicks practically fall off. Meanwhile, women dry up in the prime of their lives; just when we seem to know a few things and have gotten our shit together. That's what pisses me off about it. We are smarter than men. We work harder than men. Yet we earn less and can barely procreate once we're out of puberty. It's like, ‘have a baby at twelve, or give up your chances altogether.' What kind of bullshit is that?"

  "Here here Norma Rae!" Maya said, raising a fist as she laughed out loud.

  "I'm serious Maya. I mean think about it. If I would have stopped at any point along my career path to have a child, it probably would've taken me longer to get through college, then law school, then work the 80 to 100 hour weeks to make partner. Where in the last fifteen years would a child have fit into that plan? But do men have to worry about that? Nooooo!!! They can get a degree, start a business, work crazy hours and start a family at fifty if they want. Meanwhile, we're born with all the eggs we'll ever have and start losing them from day one. It's what makes me know for a fact that God is a man. Only a man would set up the reproductive system in such an unfair way. We should be the ones who can procreate until the day we die, not the other way around!"

  "I never thought about it like that," Maya said.

  "Neither did I until everybody and their mama started telling me once I got married and hit twenty-five that I better have some babies before it's too late," Bria said, marching from one end of her bedroom to the other. "Imagine being pressured to have kids at twenty-five. To my way of thinking, you shouldn't even think about it until you're thirty. You don't know shit and most likely ain't got shit at twenty-five."

  "Preach sista!" Maya championed from her perch on the corner of Bria's bed. "There's the fire!"

  "And ooooohhh, when I hit the magic number of thirty – it spelled doom according to many in too many ways to count. It's like I'd broken some cardinal law of the universe because I didn't have children yet. I mean, I was already married, right? What was the holdup? Why hadn't I popped out at least one kid?! Like my only goal in life was to have a husband and kids. It's like, as a woman, you’re not allowed to have other dreams – like getting a college degree, going to law school and securing your financial future. How dare you want to do that first!" Bria harrumphed. "The more I think about it, the more I realize that the whole procreation system is set up for women to fail from day one. We are fucked Maya; fucked from the start – and most of us don't even realize it until it's too late."

  Maya clapped. "Girl, you got a lot pent up inside of you."

  "I guess I do," Bria said, her chest heaving as she fought to regain control of her emotions.

  "But Bria, you have to know that it's not too late for you to have a family. There are advances in technology that's stretching child-bearing years. Hell Janet Jackson got pregnant at fifty!"

  "But was it natural, which brings me to another thing," Bria said, going off on another tangent. "You gotta turn yourself into some kind of lab rat if you want to have kids past a certain age. If you're pregnant at thirty-five, you're considered a high-risk pregnancy. High risk Maya! At thirty-fucking-five years old! You can run for president and be the most powerful person on the planet, but if you by some miracle find yourself pregnant at thirty-five, you're reduced to being almost a medical experiment. You gotta report to some doctor to be poked and prodded and tell someone what color your piss is so they can see if you're fit enough to grow another human being – one that's already growing inside of you, mind you! And that's another reason I know God is a man. Imagine being too old and feeble to produce another human at thirty-five, but you can be powerful enough to nuke the whole fucking planet into oblivion if you wanted. Do you think that's some kind of coincidence? Oh hell yeah, the joke is definitely on womankind! Like I said ... fucked; women are fucked from the cradle to the grave and there's not a damn thing we can do about it!"

  Maya doubled over in laughter on Bria's bed.

  "Laugh if you want, but it's true."

  "I'm not arguing with a word you said. I'm just looking at you marching around in your fuzzy pink socks with your hair going in every direction railing at the universe about how unfair it is to be a woman. It's the maddest – and most alive – I've seen you since your divorce. Now take that passion and do something positive with it. Sweetie you can't beat the universe and how it's set up, so you might as well celebrate life. If it's meant for you to have a family, you will. You'll make it happen because that's who you are," Maya finished, glad to see glimpses of the old Bria back. These last ten months she'd been a shell of herself.

  "I know you're not even sure if you want kids, but what if you do Maya? You're thirty. Don't you worry that time is gonna run out?"

  "I wouldn't say I worry about it. I figure if it's meant to be, the option will be there when it's time. And if it's too late, then it wasn't meant to be. Besides, there's always adoption. Right now, it's all I can do to take care of myself. I can't imagine having to think about caring for someone else 24/7/365. The thought of it makes me wanna break out in hives!

  Bria laughed. "I should adopt your attitude. It's just, me and Gunner – we were on this track; this path, ya know? We were gonna start trying as soon as I made partner."

  "I know it's hard to let a dream die Bria. But your dream of having a family is not dead. It's just delayed."

  "And with somebody else," Bria added sadly. "Gunner is the only man I've ever wanted to have a child with."

  "The right man is out there for you. You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. And that includes my fine ass," Maya joked. "Some dude is gonna sop you up like gravy with a biscuit. And he's gonna lick his fingers in delight once he catches you too. I just know it."
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  Bria laughed and wiped at a stray tear that had fallen. She hadn't even noticed she'd started to cry.

  "Second of all, you may be thirty-five, but you look twenty-five. Don't be playing down those heavenly genes your mama gave you. That's just an insult to her."

  Bria laughed again and rolled her eyes.

  "Third and last, no one is saying that you have to try and start over with someone right now. If I'd gone through the awful year you've been having, I'd have a hard time trusting men too. But would it really be so bad to start seeing someone casually? Nothing serious. Just start getting your dating feet wet. I'd hate to see you give up a wonderful part of life – and that's having somebody to share things with; to have fun with. Not to mention, get your groove on with. I know you haven't been with anyone since Gunner and that's damn near a year. Hell, I'd be Spider Man right now – climbing walls like a mofo!"

  In spite of herself, Bria covered her mouth to stifle her crazy laughter. "You are too tooo tooooo much!"

  "Ain't no shame in my game honey. I tell you no lies. I could never go that long without sex."

  Bria considered Maya's point and conceded that she might be right. It couldn't hurt to see someone casually. It was certainly better than sitting around feeling sorry for herself, which is exactly what she'd been doing these last ten months. Even she was sick of her moods. And try as she might, one can't run away from themselves, she reasoned. "Maybe, you're right. It can't hurt to start getting back out there," she admitted slowly.

  Maya scoffed. "Of course I'm right. I'm always right. Now let's get you dressed for this party. Who knows, Mr. Right Now could be there."

  It was Bria's turn to scoff. "You're crazy if you think I'm going to find Mr. Right Now, or mister anything, at this party. It's an old, blue-blood, New York City law firm. That usually means a fair share of ancient, rich men trying to hold their liquor so they don't chase their secretaries and the young, pretty associates around in front of their wives."