Double The Love (BWWM Pregnancy Romance Novel) (2 page)

Jasmine stepped into the
spotlight and reached up to make sure her mic was securely behind her ear. The
band began the first song of the night and she met her cue without any effort,
plastering on a smile as she began her set, but every movement she made felt
stiffer than intended. She kicked things up a few notches when she spotted
Stephen staring at her from backstage, but it was a lot easier said than done.

Putting on an entertaining show
was the least of Jasmine's worries right now. Her stomach was in knots and her
heart wouldn't stop racing. She couldn’t get over the fact that Liam was in the
audience hearing her belt out one of the many ballads she’d written about him
since their encounter. It was the definition of irony.

Jasmine searched the room for
Liam and briefly fumbled up her lyrics when she spotted him leaning against the
bar. The distressed leather jacket he was wearing pulled at his elbows as he
rested them on the counter behind him, and a tuff of shaggy brown hair failed
to disguise the condescending smirk on his face. She swallowed hard and
attempted to act like she hadn’t seen him, but his eyes latched onto hers
before she could. She tried her best to ignore him, continuing to sing as
though nothing was wrong, but her anxiety was apparent when she struggled to
hit notes that usually came easy for her.

Liam laughed at Jasmine's
reaction and raised his drink in the air in a mock salute. He guzzled down the
last of it and slapped the bar for another, keeping his eyes steadied on hers
as she continued with her flawed performance.

When the song came to an end
and another began, Jasmine failed to meet her cue and Eli decided that enough
was enough. He’d been watching the whole ordeal unfold from backstage, and the
series of expletives that were flying from Stephen’s mouth made it pretty clear
that he had to do something. Ignoring Jasmine’s request not to get involved, he
stormed onto the venue floor and grabbed Liam up by the collar, causing his
drink to go flying.

Shit.

Jasmine stumbled even further
when she caught wind of what was happening. She watched the two men converse,
but the expressions on their faces weren’t friendly, and it wasn’t long before
it turned into a full-fledged argument. She stumbled off stage as soon as her
final song came to an end, and it was at that exact moment that she saw Liam’s
fist make drunken contact with Eli’s nose.

Jasmine gawked at them for a
few seconds before attempting to make her way over to them, but Eli held up a
hand to stop her. The look on his face made it pretty clear that he was pissed.
He grabbed a wad of paper towel from the bartender and angrily wiped away the
blood gathering near his nostrils before hunching his shoulders and making his
way towards the door with the rest of the crowd.

It was just after midnight when
Jasmine finally made her way back to her dressing room to grab her things. She
pushed her way backstage and ignored the many complaints Stephen was hurling at
her as she entered the dimly lit corridor where her room was located. Once she
reached it, she pushed open the door and froze as soon as she saw Liam.

“What the hell are you doing
back here?” Jasmine spat. It astonished her that he’d managed to make it past
security after his little brawl with Eli. She’d assumed that he would be smart
enough to leave the club after that, but then again, this was Liam. It was
impossible to predict his next move.

“Aw c’mon,” Liam slurred. “Is
that any way to greet an old friend?”

Acquaintance
,
Jasmine silently corrected, but she didn’t say it. “You’re shitfaced,” she said
instead, crossing her arms over her chest and pulling her jacket closed in an
attempt at hiding her stomach.

“Nah, I’m just happy to see
you, can’t you see the elated smile on my face?” Liam spat back in an overly
condescending tone. He grabbed a bottle of liquor up from Jasmine’s vanity and
swallowed back a mouthful before she could stop him.

“Liam…” Jasmine warned. She
looked to the hallway for help, but of course there was none there when she
actually needed it.

Liam smirked and took a step
forward. Jasmine tensed when his palm made heavy contact with her abdomen.
“Congratulations,” he whispered, keeping his eyes steadied on hers.

“What's that supposed to mean?”
Jasmine shot back, stubbornly continuing her charade.

Liam let out a humorless laugh.
“If it wasn’t on the cover of every magazine, there’s the fact that our moms
are best friends,” he clarified. “How long did you really think it would be
before I found out?”

Jasmine stared at Liam in
shocked silence, evoking another strained laugh from him. “Don’t look so glum,
babe.
I get it. There’s no slowing down
your type is there? It’s just that, if I’d known you were this easy, I’d have
gotten you in bed a long time ago. My bad for assuming you had standards.”

Jasmine’s jaw dropped. “Excuse
me?” she spat, shoving Liam away from her. “My type?”

Liam shrugged and waved a hand
at her. “Industry floozies who have no problem sleeping their way to the top,”
he explained, failing to mask the hurt in his tone. “Knocked up by your
publicist, huh Jazz? I don’t know who the fuck you are anymore, but you’re not
the girl I knew growing up, that’s for sure.”

Liam’s harsh choice of words
made Jasmine deflate a bit, but she didn’t correct him. There wasn’t any point.
“Oh please,” she shot back. “I don’t need your judgment. How many bimbos have
you been with since we hooked up? Ten? Twenty? And don’t even get me started on
the airheads you keep bringing to my shows in some lame attempt at making me
jealous. As if I actually give a shit.”

“Yeah, because you definitely
sound like you don’t care,” Liam said. “But it doesn’t matter what you think of
me, because at the end of the day, I’m not the one expecting a kid with some
idiot. At least I’m bright enough to use protection.”

Jasmine narrowed her eyes at
Liam and placed a hand on her stomach as if to protect her unborn child from
his words. “You say you don’t know me anymore, but I don’t know you either,”
she whispered. “The Liam I knew would never talk to me like this. You’re not
him.”

“You’re right, I’m not,” Liam
shot back. He squared his shoulders and took a step towards Jasmine on his way
out the door, causing her to cower under his close proximity. “I thought you
were better than this, Jazz, but I was wrong. The only reason I came here
tonight was because I needed to see it for myself. And I did. So I’ll stop
calling. I’ll stop coming to your shows. And I’ll stop trying to be your friend
again. From now on, you won’t hear from me at all.”

Jasmine watched Liam storm out
of the room and slid to the ground, allowing the tears she was holding in to
roll freely down her face.

Chapter three

Liam emerged from the club and
stumbled when someone grabbed him from behind and slammed him up against the
building. He turned around and came face to face with Eli, whose nose had
already began to bruise.

“Stay the fuck away from her,”
Eli spat, giving Liam another rough shove. The dude was cruising for even more
of a bruising.

“Sorry man, but I’m not one for
rules,” Liam said in an amused tone. “Especially not when they’re set by jack
asses who take advantage of girls half their age.”

Eli sniffed through the dried
up blood in his nostrils and narrowed his eyes at Liam. “You think you’re hard,
don’t you, you little shit? Well guess what? I know a sad sap when I see one,
and swinging your fists won’t change that. You can live as miserable as you
want, I don’t give a shit, but when that misery starts wearing off on Jazz?
Well, that’s when it becomes my problem.”

“Right,” Liam shot back. His
sarcasm was apparent. “Cuz she’s so happy with you, isn’t she?”

Eli shrugged. “Actually, she
is. If you actually gave a shit about her, you’d see that her only real problem
these days is you. As soon as you disappear back into obscurity, which lets
face it, is exactly where you belong, Jazz will pick up right where she left
off before you shoved your way back into her life. You’re her past man. I’m her
future.”

Liam snorted. “So you got her
pregnant. Big fucking deal. You and I both know that doesn’t equate to a
commitment. The only thing you did was fuck up her career. Do you really think
she’s going to continue being your cash cow once she has a baby on her hip? And
when the money starts drying up, what are you going to do? Support her? Stick
it out through thick and thin? Yeah fucking
right
man. You can lie to Jazz all you want, but there’s no sense in lying to
yourself.”

The underlying layer of truth
in Liam’s words left Eli visibly perturbed, so much so that it caused him to
loosen his grip on him. “I would never abandon them,” he spat, but Liam could
hear the insincerity in his tone as clear as day.

Liam smirked and shook his head
as he continued down the road. “I’m not the sad sap in this equation,” he
called over his shoulder. “You are.”

Liam hailed a taxi and slumped
into the backseat as he grated out his address, waving a hand at the driver to
signal that he wasn’t in the mood to talk. He was pissfaced, but in his
defense, there weren’t many coping mechanisms that didn’t involve alcohol when
it came to finding out news like this.

Today marked the sixth day in a
row that Liam had gotten this drunk. Ever since his mother giddily announced to
him that Jasmine was pregnant, drinking was just about the only thing he could
find it in himself to do. He didn’t know who the father was, and he sure as
hell wasn’t going to ask, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it
out. That publicist of hers was such a tool it was almost award worthy. Liam
figured it was only a matter of time before he fucked up her life in some way.

After hearing the news, Liam
left his mother’s place bright and early the following morning and immediately
set about on throwing himself into an alcohol-induced trance. After bombing his
exams and getting into a meaningless argument with his roommate, he downed an
entire bottle of Jack in one sitting and decided somewhere in the midst of his
fifth or sixth drink that he absolutely had to see Jasmine. It didn’t matter
that she’d made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want to see him.

Now, in the present, Liam was
more than a little regretful. He had a monster hangover, sore knuckles, and
more anger than he knew what to do with. He thought seriously about downing the
bottle of aspirin on his bedside table, but he clawed his way out of bed and
searched the floor for his clothing instead. As good as sinking into a
permanent slumber sounded right about now, that particular course of action
didn’t exactly coincide with the kind of guy that he was.

“Damn dude,” Liam's roommate,
Jason, spoke up from his doorway. “You look like shit.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Thanks,”
he muttered, pulling his arms through the first clean t-shirt he could find.

“Wild night I'm guessing?”

“You could say that.”