My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 208

FOUR YEARS LATER – JOSH'S P.O.V.

"Will you marry me?"

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

Please tell me he's fucking kidding... He's not actually doing this.

The whole restaurant is looking at us, what the fuck am I supposed to do here...

We've only been going out for three months!

Shit, that ring has more sparkle in it than his emerald eyes.

OK Josh, just breathe. I really wish he would stop looking at me like that. Xade knows when he looks at me like that I just can't say no to him.

It's the same look he gave me sitting on my couch the day that started this whole fucking thing.

My life was very fucking different six months ago.

Six months ago I didn't have my business. Six months ago I didn't have custody of Liam. Six months ago my heart still felt like it could never be put back together again.

Things are different now.

Xade invited me to that social workers fundraiser every year, but I never responded. I always kind of felt awful about not turning up the first time he gave me the tickets but I just couldn't see anyone outside of my family after Miles...left.

Unless I was going to court with Liam or turning up at work, me and my little man pretty much decided that leaving the house served no purpose. It didn't stop the invitations coming though, something I appreciated. A few months ago, Brie was helping me to pack up my office after me and Charlie quit, when she came across the invitation for the fundraiser and told me that I had to get back out into the world again.

I thought it would be really fucking awkward. Me and Xade hadn't spoken to each other outside of a few emails here and there for over three years. He'd checked in on me after he found out about me and... yeah, but otherwise we kept it pretty business casual.

Fuck, why does even thinking his name do this to me?

Milo.

You have to start calling him Milo.

You know that you have to see him soon and you can't be fucking calling him that...

That day was kind of a fucking whirl wind. Actually that whole fucking week was.

It's funny how nothing and everything can happen in your life in such a short period of time.

It all started the month before the fundraiser, I'd been receiving threats, nothing too frightening, more just trying to intimidate me. Hannah was on it quickly and it didn't take long to find the cause.

Not that we all didn't already know who was behind it.

Chrissy.

When I look back on it now, it's kind of fucking hilarious. She really unravelled in prison; without anything there to make her feel superior to everybody else she just didn't know how to cope. She threw all her energy into making my life as difficult as fucking possible, even Stephanie dropped her professional face a few times at some of the shit this woman came out with from behind bars. Turns out she's as stupid as she is easy though.

When she realised that she wasn't going to be able to use being Liam's mother to get her an early release while he was happy in my care, she decided to come up with a plan to try and scare me into giving him up to the system. As if that would ever fucking happen.

She fucked her way through every woman willing to touch her in that prison, even a few of the guards, convincing them to use their outside contacts to send me threats. Of course she rode too many faces and it all came back on her, her fuck-buddies told the cops everything to save their own necks, it didn't add too much to her jail time but it got us what we needed. The day we got her confession was the day that Stephanie put the application into court to strip her of her rights and Hannah got me a nice fancy restraining order.