Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“Hm?”
“When you came in the house and asked what we were talking about. I wasn’t changing the topic. I just wanted to get Gracie on her way before I, um, talked to you about something.”
“Uh oh,” he said, back tensing.
“It’s nothing bad. I just… I feel like I owe you the truth about, well, everything that, you know, created Adelaide.”
“Honey, you don’t owe me anything. I would like to know if you want to tell it, but that doesn’t have to be right now. Or a week or month or even year from now.”
“I don’t mind talking about it. It’s not as sore a subject as it used to be.”
When I didn’t immediately figure out how to launch into such a complicated conversation, Owen spoke. “I saw when you started dating someone. Two mugs instead of one, whiskey next to your wine, extra toothbrush. That probably sounds a lot creepier than I intended,” he said, wincing.
“No, it sounds like you’re observant. Which happens to be a quality I really admire in people. So, yeah, I was seeing someone. Obviously.” I gestured to Adelaide, who was desperately trying to shove her foot into her mouth.
“How’d you two meet?”
“That’s the part where I am a little bit at fault with this whole mess of a situation,” I admitted. “Chase was the guy who essentially has the same job as Martin, but in the London office.”
“And you’re not supposed to date coworkers?”
“Coworkers are fine. But I was a subordinate.”
“What I’m hearing is he crossed a line.”
“We both did.”
“Maybe. But he was the one in a position of power.”
“Yeah, but I knew what I was doing. And what I was risking. I think I just… didn’t care at the time. Chase, at first, was very charming. Very complimentary. Always positive. And he was the wine-and-dine sort. I think I was just… caught up in a bit of a love bomb and didn’t see it.”
My parents had. And my cousins. Basically, everyone who met Chase and saw us together clearly had reservations about him.
“So, it was good for a while.”
“A short while, yeah.”
“Because of long distance?”
“That wasn’t a huge issue. The company was working on an important account, so he had to keep flying back and forth. I guess it was more that, once that initial honeymoon phase was over—I guess once he knew he had me—he suddenly was a lot more grumpy, full of criticisms, and hardly ever had something good to say. But I was kind of all-in at that point.”
Maybe a part of me had been too prideful to admit that I’d been played, that I’d missed everything all the people around me had seen right away.
“Everything didn’t hit the fan until the stick showed me two lines.” I sucked in a steadying breath. “Chase was back in London at the time. And that wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to tell him over the phone. So I decided to wait until he came back. But one day at work, I walked into Martin’s office. He was on a call and he said something about saying hello to the wife and happy anniversary. I asked who he was talking to…”
“Oh, Willa,” Owen said, wincing.
“Yeah. It was Chase. One little search online and I would have figured that out. But I didn’t do that. I just took him at his word that he hadn’t been in a relationship in a while. There was no ring. I don’t even remember seeing a line on his finger where his finger would be protected from the sun. But, I guess, London isn’t the sunniest area. And he had an inside job…”
“It wasn’t your job to investigate him. It was his responsibility to tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, exhaling hard. “Needless to say, though, I started looking into him then. Sure enough, he married a woman seven years before and adopted her two children. They have a flat in London. A vacation home in Greece. The kids attend private schools. It was the dream family.”
“Some men are never happy. Not even when they have it all.”
“Yeah. I doubt I was even the first affair. Just the only one that ended up with a positive pregnancy test.”
“Did you call him then? Or wait for him to come back?”
“I honestly didn’t trust myself not to punch him in the face if I saw him. I video-called him.”
I’d never forgotten the look on his face when I held up the pregnancy test and asked him if he wanted to tell his wife, or if I should.
“How’d he react?”
“He was… cold.” That was the best way to put it. His face froze; his voice was frigid. But nothing was as chilly as what he said. “He told me in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with the baby, or me, obviously.”