LOGINDaxton was holding the phone when I walked out of the bathroom. He sat very still, gripping it carefully, as if it might explode in his hands."Jason messaged me," he said. "Not you. He doesn't have your number. He got my contact information from that meeting a few weeks ago."He handed me the phone. I read the message twice before slowly sitting on the edge of the bed. Rowan was watching cartoons with his tablet, the volume up just enough that he wouldn't hear us.*This is Jason Crane. I don't want to go behind your back. I'd like to request a paternity test through our lawyers. Nothing secret, nothing without her knowledge. I just want to handle this the right way for once. I understand if the answer is no.*I lowered the phone."A paternity test.""Yeah.""Through lawyers.""I heard you the first time," Daxton replied, a sharpness in his voice I rarely heard."Daxton...""Do you know what happens when that test comes back?" he asked, standing and walking to the window. "I'm not tal
The estate looked the same as it always did, perfectly maintained, quietly enormous, and Sloane walked through the front doors that afternoon with none of the composure she usually managed to carry into this house.Cordelia was waiting in the small sitting room, tea already poured, the same room where she conducted every conversation she considered too delicate for the larger, more formal spaces of the house."Sit," Cordelia said, the way she always said it, not unkind, simply efficient.Sloane sat, her hands folded tightly in her lap."Jason believes it," Sloane said, without preamble. "I know you saw the boy too, that night at the gala. But Jason told me this morning, plainly, that he believes that child is his. He's not just wondering anymore. He's decided."Something in Cordelia's expression remained carefully still, though Sloane caught the smallest flicker behind her eyes, the particular look of a woman recalculating something in real time."And what does he intend to do with th
Sloane didn't sleep that night, lying awake beside a husband who'd confessed, essentially, that another woman's son might be the thing standing between her and everything she'd fought five years to secure. By morning she'd decided something, lying there in the gray light before dawn, watching Jason's chest rise and fall beside her, oblivious or pretending to be. She wasn't going to lose this. Not after everything it had cost her already. She got up before he did, showered, dressed carefully, and was sitting at the breakfast table with coffee already poured by the time he came down, dark circles under his eyes from a night that had clearly been no easier for him than it had been for her. "We need to talk," Sloane said, before he'd even reached for the coffee. "Sloane....." "Not about her," she said quickly. "About us. About what happens next, regardless of whatever you decide to do about that boy." Jason sat down slowly, something wary in his expression. "Okay," he said.
Jason didn't go back to the office after the park. He told his assistant he needed the afternoon, which he never did, and drove home instead, sitting in the car outside the building for nearly twenty minutes before he could make himself go inside.Sloane was in the kitchen when he walked in, going through fabric samples for some upcoming event, and she looked up, something guarded already in her expression. She hadn't said much to him since the gala three nights earlier, the two of them circling the subject of Serenity without ever quite naming it directly, both of them apparently hoping if they didn't discuss it, it might simply settle back down on its own."You're home early," she said."Needed a break," he said, which was true in the way most things he said to her lately were technically true without being the whole truth.He poured himself a drink he didn't want and stood at the window, looking out over the city, the image of Rowan's face still sitting behind his eyes, impossible
I told myself the gala was behind us. One difficult night, survived, the truth protected, the lie delivered cleanly enough that there was nothing left for Jason to do but accept it and move on with whatever life he'd built around Sloane.I believed that for exactly two days.We planned to take Rowan to the park before my Thursday meeting. It was a chance to have some fun together before the trip became busy with work again. It was the same park we'd visited during our first week in the city, where Rowan had begged to ride the carousel three times in a row.He ran straight for the swings the second we arrived, Daxton jogging after him, and I settled onto a bench nearby, finally letting myself relax into the easy, ordinary rhythm of watching my son play.It was maybe twenty minutes in that I noticed him.Jason, standing near the edge of the playground, close enough to see clearly, far enough to look, to anyone else, like simply another parent out for a walk. He wasn't dressed for the p
I found Daxton with Rowan at the dessert table, told him I just needed air, and slipped toward the quieter corridor near the coat check, needing distance from the ballroom's noise before my body did something embarrassing.I didn't expect anyone to follow me."Serenity."I turned, Jason stood there, having excused himself from his own table with quiet efficiency, closing the distance before I could decide whether to walk away."What are you doing," I said, my voice low."I need five minutes," he said. "That's all.""We don't have anything left to say to each other.""I think we do," he said, something sharp and unsteady breaking through his usual composure now that we were alone. "That boy. Rowan. How old did you say he was?"My stomach dropped, but I didn't let it show on my face."Five," I said evenly. "I already told you that.""Five years," he repeated, doing the math out loud, watching my reaction the way a man watches a card table for a tell. "That's exactly how long it's been s
Three months earlier."Congratulations, Serenity, you're getting married."The fork slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against my plate,the dining room fell dead silent while I stared across the table at my father. "Excuse me?"Dad didn't even look up,he just calmly dabbed his mouth with a
I don't even remember how I got out of Jason’s office.One minute I was looking at the man I loved handing me divorce papers the next, I was trapped inside the elevator, staring at my reflection in the mirrored walls.The woman looking back at me was a stranger,her lipstick was smeared,her eyes wer
Twenty-four hours. That was how long I lasted as Mrs. Crane, I stared at the papers on Jason’s desk. I kept waiting for the words to scramble into a joke, but they just sat there, heavy and permanent.DIVORCE AGREEMENT.My throat went completely dry just a few hours ago. I'd woken up in his bed w
I didn't sleep that night, or the night after.Every time I closed my eyes, the photographs burned into my eyelids.The dark hotel room,the man with the blurred face,my body and features,the total ruin of the only night that had ever felt real to me.I sat on the edge of the sagging mattress in a c







