My Fake-Lame Husband Regrets Losing Me

"If you want her back, I'll let you go."

Claire Whitfield curled her fingers into tight fists, her lashes trembling as she stared down at the man in the wheelchair.

The moment the words left her mouth, something in his eyes iced over cold, and got colder.

"Do you regret marrying me?"

"I don't regret it," she said, without a beat of hesitation. "Your grandmother raised me."

"So you married me out of gratitude. Or pity."

Nathan Wade's eyes narrowed, sharp as glass, his handsome face darkening with something close to fury.

Even seated, even confined to that chair, he carried the same crushing presence he always had.

Claire flinched under his stare, bit down on her lip, and looked away.

Five years ago, a car crash had taken the use of both his legs.

Back then, he had a fiancée. She'd had a boyfriend.

When Nathan's fiancée walked away from the engagement, his grandmother, already dying, had gotten down on her knees in front of Claire and begged her to marry him instead.

Claire hadn't been able to refuse. She'd lost both her parents at eight years old. It was Grandma Wade, once close to her parents, who'd taken her in off the street and given her a home.

The wedding happened. Not long after, Grandma Wade passed peacefully in her sleep.

Claire had agreed to the marriage to settle a debt she could never truly repay.

But five years of living beside Nathan had done something to her. She'd gotten used to him. Then she'd come to need him.

He was the only family she had left in the world, her one remaining tie to anything.

She used to think she could live like this forever and be fine with it.

Then, a week ago, Nathan's ex-fiancée, Diana Foster, came back with a boy in tow, just past four years old.

The child had the Wade family's pale skin, deep-set eyes, the same red mouth. Chubby-cheeked, but unmistakably cut from the same cloth as the Wade brothers.

Nathan's older brother, Adrian, had been happily married for eight years; no chance he'd fathered a child with his own brother's former fiancée.

Which left only one possibility.

"And the boy?" Claire asked.

"I have it handled."

Nathan clearly had no interest in discussing it further. His attention shifted to the housekeeper hovering in the entryway.

"What is it?"

"Miss Foster and her son have arrived."

Aunt Carol had been standing there a good while, but the tension in the room had kept her from speaking up sooner.

Something in Nathan's expression eased.

"Uncle Nathan!"

Before Carol had finished her sentence, a small shape came barreling through the front door and threw himself straight into Nathan's arms nearly bowling Carol over on the way.

"Oliver, mind your manners."

Diana followed him in, a soft, doting smile on her face, her eyes locked on Nathan with open affection.

"Nathan. Thank you for taking us in."

The Wade family driver, Mr. Hughes, came through next hauling two oversized suitcases. Nathan told him to bring them up to the room on the left side of the third floor.

Claire's brow creased. No one had mentioned that Diana and her son were moving in.

This was Nathan's idea of "handling it" settling them into his house without a word to her.

She opened her mouth to point out that the third floor was where the two of them lived, that guests belonged on the second but he'd already turned away, laughing easily with Diana and the boy, as if she'd stopped existing.

The three of them looked more like a family than she and Nathan ever had. Standing beside them, she felt like the one who didn't belong.

She turned to go. Two steps in, Nathan's voice stopped her.

"Claire. Go make sure the rooms are ready, get Diana and Oliver settled comfortably."

Diana. Not Miss Foster. Just Diana, easy and familiar, like it had always been that way.

Claire paused mid-step. "I'm tired. I'm going to shower and sleep."

She'd spent five years caring for Nathan out of a promise she made to a dying woman. If she started waiting on Diana and her son too, what exactly separated her from the household staff?

And what kind of world was it where the lady of the house turned down beds for the woman who'd shown up to disrupt it?

"It's fine. Carol will handle it."

Diana produced a small jewelry box and pressed it into Carol's hands.

"For you, Aunt Carol. I picked it up overseas, a boutique piece."

Carol backed away like she'd been handed something cursed, waving both hands. "No, no that's not necessary, it's just my job."

Before Diana could argue, Carol had already taken the stairs two at a time up to the third floor to prepare the room, clean forgetting there was a working elevator.

Diana lowered her empty hand, a little embarrassed. "Nathan, it seems my son and I aren't very welcome here."

"Don't say that," Nathan said gently. "Claire's always thinking of you and Oliver."

Claire pretended not to hear and kept walking toward the elevator.

It wasn't her doing the worrying. It was Nathan.

Ever since Diana and the boy had arrived, the man who'd always kept the world at arm's length had turned into someone else entirely.

He took them everywhere. Picked out gifts for Diana with his own hands. Her closets were filling up with bags and jewelry; an entire spare room had become Oliver's toy chest.

Nathan had never gone to this kind of trouble for anyone. Claire understood, without needing to be told twice, that everything had changed.

"Miss Whitfield." Diana's voice reached her from behind. "Nathan told me you've always wanted a child of your own. He thought you might grow fond of Oliver."

Claire didn't turn around. "Whatever makes Nathan happy."

She stepped into the elevator without looking back.

So he'd known all along that she wanted a child and never once said anything, because she'd never brought it up, careful not to burden him with something he might see as a failure.

He'd known. And he'd let her believe he didn't.

As the glass elevator rose slowly under the overhead lights, she caught his reflection tenderness on his face, something like pity, an expression she had never once seen him wear for her.

Five years of tending to him down to the smallest detail, and not once had he shown her that kind of softness.

She hadn't even realized, until now, how much she'd forgotten she deserved better.

The elevator stopped on the third floor. Diana's voice drifted up from below.

"Five years ago my parents forced the engagement apart and shipped me overseas. I didn't find out I was carrying your child until after I'd already left. He's ours. I couldn't give him up."

Diana's voice cracked. She sank to her knees, pressed her face against Nathan's, and her shoulders began to shake.

Nathan reached down slowly and rested a hand on her shoulder.

Diana looked up at him, eyes glistening, the picture of heartbreak.

"I thought my parents would come around once Oliver was older. Instead, the moment I landed back home, they cut off my accounts and threw the two of us out."

"I wouldn't have come to you if I'd had any other choice."

"I'm not afraid of hardship. But Oliver he's still so small"

Nathan brushed a thumb across her cheek, wiping the tears away.

"Don't be afraid. I'm here now."

Up on the third-floor landing, Claire watched the whole scene unfold, and something cold settled into her chest.

Her nails dug into the railing without her noticing, hard enough to nearly crack the wood.

"Don't worry, ma'am. I'm on your side, always."

Aunt Carol had appeared at some point, watching Claire with quiet concern.

She'd worked for the Wade family more than twenty years first for the elder Mrs. Wade.

Before the old woman passed, she'd asked Carol to look after both Nathan and Claire.

Carol had watched Claire grow up. She knew exactly what kind of person she was, kind, steady, never one to make a scene.

Claire pressed her lips into something like a smile. Nathan wasn't a possession. He was a person, with his own will.

If she went downstairs to fight Diana for "ownership" of him, it would only prove he'd never really belonged to her in the first place.

She'd always lacked that kind of security if something wasn't fully hers to begin with, she'd rather not want it at all.

Better not to spend herself chasing something that was never guaranteed.

—

Late that night, just as Claire was drifting toward sleep, the door opened and Nathan wheeled himself in.

He'd already showered and changed for bed. The house kept a private bathroom for him, along with a live-in caregiver, a man who was deaf and mute to help with the parts he couldn't manage alone.

Out of habit, Claire got up and helped him settle into bed.

His wheelchair was custom-built, high-end enough to do almost everything for him but he still preferred her hands over the machine.

She lay down beside him, weighed down by something heavy in her chest.

With no family of her own, she'd always wanted more, a child, maybe two, something that would tie her to someone permanently.

Nathan's injury was only in his legs; it had never stopped them from being husband and wife in every sense.

She'd reached for him more than once over the years, only to be turned away each time.

Eventually she'd told herself it was pride that he couldn't stand not being fully in control of himself so she'd stopped asking.

Tonight, from Diana's own mouth, she'd learned the truth: Nathan had always known what she wanted.

And just like now, he watched the want burn quietly inside her from a distance, and said nothing.

She was still lost in the thought when a hand closed around her waist and pulled her back against a broad, warm chest.

Nathan held her close, chin resting on the crown of her head, one hand moving slowly through her hair.

"Diana was my fiancée when she got pregnant. I never cheated on you, and she was never anyone's mistress. We were both caught in something neither of us chose."

"Oliver is my son. I can't pretend otherwise, not as a man. It's my responsibility to him."

"Don't be angry, little one. They're only staying in the house. That's all this is."

The night before he was set to marry Diana, he'd gotten too drunk to remember anything. When he woke, she was already in his bed. That was the only night that made Oliver possible.

Even now, he couldn't say whether what sat in his chest when he thought about it was regret, or guilt.

Claire pushed his hand away and sat up in the dark.

"Either you divorce me. Or you give me a child."