Библиотека
Искать
Главная / Romance / The Wrong Bed / Two Lines

Share

Two Lines

Aвтор: P.E. Hart
last update publish date: 2026-04-12 11:08:35

"Put it down," Priya said. "Stop looking at it. It's not going to change."

Lina was still holding the test.

"Lina." Priya took it out of her hand and set it on the bathroom counter face-down. "Look at me."

She looked.

"Tell me it's Freddie's," Priya said.

Lina said nothing.

"Oh God." Priya sat down on the edge of the tub. "Tell me you didn't."

"I don't know what I did." Lina pressed her hands flat on the counter. "I don't remember most of that night. I just woke up and he was—" She stopped. "I woke up and it was Marcos."

"Marcos." Priya repeated his name like it was something she had found on the bottom of her shoe. "Freddie's Marcos."

"The same."

Priya stood up. Sat back down. Stood up again. "Does he know?"

"No."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know."

"Are you going to tell Freddie?"

"Absolutely not."

"Lina."

"What do you want me to say, Priya? What is the right answer here? I left Freddie at the altar and then I possibly slept with his best friend and now I'm—" She turned around. Pressed her back to the counter. "I'm pregnant."

The word landed like a stone in water. It rippled.

Priya was quiet for a long time.

"What are you going to do?" she finally asked.

"I'm going to figure it out."

"That's not a plan."

"It's all I have right now."

She called Marcos that afternoon.

He answered on the second ring. "Lina." His voice was smooth. Warm. Completely unsurprised. "I wondered when you'd call."

"We need to talk."

"Agreed. Come to my office."

"I'm not coming to your office."

"Then come to my apartment."

"I'm not doing that either." She kept her voice flat. "I'll meet you at the coffee place on Forty-Second. One hour."

He paused. "You sound serious."

"One hour, Marcos."

She hung up before he could say anything else.

He was already there when she arrived. Sitting with two coffees, jacket pressed, looking like a magazine spread. That smile in place.

She sat across from him without taking her coat off.

"What happened that night?" she said.

He tilted his head. "You don't remember?"

"I remember some of it. I need you to fill in the gaps."

"You came down to the bar," he said easily. "We had drinks. We talked. You were upset about the wedding." A shrug. "One thing led to another."

"Did I—" She stopped. Started again. "Was it consensual?"

Something shifted in his face. Just for a second. Then the smile came back, softer now, almost gentle. "Lina. You kissed me first."

She stared at him.

She did not remember kissing him first.

"Why didn't you stop it?" she said. "He was your best friend."

"Was," Marcos said. "Past tense."

"What does that mean?"

He looked at his coffee. Then back at her. "It means things between Freddie and me are complicated. They have been for a long time." He leaned forward. "Are you going to tell me what this is really about?"

She reached into her bag. Put the pregnancy test on the table between them. Face up.

She watched him look at it.

His expression didn't change. Not the way a shocked person's face changes.

It just went very, very still.

"I see," he said.

That was all.

"That's it? That's your response?"

"What would you like me to say?"

"I don't know. Something human."

He sat back. Crossed his arms. Looked at her with those unreadable eyes. "I'll support whatever you decide. Financially. Logistically. Whatever you need."

"I don't want your money."

"Then what do you want?"

"The truth."

He picked up his coffee. Took a slow sip. "I told you the truth."

She stared at him for a long time. Something was wrong. She could feel it the way you feel a change in pressure before a storm.

She picked the test up and put it back in her bag.

"Stay away from me, Marcos."

"Lina—"

"I mean it."

She walked out.

Behind her, she heard him set his coffee cup down. Very carefully. Very quietly.

She didn't look back.

But on the street outside, her phone buzzed.

A text from him.

"Before you make any decisions. You should know that Freddie has been looking for you."

Her feet stopped moving.

Another text came.

"He's been asking questions. About that night. He knows something happened."

Lina's blood went cold.

Freddie knew.

Or suspected.

Either way, she was out of time.

Продолжить чтение
Scan code to download App
Предыдущая глава Следующая глава

Latest chapter

  • The Wrong Bed   The Truth

    Priya had been lying for eighteen hours.Not big dramatic lies. Just the same quiet one. Over and over. Every time Lina asked about Freddie. Every time her eyes went to the door expecting him to walk through it. Every time she said something like “he'll be here soon” with that tired hopeful look on her face.“He's responding to treatment. He's going to be fine.”Priya had said it so many times the words had stopped feeling like words. They had become something she just said. A reflex. A way of buying another hour before she had to figure out how to say the real thing.Daniel had called twice more through the night.She had taken both calls in the corridor with the door closed behind her. Standing against the wall with her voice completely flat while he told her nothing had changed. Still unconscious. Still in the coma. The doctors were being careful about what they promised.She had gone back into the room both times and smiled and said everything was fine.She was sitting in the chai

  • The Wrong Bed   The Note

    DIANEShe had been standing at her door for forty seconds when she heard the cars.Not one. Two. The particular sound of vehicles that moved with purpose and stopped with authority. She recognised it before she saw them.She stepped back inside.Closed the door.Stood in her hallway with her back against it and her hand still on the handle and her mind moving very fast through everything this meant and everything it was going to look like and everything she needed to do in the next sixty seconds before….The knock came.Three sharp raps.Official. Unhurried. The knock of people who had time because they weren't going anywhere without what they came for.She pressed her eyes closed for just a moment.Then she opened the door.Two officers. A third slightly behind them. All three, looking at her with the particular neutral expression of people who had already formed a preliminary view of the situation and were now gathering evidence to confirm it."Ms. Park," the first one said. "Diane

  • The Wrong Bed   The Betrayed

    Marcos had been patient long enough.He had watched the news alerts come through one by one that morning from his apartment. Clara Amara Caldwell appointed acting president of Caldwell Enterprises. The name he didn't know. And nobody had told him about it. The office that was supposed to have his name on it.He had been patient for three years.He had done everything that was asked of him.He had turned against Freddie, used Lina, and threatened Brett, he stood at Freddie's door that morning and delivered a warning he hadn't wanted to deliver because Karthy had asked him to buy her a few more hours.And this was what he got.A name on a news alert that wasn't his.He called Karthy at noon.She answered on the second ring."Where are you," he said."That's not how we start conversations Marcos.""Where. Are. You."A pause."My apartment," she said. "Why.""Because I'm coming over," he said. "And you're going to explain to me who Clara Caldwell is and why she is sitting in the office th

  • The Wrong Bed   The Throne

    Clara took the elevator to the thirty fourth floor alone.She had been in this building before. And walked these corridors under a different name with a different purpose. She had stood at the door of this office and looked at it from the outside the way she had looked at everything connected to this family her entire life.From the outside.Not anymore.The elevator opened.The floor was quiet. Most of the staff hadn't been told yet. That would come later. There was a specific order to these things and she understood it better than most.First you secured the position.Then you secured everything else.She walked down the corridor.Stopped at the door with his name on it.Frederick Caldwell. CEO.She looked at it for a long moment.Then she pushed it open and walked in.The office was exactly as he had left it.Jacket on the back of the chair. Notepad on the desk. The particular organised chaos of a man who worked hard and thought fast and had never needed anyone to tidy things up f

  • The Wrong Bed   Welcome

    The contractions were three minutes apart by the time they got Lina into a room.She had counted them in the ambulance. Not because anyone asked her to. Because it gave her something to focus on that wasn't Freddie lying unconscious in a hospital on the other side of the city.Three minutes.Then two and a half.Then two.Her body had decided and it was not interested in waiting for anyone.Priya hadn't left her side since the lobby. Had held her hand through the elevator and through the corridor and through every question the admissions nurse asked that Lina had to stop mid answer to breathe through.Now they were in a room. Clean and bright. A midwife named Karen who had the kind of calm that came from having done this so many times that nothing surprised her anymore."You're doing really well," Karen said.Lina looked at the ceiling.She didn't feel like she was doing really well.She felt like her body was doing something enormous and completely independent of anything she thought

  • The Wrong Bed   The Break

    Gerald stopped the meeting at ten twenty twoHe didn't make a production of it. Just put his hand flat on the table and said quietly but firmly that he needed a short recess before the board proceeded any further.Clara watched him do it.She had been watching him since she sat down. The way he read. The way he listened. The way his jaw tightened on certain pages and his eyes slowed on certain lines.She had known this moment was coming.Gerald Osei was not a man who moved without being certain. And he was not yet certain. The source question had been sitting in the room like something nobody wanted to step on and Gerald being Gerald had stepped on it anyway."Twenty minutes," he said. "Then we reconvene."Diane stood immediately. Picked up her copy of the documents. Walked out without looking at anyone.Thomas stayed seated. Looked at his hands.Raymond caught Clara's eye briefly. Gave nothing away.Gerald was already moving toward the door.Clara stood up."Gerald," she said.He sto

  • The Wrong Bed   The Man In The Room

    "You look different," Freddie said.It was Thursday. Nine o'clock. She was on time.They were standing by the floor-to-ceiling window of his office before the rest of the team arrived. She had made the mistake of accepting coffee from his assistant, which had turned into standing here, close enough

  • The Wrong Bed   The Office

    "Absolutely not," Lina said."The contract is already signed." Her boss, Dana, pushed the folder across the desk without looking up. "It's a six-week consulting project. You're the best I have for restructuring work. It's not a conversation.""Dana. Who is the client?"Dana looked up then. And the

  • The Wrong Bed   Six Weeks Before The End

    "You're going to marry him, and it's going to be perfect," her best friend Priya said. "So stop looking at me like the ceiling is about to fall."Lina was looking at the ceiling.The champagne glass in her hand was nearly empty. The hotel suite was full of flowers and satin and the low thrum of a p

  • The Wrong Bed   I Do Not

    "Do not do this to me, Lina."Freddie's voice was low. Controlled. But his hands were shaking.She could see them from where she stood. Right there at the altar, three feet away, with two hundred people watching and a priest who had gone very still.Lina looked at those hands. Then she looked at hi

More Chapters

Вам тоже понравятся

Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status