All Chapters of My Brother's Best Friend's Secret Baby: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Was I still running away? I wasn't running in the literal sense. I hadn't changed my phone number or packed my bags. I went to trips to the park, therapy sessions, and dinners at the apartment whenever I'd agreed to them. I did all of it with a clear head, my feet firmly on the ground, without disappearing. But there was something deep inside me that I'd been pushing down for months. There was the way I always looked away at certain moments, because meeting his eyes head-on stirred something I wasn't ready to face. There was the armchair in the corner, chosen specifically because it was the farthest seat from him in the room. Maybe running away didn't always look like packing a suitcase. Lucy let out a soft sigh in her sleep and rolled over. I studied her profile in the darkness. The curve of her nose, the sweep of her lashes, the gentle movement of her hand resting near her chin. I thought about the time she'd asked me if I felt lonely. I thought about what she'd said: "He

"Thank you for answering," I said. "That's what the line is there for," he replied before hanging up. I didn't fall back asleep right away. I stayed sitting in the dark for a while, letting the silence of the apartment settle around me. The almost nonexistent sounds of the building at night, that deep, distinctive quiet that only exists in a building full of sleeping people. The glow of the streetlamp filtering through the window. My jacket draped over the chair. I thought about something Dr. Garrett had been telling me over the past few months. Not the way I usually absorbed information in therapy, filing it away for future use while keeping it at arm's length. This time, I actually let it sink in. 'Your father isn't inside you.' That was something Dr. Garrett had said during one of our earliest sessions, a thought he'd returned to in different ways ever since. One day he'd asked me to describe my father's defining trait. I'd answered, "He used the people he loved

"What do you mean?" "Like she was trying to figure something out," Lucy said. "The way people look when they're solving a math problem." I put the box of penne into the cart. "Come on," I said. "We still need tomatoes." We finished our shopping. I moved through the remaining aisles on autopilot while Lucy carried her little basket and narrated her choices of fruits and vegetables. I nodded, answered when appropriate, but I wasn't really listening. The cold feeling that had settled over me in the pasta aisle refused to leave. It remained lodged in my chest like a splinter someone had placed there on purpose, with no intention of ever removing it. I knew almost nothing about Elena Vasquez. I recognized her name and face from an engagement announcement I'd seen on social media seven years earlier. I knew she'd been Aiden's fiancée. I knew their engagement had ended the week after I disappeared. I knew she was in the military. And for seven years, I'd made a point of

The complaint was dismissed. I thought that was the end of it. I was terribly wrong. I'd run into Elena twice since then at professional events where our paths inevitably crossed. Both times, she'd been impeccable, unfailingly courteous, never once bringing up the past. Watching her, I'd convinced myself her civility was genuine. That she'd moved on. "I made a terrible mistake in judgment," I admitted to Rosie. She kept staring at the tabletop. "She's in the city," I continued. "She's here. She knew your name. She knew where to find you. And she watched Lucy exactly the way you described. That's not a coincidence." I kept my voice flat and even, wanting her to understand the facts without my own emotions clouding them. "Elena never acts impulsively. She's a strategist. If she moves one piece, she's already calculated her next two moves." Rosie didn't react. She'd listened to everything without interrupting me. I'd always admired that about her. Her ability to ab

I read it once, then a second time. I texted back. [She claims the two of you had lunch together last week. She said it outright.] His reply came even faster this time. [She's lying. I didn't have lunch with her. I haven't seen her. I haven't called her, texted her, or exchanged a single message with her in any form since we spoke in the parking lot last year.] I locked my phone. I weighed the facts with deliberate detachment, forcing down the storm threatening to rise inside me. One of them was lying. That much was certain. Either Aiden had met his former fiancée for lunch and was hiding it from me… Or Elena had fabricated the entire meeting just to slip it into our conversation, solely to plant doubt in my mind. I thought back to Aiden sitting at my kitchen table the night before. The way he'd talked about Elena openly, without trying to soften the truth, even the parts that made him look bad. The way he'd stayed silent when I'd accused him of keeping me in the