All Chapters of My Ex-Husband Begged to Come Back, But I Already Said ‘I Do’: Chapter 11 - Chapter 19

I didn't have time to process what I was looking at before the door opened again behind me."Anna?" Nate's voice, confused, cutting straight through the ringing in my ears. "What are you doing here?"I turned, grateful for anywhere else to look. "I…I got the temporary assistant position.""Oh."Nate's gaze slid past me, toward the man still standing behind that enormous desk like none of this was unraveling in front of him at all, and something in his expression shifted into easy familiarity."Hey, Conner." He crossed the room, hand extended. "Been a while, man. How've you been?""Good." Conner's voice was smooth, unbothered, the same tone he'd used checking his watch two mornings ago. "Real good, actually."He shook Nate's hand like they'd known each other for years, because apparently, they had, and I stood frozen near the door, my whole body screaming with the effort of holding still."I can see Anna's going to be working under me." Conner's mouth curved, slow and deliberate, and I

I tried the number three times before I gave up.Straight to a dead line each time, no ring, no voicemail, just a flat electronic tone that made my stomach twist tighter with every attempt. Whoever this was, they didn't want to be found. They just wanted to be listened to.A second text landed while I was still staring at the screen.*Meet me at the parking lot at 6pm.*No name. No explanation. Just an order, delivered as flatly as everything else about this day had been, and I sat there with my thumb hovering over the message for a long moment before I finally shoved the phone back into my pocket and made myself walk back toward the filing room.I told myself I wasn't going to think about it for the rest of the afternoon.That lasted about eleven minutes.---By four o'clock, the clock on my desktop had become the only thing I could actually focus on. I answered emails I don't remember the content of. I filed papers into folders I'd have to double-check tomorrow because half my atten

I stood in that alley long after the message stopped coming through, staring at my phone like it might take the words back if I looked at them long enough.*Don't trust Nate either. He knows more than he's told you.*I turned it over and over on the walk home, trying to find a version of it that made sense. Conner had planned what happened to me, that part I had proof of, cold and undeniable, sitting in a drawer under a stack of old bills. But Nate?I'd known Nate since we were kids trading lunch snacks on a playground neither of us remembered clearly anymore. I'd known him through braces and breakups and the year his father got sick, through every version of myself I'd ever been before Max existed. He'd shown up at two in the morning without asking a single question. He'd fed me, sheltered me, held my hand in a dark theater and never once pushed for more than I could give.Whoever was sending these messages wanted me isolated. Scared. Suspicious of the one person who'd actually shown

"You're pregnant?"Conner's voice came out low, careful, his eyes still fixed on the paper in his hand like he was doing math he didn't want the answer to. I opened my mouth, some half-formed explanation already rising in my throat, though I had no idea yet what I was even going to say.I never got the chance to find out."Why didn't you tell me you're pregnant?"Max's voice cracked across the sidewalk like a gunshot, and I turned so fast my neck ached with it, my whole body flooding with a dread so sudden it nearly buckled my knees.He was already crossing toward us, face lit up in a way I hadn't seen since the day I first told him I loved him, years and a lifetime ago. He came to a stop beside me, closer than I wanted him, one hand hovering near my shoulder like he thought he still had the right to touch me."Max." His name came out of me thin, strangled. "What are you doing here?""I have an appointment." He barely glanced at Conner, too consumed by whatever fantasy was already bui