10. Luciana Creed
LUCIANA CREED
My mind wasn’t on breakfast. It wasn’t on the laundry waiting upstairs, the grocery list sitting on the counter, or even the pile of folded clothes I’d left in the family room the night before.
It was on my husband.
Lately, everything seemed to come back to Maddox. Every thought, every fear, every reminder somehow led right back to the damage I’d caused.
Without even realizing it, my hand drifted to my stomach. The baby growing inside me wasn’t responsible for any of this, yet every time I thought about telling Maddox the truth, my chest tightened.
Our child didn’t deserve to be caught in the middle of a war we never saw coming.
Losing my husband was already a possibility I’d been forced to accept. What terrified me even more was the thought of him looking at this baby differently because of everything that had happened. I couldn’t bear the idea of our child paying the price for my decisions.
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it, and I quickly brushed it away with the back of my hand.
Crying wasn’t solving anything. Sitting here drowning in my thoughts wasn’t helping either. The truth was, I didn’t know what to do anymore, and for the first time in a long time, I felt completely lost.
Maddox barely spoke to me unless he had to. My friends couldn’t relate to what I was going through, and my family loved me enough that they’d probably tell me what I wanted to hear instead of what I needed to hear.
What I needed was honesty. The kind that hurt. The kind that forced me to stop making excuses and really look at myself. The kind that could only come from somebody who loved both of us.
The answer came to me almost immediately.
Mama Creed...
Just thinking about her made a lump form in my throat.
My relationship with Mama Creed had never been fake. From the very first day Maddox brought me around, she’d welcomed me with open arms, and over the years she’d become so much more than my mother-in-law.
She celebrated birthdays with me, spent holidays beside me, sat through school programs for the boys, helped me plan birthday parties, called to check on me whenever Maddox was out of town, and defended me when I wasn’t even there to defend myself.
She loved me like I was one of her own and I’d repaid that love by keeping a secret that nearly destroyed her son.
The guilt hit hard enough to make me look away from my own reflection in the kitchen window.
That part never got easier.
No matter how many times I told myself my intentions had been good, the outcome never changed. Maddox was still hurting.
The hardest part was realizing two things could exist at the same time. I could love my husband with everything inside of me and still be the reason he was suffering.
A shaky breath escaped me as I reached for my phone. My thumb hovered over Mama Creed’s name for a long moment while doubt crept into the back of my mind.
Calling her meant facing another person I’d disappointed.
Still, avoiding difficult conversations was exactly what had gotten me here in the first place.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I pressed the call button.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey, baby.”
The simple greeting nearly broke me.
There wasn’t an ounce of anger in her voice. She greeted me with the same warmth she always had, and somehow that hurt even more.
“Hey, Mama Creed.”
My voice came out quieter than I intended and she noticed.
“Are you okay?”
She got straight to the point.
There wasn’t any small talk or pretending everything was okay.
Just pure concern.
I lowered myself onto one of the kitchen stools and stared at the marble countertop, trying to figure out where to begin.
Where was I supposed to start?
With the NDA?
The therapy?
The pregnancy?
Or the fact that every day felt like I was watching my marriage slip a little farther through my fingers?
The silence lasted long enough for her to let out a quiet sigh.
“Maddox talked to me.” My grip tightened around the phone when she said that.
Part of me had expected that.
Hearing it out loud still hit harder than I thought it would, though.
“What did he say?”
The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Mama Creed was quiet for a moment, long enough for my stomach to start tying itself into knots.
Then she finally answered.
“He told me enough…”
Her voice wasn’t cold or judgmental. She just sounded disappointed.
My eyes burned, but I refused to let the tears fall. I’d already hurt too many people with my choices. Breaking down now wasn’t going to undo any of it.
“I was trying to protect my relationship.”
The words sounded weak the second they left my mouth. I believed them with everything I had when I made those decisions, but saying them now, they didn’t feel like enough.
Mama Creed didn’t rush to respond. She let the silence settle between us before speaking, her voice as calm as ever.
“Baby, protecting your relationship shouldn’t have required hurting my son.”
The words landed square in my chest.
I opened my mouth, hoping something—anything—would come to me.
Nothing did.
There wasn’t a defense left that made sense anymore. Not to her, and if I was being honest with myself, not to me either.
Right now, I realized I was talking to someone who genuinely loved both of us. She wasn’t taking Maddox’s side over mine, and she wasn’t taking mine over his. She simply wasn’t interested in excuses.
Mama Creed wasn’t trying to make me feel guilty.
She was making me face the truth, and the truth hurt like hell.
Silence settled between us again while I stared down at the countertop, my fingers tightening around my phone. My mind searched for something to hold on to, but every explanation I’d spent years believing sounded empty now.
Maybe if Gia had stayed away…
Maybe if none of this had ever come to light…
None of those thoughts changed what was right, and they definitely didn’t change what I’d done.
“Do you hate me?”
Mama Creed let out a slow sigh. “Now why would you ask me something like that?”
“Because I fucked up.”
My emotions had been sitting too close to the surface for days, and once they started spilling over, I couldn’t stop them.
“I hurt him. I lied. I made decisions that weren’t mine to make.” I shook my head, struggling to keep my voice steady. “I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
Mama Creed stayed quiet for a moment before answering.
“I don’t hate you, Luciana.”
Her response should’ve made me feel better, but instead, it made my chest ache. The love was still there, but so was the disappointment.
“You know what’s crazy?” she asked.
I wiped beneath my eyes.
“What?”
“If somebody had asked me a year ago whether you’d ever do something like this, I would’ve said no.”
“So would’ve I.”
For years, I’d been the responsible one. The organized one. The wife who kept everything together, the mother who never missed a school event, and the woman everybody believed had the perfect life.
Turns out I was capable of making selfish decisions too.
“Maddox isn’t innocent either, though.”
The words left my mouth before I had a chance to think them through, and I regretted them almost immediately. They sounded less like honesty and more like I was trying to defend myself.
“I know he ain’t,” Mama Creed said. “Maddox made his own mistakes. He stepped outside of the relationship after asking you to be his wife, and he’ll have to live with that. What he did was wrong, Luciana. It just don’t erase what happened afterward.”
Her words lingered between us.
“True...” I whispered.
Mama Creed let the silence settle before she spoke again. “But his affair created a child, and your decisions kept that child from her father.”
The distinction hit me immediately. One mistake didn’t erase the other, and one wrong could never justify the next.
I lowered my head as the truth settled between us.
There wasn’t anything left to argue or defend because, for the first time, I could finally see the damage without trying to explain it away.
A tear slid down my cheek, but I didn’t bother wiping it away this time. I was tired—tired of pretending I had everything under control, tired of carrying the weight of my decisions alone, and tired of convincing myself things weren’t as bad as they looked when deep down I already knew they were.
“Mama Creed…” My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard before forcing the question out. “What if I already lost him?”
That fear had been following me everywhere. It met me every morning when I opened my eyes, stayed with me through every awkward conversation, every therapy session, and every long stretch of silence between Maddox and me. No matter how hard I tried to push it away, it always found its way back.
Mama Creed didn’t rush to answer. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the same honesty I’d been searching for from everyone else.
“I don’t know.” She let those words settle before continuing. “I wish I could tell you everything gonna work out, and I wish I could promise you that ya’ll gonna fix this… but I can’t.”
A lump formed in my throat because I already knew she was right. Nobody could promise me my marriage was going to survive—not the therapist, not Mama Creed, and certainly not Maddox. The future wasn’t something anybody could guarantee.
“What I do know,” she continued, “Is that marriage don’t survive without truth.”
My stomach twisted. We both knew exactly what she was talking about. The birth control, the pregnancy, and the secret I’d been carrying around every single day suddenly felt heavier than ever. I squeezed my eyes shut before whispering the words that had been sitting on the tip of my tongue.
“You know there’s more…”
It wasn’t really a question. Mama Creed had been married to Apollo for decades and raised three boys into men. A woman with that kind of wisdom didn’t need anybody to confess when she could already hear it in their silence.
“I can hear it in your voice.”