Chapter 2
Two
Xavier
Ignoring your instincts was never a good course of action, so why had I chosen to hide my head in the sand over Gio’s increasingly concerning behavior? It was something so unlike me that even my best friend was questioning me about it.
“Dude,” Malik groaned. “This is what? The fifth time Gio mysteriously had a late meeting!” My best friend gave a dramatic sigh. “You need to bite the bullet and talk to your husband instead of being here and eating my in-laws’ Moo Shu pork.”
“But it’s the best Moo Shu pork in the city!” I protested weakly, though it wasn’t a lie. Malik’s in-laws ran the best Chinese restaurant I’d ever been to, and since meeting Malik in law school, I’d been to more than my fair share. Malik called it research for his mate’s family.
“Obviously,” he drawled. “It really is a shame Chen didn’t want to take over the restaurant. I would have liked running this place with him.”
“Lies,” I shot back. “You’d have gotten bored within a month and either you, or Chen, would have mouthed off to the wrong customer. The restaurant wouldn’t last a year with you two in charge.”
A chuckle came from behind us. “You tell him, Xavier. My brother-in-law much prefers eating noodles to serving them.”
“Exactly,” I agreed with a grin. I elbowed Malik playfully. We liked to sit at the bar and chat with the staff when we came. “Besides, it’s in expert hands with Hao, and we get to enjoy free food whenever we stop by.”
Hao leaned on his brother-in-law’s shoulder with clear affection. Malik reached up to scent the other omega’s wrist. “Mom just wants to feed you now that you’re carrying her grandbaby!”
Malik’s face glowed with pleasure. “It’s been a long road.
” At four months along, there was a gentle swell to his stomach.
He and his husband had been trying for years, but as a recessive omega and alpha pairing, they had to undergo several rounds of fertility treatment, which was exhausting and expensive.
Luckily, they both had well-paying jobs, not that I would have pointed that out.
Both of them would have traded their careers in a heartbeat to have a baby.
“I should probably get going. Gio’s meeting should be over by now.” I pushed away from the bar and made to stand.
Malik’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Are you going to ask him what’s going on?”
My first instinct was to lie and say I was going to hash it out with my husband.
There were so many red flags popping up, it was hard to figure out which part I wanted to tackle first. The late-night meetings, the business dinners, work trips that lasted a week…
It all added up to something I didn’t want to look too closely at.
Then there was Brady. Gio had been into him to start with, yet the closer we got to Brady’s heat, the more that fire in him had cooled.
It left me in a difficult position because, unlike Gio, my feelings for the omega were growing by the day.
What had started out as a casual thing with Brady had turned into something much more serious.
I wanted to be exclusive, but my husband had asked for more time to “be sure” of what he was feeling.
Though it would have helped if he spent any time with Brady.
The rules of our open relationship meant that it was okay for me to date Brady as long as Gio knew about it. We used to discuss everything. Used to. Recently, it was difficult to pin down Gio for a chat about anything. He was always at work. At least that’s where he said he was.
My face pulled into a grimace, and Malik patted my arm. “It’s fine, you aren’t ready. Sorry for pushing… I guess I just want you as happy as I am and—”
“It’s fine, honestly. You’ve always had a big heart. I think I just need to take a minute to really think through what I feel and how I want things to be. It can’t go on like this much longer.”
Malik’s pheromones briefly overpowered the filters in the restaurant.
They were clouded with his sympathy, worry, and love for me.
He’d always been empathetic, which was what made him perfect for family law.
As an omega, he was non-threatening to the omegas who came to him for legal advice to end matings and keep custody of their children.
Our friendship got me through law school, even though I went into entertainment law.
Then his support got me through the early years of dating Giovanni.
Malik, and later Chen, were steadying influences in our lives.
Without them, I would have crumbled under the pressure Gio’s parents put us under at the start of our marriage.
“I’m sorry, Xavier. Just remember, we’re here if you need us.”
My legs shook as I stood. “You’ve got the baby to worry about now. Don’t worry about me, everything will work out.”
Malik had every good reason to worry about me. I’d told a terrible lie: everything was not going to work out.
Gio had been late home from his meeting.
Again. By the time he walked in, I was in bed and had missed any chance of talking this out with him.
I suspected he was having doubts over Brady because he was recessive and his parents were putting us under pressure to give them grandchildren.
Didn’t mean he had to avoid me. I pushed aside the thought that there was something else going on.
I trusted my husband. At least, I had.
The ambient noise from the trendy vegan restaurant barely two blocks from Gio’s marketing firm’s office wasn’t loud enough to drown out the ringing in my ears as I tried to make sense of what Gio had just said to me.
“What?” I repeated. I gripped the edge of the table as if it would stop me from falling apart.
“We’re pregnant! We’re gonna be dads! Isn’t that amazing?” Gio’s smile was overly bright, forced. His tone held a hint of hysteria, as if he knew it was one big lie after another.
“How can we be dads, Gio? That baby isn’t mine.
” The omega next to Gio, Candice, winced at the sharpness in my tone.
I wanted to stand up, to bolt out of this damned place, but with the stares of the waiting staff on me, I knew I was stuck listening to this nonsense my husband had fabricated to win me over.
“We’re married, so the babies—”
“Babies? How many are we talking about here?” My voice got higher with my panic.
Around me, people had stopped even pretending they weren’t listening in on our conversation.
Considering how loudly I’d spoken, I couldn’t really blame them.
I worked to quiet my next words. “How many babies did you make without me, Gio?” I hissed.
Candice spoke for the first time since they’d sat down together. “It’s twins.”
“And how far along are you?”
“Five months.”
Close to when I’d spent the night with the omega, but I knew they were banking on me not having anything to prove that. Candice was one of our hookups. We’d met her a few weeks before her heat was due with the plan for us to take her through it if we were compatible.
I hadn’t particularly enjoyed my encounter with her, since female omegas generally weren’t my type.
She seemed nice enough, and clearly something about her had caught my husband’s attention.
He’d obviously been seeing her since then and if I thought back to his “business trips”, gone through her heat with her.
“Is she the late business meetings? The work trips?” I asked in a flat, low voice.
Gio looked me straight in the eye. “Yes. We fell in love and now—”
“What?” I demanded. “What do you want from me, Gio? We’ve been together for twelve years. Married for a decade. I loved you! What more do you want from me?” Tears pricked my eyes.
“I want us to raise the babies together as a family. The three of us.” Gio wore a mask of calm while Candice sat next to him, clutching his arm for comfort.
“A family?” I let out a bitter chuckle. “We were a family, just the two of us, before you decided to impregnate your girlfriend. Maybe, just maybe, I could have forgiven you for cheating—”
“It wasn’t cheating!” Gio protested loudly. “We’re open.”
“With rules!” I bit back. Candice’s face paled with shock.
“You didn’t tell me you were still seeing her.
You made me think things were done with her.
We met other people. Brady! You let me fall in love with him all while knowing your girlfriend was pregnant.
His heat… were you going to pass his heat with him? ”
Gio casually shrugged, though he looked defensive. “Not like he can get pregnant.”
Fury, boiling hot, flooded my veins. My pheromones leaked out, cowing everyone within a three-meter radius until the filters kicked on higher. “Sorry,” I muttered to the staff, embarrassed at losing my control like that.
“Sir, I think your party should leave,” the manager suggested in a firm tone as they approached our table, a mask on their face.
I stood, happy for an excuse to leave, and stalked for the door after throwing a fifty on the table. We hadn’t even ordered drinks, but I wanted to give them something after our display.
“Xavi! Wait!” Gio called after me. He and Candice were moving quickly, darting around people on the sidewalk.
With a sigh, I waited for them next to a bench. Whatever had happened between me and Gio wasn’t all Candice’s fault. She was carrying two babies who were perfectly innocent in all this.
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly as she slumped onto the bench. Her pretty face was flushed pink with exertion.
“Just tell me what you want,” I demanded when Gio caught my arm.
“For all of us to do this together.” He let me go once he realized I was waiting for an explanation. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My world was crumbling around me.
“You can’t be serious! You cheat on me, make babies with someone else, now you want me to play happy families. Are you out of your mind?” How did he think any of this was okay?
Gio’s face cycled through a few emotions before landing on bitterness. “I need this. My parents want grandchildren, and it’s not like you can give them any.”
The knife twisted in my gut. I glanced at my torso, fully expecting a wound there, with how badly I hurt over his words. “We could have had them with Brady. You didn’t have to go and have an affair.”
“My family wants a female omega. I know how you feel about them. You were only with Candice because it was my turn to pick someone.”
On the bench, Candice looked horrified. “Are you serious right now?” She shook her head. “What is this? Do you even love me, Gio? All those promises, do they mean nothing to you?”
I felt nothing but pity for her. She was pregnant and vulnerable right now. She needed Gio’s pheromones to help with the pregnancy.
“Of course, baby!” Gio went to his knees on the sidewalk and brushed her brunette hair out of her face. “I love you and Xavier so much. The babies too. That first night with you sealed the deal for me.”
“Then who’s Brady? Were you with him too?”
Gio’s sweetness fell away. “Yeah, but you knew I was in an open marriage.”
“I didn’t think that meant you were still seeing other people, not once we found out I was pregnant.”
“Just Brady,” I cut in. “We were only with Brady. I chose him because he’s everything I like in an omega. No offense.”
Candice gave a bitter laugh. “You’re not the one who’s been saying all these things to me for the last five months. I thought you knew about me and we were going to raise the babies together.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Not sure that’s in the cards for me.”
“Legally, these babies are yours just as much as they are mine,” Gio said, getting to his feet.
“Okay, so why not tell me sooner? Why let me be with Brady the last three months? You knew about the babies before we met up with Brady.”
“That’s on me,” Candice said. “I wasn’t sure I was keeping them until our twelve-week scan.
I was so sick I lost my job. Me and Gio were barely dating at that point.
He’d taken me through my heat and we’d met up a couple of times after.
It was just in the last two months that things got serious with us. ”
“Right. So why do you need me? You two are in love or whatever. Why bring me into this? Why not leave?”
Gio stepped closer and cupped my cheeks. “Because I still love you. I want to give you the family you’ve always wanted.”
“I—I’m not sure.” My hands reached up to his, gently pulling them away from my face. A chime came from Candice’s phone. “I need some time to think about what this means for me.”
“Gio, we’ve got our appointment at the clinic.”
My husband took my hand. “Will you come? See what you can be a part of?”
Later, I would wonder why I followed them. Why I let them pretend we were just one big happy family. Gio begged me outside the clinic to act as if we were in a throuple. He didn’t want to embarrass Candice in front of her midwife with our drama.
The appointment took a while. I sat there, my mind spinning, while Candice was poked and prodded.
She took it with a good-natured smile. When the babies’ images were shown on the screen, I tried not to feel anything for the little innocent lives inside my husband’s affair partner.
It wasn’t their fault she didn’t check that I knew.
Not that the blame really landed on Candice.
For all that I knew, Gio had been lying to us both this entire time.
I kept my distance from my husband, which is why I ended up letting Candice take my hand after the scan.
I plastered on a smile as if I didn’t have a care in the world, even though it felt as if everything was cracking under me, like my foundation had shifted and I now hung above an abyss.
Everything, even that tiny ledge I perched on, vanished when we exited the exam room to find Brady standing there with his best friend.