Chapter 13
The Hunter Foundation summer benefit had always been an exercise in hypocrisy with excellent catering.
Angela had attended it six times as Blake's wife.
She had worn silk gowns, smiled beside ice sculptures, and listened to Richard Hunter speak about legacy while women who knew about his affairs applauded as if survival were a social skill.
She had once admired the room's beauty. The vaulted ceiling, the tall windows, the banks of white orchids, the candlelight on crystal. Tonight, all she saw was a stage.
Lily had chosen public humiliation, even if she hadn’t realized it yet. Angela had learned the value of choosing the larger room. She arrived alone. Connor offered to accompany her. Blake offered to meet her at the entrance. Damon had texted, with typical Damon brevity, Try not to start without me.
Angela declined all of them. For the first five minutes, she wanted the room to see her enter as herself. Not Blake's wounded wife. Not Connor's protected almost-lover. Not Lily's victim. She need to be Angela Hunter. The whispers started before she reached the first champagne tray.
She wore a black gown with a high neck and a bare back, her hair swept into a smooth knot. The red mark Lily had left on her cheek had faded beneath makeup, but Angela still felt it there, a private brand she intended to return with interest.
Blake saw her from across the room. The look on his face almost stopped her.
He wore a tuxedo, severe and immaculate, but there was only admiration in his eyes.
He looked at her as if he had been given one more chance to witness her strength and knew better than to claim any part of it. He didn’t approach her.
Connor stood near the side of the room with Piper, who looked unusually subdued in silver. Damon leaned against a column nearby, handsome and restless, watching the doors as though expecting a firing squad or a massacre. Possibly both.
Richard had resisted removing Lily from the guest list until Blake stood in his father's study that morning and told him, in front of two foundation officers, that Lily Saint wouldn’t be welcomed to another Hunter event under his name.
Richard had called it emotional and shortsighted.
Blake had called it overdue. Lily arrived anyway, of course.
Angela moved through the crowd with a glass of champagne she didn’t drink.
Richard Hunter began the evening with a speech about family and responsibility.
Katherine stood beside him, elegant in navy, her face composed but her eyes lingering on Angela with something like regret.
Then Lily appeared at the entrance. A hush moved through the room.
She wore white. Of course she wore white.
Soft, flowing, delicate. Her hair down falling over her shoulders, and one hand rested with delicate intention against her stomach. Beside her stood one of Richard's board members, a widower with more money than judgment and an expression that suggested he believed himself gallant.
Angela almost admired the commitment. Lily entered beside him and let the room see her being escorted, protected, welcomed. She wanted Angela to feel the old familiar punishment of being watched.
Angela smiled.
Piper sidled up beside Connor and whispered too loudly, "She looks like a slutty bridezilla."
Connor closed his eyes for half a second.
Angela nearly laughed.
Lily saw her smile, and uncertainty crossed her face. That was where Angela began. She walked toward Lily slowly enough for the room to notice. Conversations thinned. Heads turned. The orchestra continued playing something elegant and useless.
"Lily," Angela said.
Lily's eyes widened with counterfeit nervousness. "Angela. I don't think this is the place."
"You chose my bedroom. Then you chose a family dinner. Don't pretend you've suddenly developed concern for appropriate settings."
A ripple moved through the guests.
Lily's cheeks flushed. "I'm trying to avoid more pain."
"No," Angela said. "You're trying to control where people can see it."
Blake moved closer but stopped several feet away. Damon straightened. Connor watched from the edge of the room, his face unreadable.
Lily glanced around, measuring the audience. "I know you're angry."
"You don't know anything about my anger."
"I know you want someone to blame because your marriage wasn't what you thought it was."
Angela stepped closer. "My marriage was wounded. You saw the wound and mistook it for an invitation."
Lily's mouth tightened.
Angela lifted her phone, not high enough to be theatrical, only enough for Lily to understand. "I have your messages. Not enough to prove what happened in my bedroom, maybe. But enough to show how long you were inserting yourself into conversations that had nothing to do with the gallery."
Lily's eyes flicked toward the phone.
Angela saw the calculation start.
"Tell them what Piper heard," Angela said.
Lily looked toward Piper.
Piper lifted her chin, though she looked like she might throw up in her tiny silver clutch.
"I don't know what you mean," Lily said.
"Yes, you do."
"I know Connor's niece likes attention."
Piper gasped. "Okay, first of all, rude."
Connor put a hand lightly on her shoulder.
Angela didn’t look away from Lily. "She heard you say Blake was unconscious before he hit the bed."
The room froze.
Lily gave a trembling laugh. "That's disgusting."
"She heard you say he couldn't have touched you if he wanted to."
Blake's face went white.
Lily looked at him, then at Richard, then at the room. "Do you all hear this? She is attacking me at a charity benefit while I'm carrying a child."
"You are hiding behind a child," Angela said. "There's a difference."
Lily's voice sharpened. "Because you can't bear that he came to me."
"He didn't come to you. You followed him."
"He needed me."
"He was drunk."
"He was lonely."
"He was unconscious."
Lily's eyes flashed. "Because you drove him there."
There it was. The crack.
Angela felt the room lean in.
"I drove him where?" she asked softly.
Lily realized too late.
Angela pressed. "To drink? To pass out? To wake up with no memory and your perfume in my bedroom?"
"You smug bitch," Lily hissed.
Someone gasped.
Angela's pulse slowed.
Lily's face changed. The tears vanished. The wounded softness burned away, leaving the woman beneath it bare and furious.
"You think because he didn't touch me that night, it means I didn't have him?" Lily said. "He answered my calls. He told me things. He looked at me like I was warm and you were marble. By the time you walked into that room, I had already won enough."
Blake made a sound behind Angela. Not protest. Pain.
Angela didn’t turn around.
"Say it clearly," she said.
Lily laughed. It was ugly now. Real. "Fine. He was passed out. He didn't sleep with me. Are you happy? He could barely stand. But you believed it because you knew he had already made room for me."
The room erupted in whispers.
The board member who had escorted Lily stepped away as if her scandal had become contagious.
The women who had been watching Angela with pity now looked at Lily with naked disgust. Katherine's hand went to her throat, but she didn’t move to comfort Lily.
Richard's face hardened with the fury of a man whose family name had been used without his permission and whose own methods had failed him in public.
Angela watched as everyone in the room saw the truth and saw what kind of woman Lily really was. So many emotions moved through her. Relief came first, startling and sharp. Then rage. Then grief so old it seemed to have been waiting months for permission to breathe.
Blake hadn’t touched Lily. Lily had staged the scene. Angela had been right about everything and still had been destroyed by it.
Lily turned to the room, panic beginning to break through her anger. "This doesn't change anything about the baby."
Damon stepped away from the column. His phone was in his hand. Angela saw his face and knew. Lily saw it too.
"No," Lily said.
Damon looked almost sad. Almost. "Interesting response."
Lily backed up one step. "Damon."
The room went quiet again, hungry now, cruel in the way social spaces became when spectacle finally offered blood.
Damon looked at Angela first. A small nod.
An apology, maybe, though not for sleeping with Lily.
For the chaos. For the table. For being a Hunter man in another room where Angela had to stand too straight. Then he looked at Lily.
"The results came in," he said.
Lily's mouth opened, but no sound came.
Angela felt Blake behind her, silent and stricken.
Damon's voice carried through the ballroom.
"I'm the father."
The silence after that was almost beautiful.