Betrayed While Pregnant by My Husband (Her Marriage in Crisis #109)

1. Blair

— ? —

Blair

The French toast hadn’t survived the flip.

Not burned. Just folded over on itself in the cast iron pan, one half welded to the other, while my seven-year-old stood on his step stool and poked at it with a spatula like he was performing surgery.

“It’s supposed to do that,” Henry said, with the absolute confidence of someone who had never successfully made French toast in his life.

I grabbed the pan handle and slid it off the burner, flipping the wreckage onto a plate where it landed with a sad little thump.

The kitchen was a disaster. Custard dripped from the edge of the marble island.

Blueberries had rolled across the limestone floor and lodged themselves under the refrigerator.

There was egg on the ceiling, which I hadn’t noticed until just now and chose not to think about.

“Okay,” I said, surveying the damage. “New plan. We make the next one together, and this time we let it soak all the way through before it goes anywhere near the pan.”

“But the soaking takes forever.”

“Patience is a virtue.”

“What’s a virtue?”

“Something your father has more of than me.” I handed him a slice of bread. “Both sides. Count to ten.”

Henry dipped. He held the bread under with two fingers and counted out loud, slow enough that ten took closer to thirty.

He watched it with the intensity of a surgeon monitoring a transplant, his dark hair flopping into his eyes, his pajamas dusted with cinnamon.

He had Will’s eyes. The same deep brown, the same way they crinkled at the corners when he was concentrating.

God, I loved this kid. I loved this chaos, this mess, this life I’d stumbled into when a boy with too much money and not enough sense asked a nineteen-year-old nobody to dance at a party she had no business attending.

“Ten,” Henry announced.

“In the pan. Don’t touch it until I say.”

He waited. He flipped. It landed perfectly, golden brown on top, and Henry’s face split into a grin so wide it hurt my heart.

“I did it!”

“You did it.”

“Can we put chocolate chips in the next one?”

“It’s for your father’s birthday breakfast. What does Dad like?”

“Chocolate chips.”

“Nice try. Blueberries.”

“Blueberries are boring.”

“Blueberries are sophisticated.”

“What’s sophisticated?”

“Boring, but in a fancy way.”

He laughed, and I laughed with him, and somewhere upstairs my husband was pretending to be asleep so his son could surprise him with a birthday breakfast that was at least forty percent edible.

I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Not the gallery shows I never had, not the career I’d shelved at twenty-four when I married him and my paintings got boxed up in the attic.

Some days the missing was physical, the smell of turpentine, the way the world went quiet when I was working.

But then Henry would laugh like that, or Will would look at me across a crowded room like I was the only person in it, and I’d remember that I’d made a choice. A good choice. The right choice.

Most days I believed that.

The last slice was ready. Henry transferred it to the stack with surgical precision, and I helped him arrange everything on the big wooden tray.

French toast. Blueberries in a little bowl.

Maple syrup in the fancy pitcher we only used for company.

A single white rose from the garden, because Henry had insisted his father needed a flower.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready.”

We climbed the stairs together, Henry carrying the rose, me carrying the tray. The master bedroom door was closed, and I could hear Will moving around inside, probably making the bed so he could pretend to wake up in it.

“Dad!” Henry burst through the door. “Happy birthday! We made you breakfast! I only wrecked one piece!”

Will sat up in bed with a theatrical yawn, stretching his arms over his head like he’d been in a deep sleep and definitely hadn’t been awake since six in the morning when Henry had yelled, completely unprompted, “THE FIRST ONE DOESN’T COUNT.”

“Breakfast in bed?” Will rubbed his eyes. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“You got old,” Henry said, climbing onto the mattress with his rose. “Mommy said you’re practically ancient.”

“Did she.”

“I said distinguished,” I corrected, setting the tray across his lap. “I said your father is a distinguished gentleman of advanced years.”

“Advanced years.” Will raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m thirty-four.”

“Like I said. Ancient.”

He grabbed my wrist before I could retreat, pulling me down onto the mattress beside him. His mouth found my ear while Henry was busy drowning his father’s French toast in syrup.

“You’re going to pay for that later.”

“Promise?”

His hand slid up my thigh under the covers, finding the hem of my sleep shirt, and I had to bite my lip to keep my face neutral while our son cheerfully explained that he was the best French toast maker in the family now and also could he have a dog.

“Henry,” I said, my voice impressively steady given the circumstances, “why don’t you go wash the blueberry off your hands? They’re purple.”

Henry examined his hands. They were, in fact, entirely purple. “Cool,” he said, and scrambled off the bed to show them to the bathroom mirror.

The moment he was gone, Will flipped me onto my back. His body pressed mine into the mattress, warm and heavy and familiar in a way that still made my breath catch after ten years. His mouth traced my jaw, my neck, that spot below my ear that he knew, he always knew.

“Happy birthday to me,” he murmured against my skin.

“Henry’s right there.”

“Henry is showing his hands to the mirror. We have eleven seconds.”

“We do not have eleven seconds.”

“We have at least eight.”

His hand found skin, and I arched into him, and we had approximately three seconds before Henry’s voice echoed from the bathroom.

“Dad! My hands won’t stop being purple! Is this permanent? Am I going to be purple forever?”

Will dropped his forehead to my shoulder and groaned. I laughed into his hair, and he laughed too, and this was us. This was our life. Interrupted moments and blueberry-stained children and a love so big and messy and real that sometimes I couldn’t believe I got to keep it.

“To be continued,” he said.

“Tonight.”

“That a promise?”

“Get through the day first, old man.”

He kissed me once, hard, and then Henry was back demanding to know if purple hands meant he was turning into a grape, and the moment passed.

By eleven, the house had transformed from birthday morning chaos into anniversary party war room. The dining table disappeared under a mountain of seating charts, florist samples, and a string quartet’s playlist that Will was inexplicably opinionated about.

“We’re not having them play ‘Wonderwall,’” he said, striking through a line with his pen.

“It’s nostalgic.”

“It’s a college bar song.”

“We met at a college bar.”

“We met at the Bellcliff Club.”

“After you’d been drinking at a college bar.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

I loved him when he got like this, all furrowed brow and serious opinions about string arrangements.

Ten years of marriage, and he still surprised me.

The way he remembered every song from our wedding.

The way he tracked which flowers I’d mentioned wanting, months ago, in a conversation I’d forgotten.

The way he planned these parties like military campaigns because he knew, even if he’d never say it, that Newport was always watching.

That the whispers about us had never fully stopped.

The girl from nowhere who married into the Beaumont fortune. The best friend who’s a little too close. The marriage that couldn’t possibly be real.

I’d learned to ignore them. Mostly.

My phone buzzed on the table, and I glanced at the screen expecting a vendor confirmation or a question about the cake.

Trip Vanderford.

My heart lurched and twisted in my chest. Seven years. Seven years of sporadic texts and missed calls and a continent between us, and now his name on my phone, a ghost walking back into the room.

“Everything okay?” Will asked, not looking up from his seating chart.

“Yeah. Yeah, just…” I picked up the phone. “Give me a second.”

I stepped onto the terrace before I answered, the summer air hitting my face, the hydrangeas nodding in the breeze. White and blue, the colors I’d chosen a decade ago. The view stretched out to the Cliff Walk and beyond, the Atlantic glittering in the afternoon sun.

“Tell me you’re joking,” I said into the phone.

“Darling.” Trip’s voice was the same after all these years, velvet wrapped around sharp edges. “I never joke about dramatic returns.”

“You’re coming home.”

“Friday. I require your complete attention and at least three bottles of champagne.”

My face hurt from smiling. Trip had been my person before Will, before Henry, before any of this.

The boy who’d been expelled from every prep school on the Eastern Seaboard and landed in my public school classroom at fifteen, all defensive posture and designer clothes and a loneliness so profound I’d recognized it instantly.

We’d adopted each other. Grown up together.

He’d dragged me into Newport society, and I’d dragged him back to human.

And then he’d left. Europe, he’d said. A change of scenery. Some room to breathe.

“Seven years,” I said. “You’ve been gone seven years, and you’re giving me four days’ notice?”

“Dramatic returns require surprise. It’s in the handbook.”

“There’s a handbook?”

“I wrote it.”

I laughed, and it felt like a knot loosening in my chest. “You’re really coming back. For how long?”

A pause. Just a beat too long. “We’ll see.”

“Trip.”

“I’ll explain when I’m there. I promise. Just…” Another pause. “It’s good to hear your voice, B.”

“It’s good to hear yours.”

We talked for a few more minutes, logistics and flight times and where he’d be staying. The Hotel Viking, naturally. Trip had never met a historic hotel he didn’t want to haunt. By the time we hung up, I was practically bouncing.

I walked back inside to find Will standing exactly where I’d left him, pen in hand, but his eyes weren’t on the seating chart anymore. He was watching me. His expression was careful, guarded in a way I couldn’t quite read.

“Trip’s coming home,” I said, and even I could hear how bright my voice was. Too bright. “Friday. Can you believe it? Seven years, and he just calls out of nowhere.”

Will set down his pen. “That’s wonderful.”

The words were right. The tone was off.

“He wants to come to the party,” I continued, watching his face. “If that’s okay. I know it’s your birthday too, and I should have asked before I assumed, but he sounded so excited, and I just thought…”

“Of course he should come.”

“Really?”

“He’s your oldest friend.” Will’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you apart.”

There was a meaning underneath that sentence, one I couldn’t quite reach.

“Will.” I crossed to him, put my hands on his chest. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.” He covered my hands with his own. “I’m just tired. Party planning. You know how I get.”

I did know how he got. This wasn’t it.

But Henry chose that moment to race through the room asking if he could invite his whole class to the party, and by the time we’d talked him down to just inviting his friend Tommy, the moment had passed. Will was himself again, laughing and making plans and kissing my temple as he passed.

I told myself I’d imagined it. The careful look. The words that didn’t match the tone.

I’d been doing that a lot, lately. Telling myself I’d imagined things.

***

That night, after Henry was asleep and the party plans were put away and the house had settled into its nighttime quiet, I found Will in his study. He was standing at the window, looking out at the hydrangeas, a glass of scotch in his hand.

“Hey.” I leaned against the doorframe. “You coming to bed?”

He didn’t turn around. “In a minute.”

“The quartet called back. They said they’d learn ‘Wonderwall’ if we really wanted it.”

That got a small smile, at least. “We don’t really want it.”

“I know. I just like watching you pretend to have opinions about music.”

He turned then, and there it was again. That look. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle and I was the missing piece.

“You’re doing it again,” I said.

“I’m looking. There’s a difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Staring is accidental.” He set down his glass and crossed to me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “Looking is on purpose.”

His hand came up to cup my face. His thumb traced my cheekbone, my jaw, the corner of my mouth. He was memorizing me. I’d seen him do it before, in quiet moments, like he was afraid I might disappear.

“Will,” I said softly. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not nothing. That’s a very specific kind of something.”

“I just love you.” His voice was rough. “That’s all. I just love you, and sometimes I forget to say it.”

He kissed me before I could respond. Deep and slow and thorough, the kind of kiss that usually led somewhere. I leaned into him, let myself get lost in it, tried to shake the feeling that the ground had shifted between us when I wasn’t looking.

When we pulled apart, his eyes searched mine for an answer I couldn’t name.

“Come to bed,” I said.

“In a minute. I want to finish my drink.”

“Will.”

“Blair.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite land. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”

I went.

I was almost at the stairs when his voice stopped me.

“Blair.”

I turned.

He was standing in the doorway of his study, backlit by the lamp, his face in shadow. I couldn’t read his expression. I couldn’t read anything about him just then, and that scared me more than I wanted to admit.

“How long is he staying?”