Chapter 6
OUT IN THE OPEN
The noise swallows us—string quartet, champagne glasses, three hundred people in black tie doing what rich people do at charity events, which is talk to each other and pretend the cause is why they came.
Clarence’s hand is on my lower back. Steering.
“There’s Rudy.” He lifts his chin toward the bar. “Come on.”
We cross the ballroom and I shake Rudy’s hand and Vanessa air-kisses my cheek and I ask about their kitchen renovation.
My jaw aches from the smile. The back of my dress is damp where Clarence’s palm has been pressing, and every time his thumb shifts against my spine I have to stop myself from arching away.
Vanessa asks about my restaurant project. I’m telling her about the Platte Street rollout—four locations, the black walnut bar top I sourced from a mill in Fort Collins—and she’s leaning in, and I can feel the pitch landing, when Clarence’s fingers dig into my spine.
“Ginny’s been busy.” He cuts across me with a laugh. “I keep telling her she needs to slow down before she burns out.”
Heat climbs the back of my neck. Vanessa’s smile goes tight. Rudy studies his drink.
“I’m not burning out. I just signed my fifth commercial client.”
“That’s incredible.” Vanessa squeezes my arm. “We should talk—I have friends looking for designers.”
“She’d love that.” Clarence is already pulling me away. “We need drinks—Rudy, you good?”
He walks me toward the bar without waiting for an answer.
My hands are fists at my sides and my molars are grinding so hard I feel it in my temples.
He did it again. Cut me down in front of a woman who was reaching for her wallet, and wrapped it in honey, take care of yourself so it sounds like love.
“Champagne,” I say.
He disappears into the crowd. My shoulders drop the second his hand lifts, and the ache that floods across my upper back tells me how tight I’ve been holding myself since we walked in.
I turn toward the auction displays—framed photos of kids in hospital beds, a rendering of the new surgical wing. I’m reading a donor placard when a voice behind me sends my stomach through the floor.
“Ginny?”
I turn.
Patrick Collier. Silver hair, dark suit, bourbon in his hand. Looking at me like I’m the only thing in this room worth crossing it for.
“I didn’t know you were attending tonight.”
My pulse hammers in my wrists, my throat, behind my ears. “My husband’s firm has a table. I didn’t know you were connected to the foundation.”
“Twelve years.” He steps closer. “Your husband didn’t mention it?”
“He didn’t mention a lot of things.”
His jaw tightens. He holds my gaze—unhurried, deliberate, like he’s taking his time with what he sees—and the skin along my collarbones prickles.
“You never returned my text.”
“My attorney told me to stay away from you.”
“Smart woman.” His eyes drop to my mouth for a half-second, then back up. “But you’re here.”
“I didn’t plan this.”
“Neither did I. And I’m still glad you’re standing in front of me.” He tilts his head. His expression opens—not soft, not careful. Direct. “You’re the kind of woman who’s always caught my eye, Ginny. Even when the timing is terrible.”
My face goes hot. The words land low—below my ribs, in the pit of my stomach, in places Clarence hasn’t reached in months, places I’d half-forgotten existed.
I’m staring at his mouth. I make myself stop and then I don’t make myself stop because why should I?
Why should I look away from a man who’s looking at me like I’m worth seeing?
“The timing is terrible,” I say.
“I know.”
“I have a divorce attorney. I’ll be filing soon.”
“Good.” He doesn’t break eye contact. “Then the timing gets better.”
My breath catches. My whole body is pulling toward him—chest, hips, the balls of my feet—and I can feel the heat coming off his skin and I want to close the distance so badly my hands are shaking.
The entrance doors swing wide.
Annabelle walks in.
Emerald dress. Dark hair up. Scanning the room with the ease of a woman who owns it.
And she is pregnant. Five months, at least—the dress curving around her belly, her hand resting on top of it like a crown on a pedestal.
The floor drops. My hand flies back and catches the auction table and a pen holder clatters sideways because my knees just unlocked and the only thing keeping me upright is my grip on the linen.
She’s carrying my husband’s baby.
She’s carrying his child and he knew. He put his hand on my back and walked me through the front door of her family’s gala knowing she’d be standing here with his baby inside her.
This wasn’t careless. This was a choice.
He chose to bring his wife to the same room as his pregnant mistress and bet that he could manage it.
The fury is white-hot. It fills my chest, my throat, my skull—expanding, pressurizing, burning the shock away until my vision sharpens and my hands go still and my heartbeat drops to a hard, steady hammer.
Annabelle’s eyes find Patrick. The proud smile starts.
Then she sees me.
It drops off her face. Her gaze snaps from her father to me and back and her mouth parts and the color drains out of her so fast she grabs the arm of the man beside her.
Clarence materializes at my shoulder. “Here—oh.”
Champagne extended. Eyes locked on Annabelle. On her belly.
I look at my husband’s face—the slack jaw, the stalled eyes, the expression of a man whose parallel lives just collapsed into the same room.
“How long have you known she’s pregnant?”
The color leaves his face.
“Ginny—”
“How. Long.”
“A couple months.” He swallows.
“And you brought me here.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. And I feel it—the fury crystallizing into a cold, bright blade behind my sternum, every jagged edge aimed directly at him.
Annabelle crosses the ballroom toward Patrick. Her hand is pressed flat against her belly—not protective. Look at this. This is real. This is yours.
Clarence grabs my elbow. “We need to leave. Right now.”
I rip my arm free. “Don’t touch me.”
“Ginny, listen—”
“You got her pregnant.” The words come out quiet and lethal. “And you brought me to her family’s gala.”
“I didn’t think she’d show—”
“You brought your wife to a ballroom full of people and you knew your pregnant mistress would be here.” I step into him.
My voice is shaking, but my hands are steady and my eyes are dry and the rage pumping through me feels like jet fuel.
“Were you ever going to tell me? Or was I just supposed to find out like this?”
“It’s complicated—”
“It’s a baby, Clarence. There’s nothing complicated about it.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I have a divorce attorney.” The words taste like the first clean thing I’ve swallowed in months. “Paulina Klein. I’m filing this week.”
His face goes white. His jaw works but nothing comes out. For the first time since I’ve known him, Clarence doesn’t have a version of himself ready for the room.
“You can’t—Ginny, you’re upset, you’re not thinking clearly—”
“I’m thinking clearly for the first time since I married you.”
“We can talk about this at home—”
“There’s nothing to talk about. You made your choice.
You made it eight months ago when you started fucking her, and you made it again when you got her pregnant, and you made it tonight when you walked me through that door.
” I step back. The calm is absolute. “Go find her. Go live with your college slut and play house with the baby you made behind my back. I hope she’s worth it. ”
“You don’t get to just—”
“I just did.”
I turn my back on him. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard it hurts but my spine is straight and my hands are still and I walk away from my husband without looking back.
Across the room, Annabelle’s hands are cutting the air in front of Patrick—fast, furious, desperate.
She presses her palm against her belly again.
Patrick’s face is stone. He says a single short sentence, and Annabelle flinches so hard her shoulders jerk back.
He says more—longer, quieter—and I watch her face break open.
Her hand reaches for his arm and he steps back, and the tiny distance he puts between them is final.
Annabelle turns. Walks toward the service doors. Her heels crack the marble in jagged beats and the emerald dress disappears through the exit.
Clarence is across the room. Phone pressed to his ear, free hand raking through his hair. Chasing. The same pattern Patrick described from twenty years ago—she yanks, he runs.
I pick up the champagne he handed me. Catch his eye over his shoulder. Hold the glass up.
He stares.
I drink. Set the glass down. Walk toward the balcony doors.
The cold hits my bare back and arms and I grip the stone railing and my body folds forward and a sound comes out of me—low, ragged, furious.
The tears burn down my cheeks and I grip the stone and let them come because there’s nobody out here to perform for.
My chest is cracked wide open and the rage is still pouring through it—white-hot, electric—and underneath the rage, the image that won’t stop: her belly in that dress.
The curve of it. Her hand resting on top of it.
My husband made a child with her. And I found out in a ballroom.
The balcony door opens. Closes. Footsteps on the stone.
I know it’s him before he speaks. My shoulders drop. My breathing slows. Every locked muscle in my body releases at once because the person behind me is safe.
“What do you need?” Patrick’s voice. Low, close.
I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. “I need to not be in that room.”
“Done.” He leans against the railing beside me. His arm presses mine—warm through the fabric of his jacket, solid. “You don’t have to go back in there.”
“I told him.” My voice is raw. “I told him I’m filing.”
“How did he take it?”
A laugh scrapes out of my throat. “He told me I’m not thinking clearly.”
“Of course he did.”
“I called her—” I stop. Press my lips together. “I said things I’m not proud of.”
“You’re allowed to be angry, Ginny.”
“I’m so far past angry I don’t have a word for it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. The city hums below us. The wind pulls at my dress.
“She played the pregnancy,” he says. “Told me this is real, that I should be happy, that she’s finally building a life worth living.
” His voice is rough. Stripped bare. “I told her I’ve watched her chase this same pattern since college—unavailable men, someone else’s husband, and then my checkbook to clean up the wreckage.
The money stops tonight. The apartment. All of it. ”
“Patrick.”
“I cut my pregnant daughter off tonight.” The muscle in his jaw jumps. His eyes are wet. His hands are gripping the railing so hard his knuckles have gone white. “Because she’s using my grandchild as a bargaining chip, and if I keep paying for it, she’ll never stop.”
I put my hand over his on the railing. His fingers turn under mine and close around them and hold on.
“That was the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Yes.”
“And the right one.”
He turns to face me. His free hand comes up and his thumb catches a tear on my cheekbone and the gentleness of it—after Clarence’s grip on my elbow, after months of reaching for a man who pulled away—breaks the last wall I have left.
My breath shudders out of me and my hand tightens on his and I don’t look away.
“You deserved better than this tonight,” he says. “You deserve better than him.”
“I know.” Barely a whisper. “I’ve known for a while.”
His thumb is still on my cheek. His eyes are dark and close and I can feel his breath and my body is leaning into him, my hand gripping his, every inch of skin where we’re touching lit up and alive and aching for more.
I close the gap.
His mouth is warm. His hand slides from my cheek into my hair and pulls me closer and the kiss is slow and firm and unhurried, and it reaches every place I’ve been hurting—the place that flinched when Clarence rolled his shoulder away from me, the place that shattered when I read boring but stable, the place that’s been whispering what’s wrong with you for months—and quiets all of them.
The fury stops. The ringing stops. His mouth and his hands and his chest against mine and quiet.
He pulls back. Forehead against mine.
“Come home with me,” he says.
I don’t feel boring.