17. Reid
— ? —
Reid
I wanted to kill every Chadwick alive.
I wouldn’t, obviously. I was a civilized man with a fifteen-year plan that didn’t include prison time. But sitting at the bar with a whiskey I wasn’t drinking, watching the amber liquid catch the light, I kept replaying the moment in my head.
The way she’d shaken in my arms in that parking lot. The sound of her crying, not delicate tears, but deep, body-wracking sobs that seemed to come from somewhere primal. Seven years of grief pouring out of her all at once.
They had drugged her. For seven years. They had made her believe she was broken, made her apologize for something that wasn’t her fault, made her grateful for their sympathy while they were the ones causing her pain.
I was going to burn them to the ground. Every single one of them.
Blythe had wanted to be alone tonight. “Just for a few hours,” she’d said. “I need to think.” I’d understood, even though leaving her felt like tearing off a limb. So I’d come here instead, to the bar where everything had started, and I was pointedly ignoring the table in the corner.
Stan was there. Sandrine. Ivy with her phone out, as always. A collection of Newport’s finest, laughing and drinking and having no idea that their world was about to collapse.
My phone buzzed. A text from Blythe.
Where are you?
The bar.
Maybe I’ll come.
My whole body perked up instantly. I set down the whiskey and pushed it away, suddenly not interested in alcohol at all.
I was like a dog. She’d trained me. I didn’t mind.
“Reid.”
I turned. Blair Beaumont was sliding onto the stool beside me, her expression carefully neutral.
“Blair.” I nodded. “How are you?”
“Fine. Worried about Blythe.” She signaled the bartender. “Gin and tonic, please. Light on the tonic.”
“She’s doing okay. All things considered.”
“Is she?” Blair studied me with sharp eyes. “Because from where I’m sitting, she’s just survived her own husband, her entire family has picked his side, and she’s married to a man she barely knows who may or may not be hiding something from her.”
I went very still.
“I’m not hiding-”
“Don’t.” Blair’s voice was soft but firm. “I’ve been married long enough to know what secrets look like. And you’ve got one written all over your face.”
I didn’t answer. The bartender set down her drink. She took a long sip before speaking again.
“You’re in love with her.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I said. Because I couldn’t lie to a direct question.
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Is there something else she doesn’t know?”
The silence stretched between us. I could feel Blair reading me, cataloging every twitch and tension.
“I thought so.” She set down her glass. “Reid, I’m going to tell you something I learned the hard way.
Secrets in a marriage are like termites.
They eat away at the foundation until one day the whole thing collapses, and you’re standing in the rubble wondering why you didn’t just call the exterminator. ”
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is.” She turned to face me fully. “Tell her. Whatever it is, tell her before someone else does. It will not matter that you were going to tell her eventually. It will only ever matter that you didn’t.”
I nodded slowly. She was right. I knew she was right. But the thought of telling Blythe, of watching her face when she understood why I’d really come to Newport, what I’d been planning all along, made my chest seize up.
Blair hesitated before she stood.
“Is she okay?” she asked quietly. “I want to talk to her, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t make things worse.”
I frowned. “Why would it make things worse?”
“Because - she might want to forget everything about the pregnancy right now. Considering what she’s been through.” Blair’s expression was sympathetic. “Finding out like that, in front of everyone…”
I went cold.
“What did you just say?”
Blair’s face went pale. “You haven’t read Posy’s column?”
I grabbed my phone. Searched for the society page. Found today’s entry.
A Navarro Heir, Ahead of Schedule
Sources confirm that Blythe Navarro, née Montrose, née Chadwick, is expecting her first child, though the timeline raises some interesting questions.
Married less than a month to hedge fund manager Reid Navarro, and already eleven weeks along?
One has to wonder if the new husband knows he’s raising another man’s baby…
The article went on. Speculation, innuendo, thinly veiled accusations. By the time I finished reading, my hands were shaking.
Everyone knew.
The whole town knew she was pregnant before she’d told a single living person. A clinic three towns over, picked because nobody there knew our faces, and it hadn’t mattered, because somewhere between a blood draw and a fax machine, someone at a lab had made themselves some Christmas money.
“She’s on her way here.” Blair’s voice was urgent. “You have to stop her. She can’t walk into-”
“Fuck.” I was already standing, already moving toward the door. “I need to go.”
I made it three steps before Stan’s voice cut across the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” He was on his feet, glass raised, his voice carrying to every corner of the bar. “I’d like to make a toast.”
The room quieted. I stopped, caught between the door and the disaster unfolding behind me.
“To Blythe Navarro,” Stan said, his smile vicious. “And her miraculous pregnancy.”
Scattered laughter. Someone clinked a glass.
“I just want to set the record straight,” Stan continued. “That baby isn’t mine. I don’t even think it’s real. She can’t get pregnant - ask any doctor in this state.” He paused for effect. “And fuck, we tried hard. If you know what I mean.”
The table erupted in laughter. The whole room, laughing at my wife.
I knew half the faces, two board members who’d shaken my hand on Tuesday, a committee chair who’d begged Blythe for gala help in June, a man whose marina fees I paid.
Laughing. Someone had a phone up, filming.
And at the far end of the bar, half in shadow, Posy Wetherell had gone very still over her notebook, her pen moving, her face doing the thing a columnist’s face does when the story writes itself.
Sandrine nodded sorrowfully. “It’s true. We’ve been managing this situation for years. The poor dear just can’t accept reality.”
And then Priscilla, her own mother, said it out loud: “She’s always been a liar. Even as a child.”
I was going to kill them. I was actually going to commit murder in front of a room full of witnesses-
“Reid.”
Blythe’s voice. Behind me.
I spun around.
She was standing in the doorway. She must have just arrived, her chin was high, her cheeks flushed. And she’d heard everything.
The whole room went silent.
I moved toward her, but she was already walking. Not toward the exit. Toward me.
She crossed the room with her head high and her shoulders back, and when she reached me, she took my hand.
The table had gone quiet. Stan’s smirk faltered. Sandrine’s face went carefully blank.
Blythe turned to face them.
“I’m so glad to see I’m still the main topic of conversation.” Her voice was steady, pleasant. “Even after divorcing you, Stan. Though it’s getting a bit concerning, honestly. You being this obsessed with me.” She tilted her head. “It isn’t healthy. It’s time to let go, okay?”
She pouted at him. Actually pouted, like he was a child throwing a tantrum.
“And don’t worry about the timeline,” Blythe continued.
“Posy always gets it wrong.” She paused, letting the whole room lean in.
“You spent seven years letting everyone believe I was the broken one. The specialists, the tests, all of it my fault. Funny how that story falls apart the second I’m out of your house.
” She smiled, sweet as poison. “You might want to ask yourself which of us was really the problem, Stan.”
Stan’s face went red.
“You let them point the finger at me for years,” she went on, “while you knew exactly why those tests kept coming back the way they did. Didn’t you, Stan?
” She let that land, then smiled up at me.
“Some men would rather a woman think she’s broken than admit what they’ve done.
I’m just glad I got out before I believed it for good. Isn’t that right, darling?”
And she winked at me.
I was so fucking hard.
“Absolutely, darling.” I smirked at Stan. “Go easy on him. Some men peak early and spend the rest of their lives pretending it was everyone else’s fault.”
Beat.
“If you’ll excuse us.”
The table erupted. I heard Stan shouting, heard chairs scraping, heard the chaos of the whole bar talking at once.
We made it outside. The night air was cool and clean.
And then Stan burst through the door behind us.
“You fucking bitch.” He was red-faced, breathing hard. “You think you can come in here and embarrass me? After everything I did for you?”
“Stan.” I stepped in front of Blythe. “Go back inside.”
“Fuck you.” He jabbed a finger at me. “You don’t know what she’s like. She’s crazy. She’s been crazy for years. And that baby - that baby could be anyone’s. She probably fucked half of Newport while we were married-”
I hit him.
One punch, clean and hard, right across the jaw. He dropped like a stone.
Then, for good measure, I grabbed my wife and kissed her.
I kissed her the way I’d wanted to kiss her for weeks, deep and desperate, my hands in her hair, her body pressed against mine. I kissed her until I forgot we were standing in a parking lot, until I forgot Stan was groaning on the ground three feet away.
When I pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
“That,” I said, looking down at Stan, “is how you treat the woman you love, you fucking asshole.”
I didn’t even register what I’d just said.
We walked to the car. I opened her door. She slid inside. I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the lot, leaving Stan crumpled on the pavement.
Neither of us mentioned it.
Neither of us mentioned the word I’d said out loud, the confession I’d made without meaning to. We drove in silence, and I pretended it was nothing, and she pretended she hadn’t heard.
But it wasn’t nothing.
I loved her. I loved her so much it scared me. And I didn’t know how much longer I could pretend otherwise.