Chapter Eighteen
Willa
It took a solid four days before I felt human again. There was still some lingering congestion, but I felt rested, ache-free, and swallowing my spit no longer felt like razorblades.
Adelaide had been better a day before me—back to nursing her usual amount, breathing freely, and enjoying how much attention she was still getting from my family.
My parents had finally gone home the day before, replaced with Gracie and one of my aunts.
As much as I loved having everyone around to help when I was feeling so crummy, I was excited to get back to my usual routine. Plus, Owen.
Owen, who had been by my side every hour he wasn’t working, who brought me endless tea, medicine, and soup.
He pulled me close to sleep. Woke up to burp Adelaide each time I fed her. Then curled up with me again.
I knew it was early, but I felt the way I was falling, how he was on my mind every spare moment, how my heart swelled each time I saw him holding my daughter.
I once woke up to find him with Adelaide propped up on his legs as he made silly faces at her, getting big, gummy smiles out of her.
I swear my heart nearly burst out of my chest it got so big.
“I can stay,” Gracie insisted as I plucked a sleeping Adelaide out of her arms. “I don’t mind.”
“I’m ninety percent better. You should be back to your life. And back to your man.”
“So you can be back to your man?” she asked. Her smile was a little smug, and I guess she earned it. She’d been clocking me and Owen as a good potential couple for a while.
“He stayed while I was sick.”
“He made you minestrone soup. And broke down all your cardboard boxes in the garage. And ran the dishwasher and washing machine. He’s a good man, Wills. I have a good feeling about him. Not like, well, you know.”
I did know.
And I had to agree with her.
“Does he know?”
“Does he know what?”
“About Adelaide’s father and that whole situation?”
“No. I mean, I wasn’t deliberately keeping it from him. But we went from just client and contractor to… a lot more really quickly. Then I got sick, and…”
“You do plan to tell him, right?”
“Of course. I don’t want to keep anything from him.”
“And you have nothing to be embarrassed about. He was the bad guy here, not you.”
“I know.” Maybe there’d been a time back when the whole situation blew up when I’d been trying to blame myself for what happened.
I guess because the person really at fault refused to take any responsibility for his actions and their consequences.
That was a long time ago now, though. I was a new person now.
“I know it will probably be awkward, but if he’s going to be a part of your life and a sort of father figure to Adelaide, he really should know the whole story.”
“What story?” Owen asked, coming in the front door to a Golden Retriever who danced around his feet, nails tapping, tail wagging.
“Hey, Owen!” Gracie greeted. “I am heading out. Do you want me to walk Tuna before I go?”
“Actually, I could use some exercise after being stuck in bed for days. You up?”
“Yeah,” Owen said. “Sounds good.”
“Okay. I’m out then. Love you, pumpkin,” she said, rubbing Adelaide’s cheek. “Love you too,” she said to me. “You too, Owen.”
“Back at you,” Owen said. “I’ll grab the bottles of water.”
“I’ll grab the carriage.”
And it all felt so… normal. Domestic. Like we’d been doing it every evening since Adelaide was born.
“I wasn’t trying to change the subject, you know,” I said as we walked. Adelaide was wide awake and watching the sky. Tuna was sniffing every inch of the street.
“Hm?”
“When you came in the house and asked what we were talking about. I wasn’t changing the topic. I just wanted to get Gracie on her way before I, um, talked to you about something.”
“Uh oh,” he said, back tensing.
“It’s nothing bad. I just… I feel like I owe you the truth about, well, everything that, you know, created Adelaide.”
“Honey, you don’t owe me anything. I would like to know if you want to tell it, but that doesn’t have to be right now. Or a week or month or even year from now.”
“I don’t mind talking about it. It’s not as sore a subject as it used to be.”
When I didn’t immediately figure out how to launch into such a complicated conversation, Owen spoke. “I saw when you started dating someone. Two mugs instead of one, whiskey next to your wine, extra toothbrush. That probably sounds a lot creepier than I intended,” he said, wincing.
“No, it sounds like you’re observant. Which happens to be a quality I really admire in people. So, yeah, I was seeing someone. Obviously.” I gestured to Adelaide, who was desperately trying to shove her foot into her mouth.
“How’d you two meet?”
“That’s the part where I am a little bit at fault with this whole mess of a situation,” I admitted. “Chase was the guy who essentially has the same job as Martin, but in the London office.”
“And you’re not supposed to date coworkers?”
“Coworkers are fine. But I was a subordinate.”
“What I’m hearing is he crossed a line.”
“We both did.”
“Maybe. But he was the one in a position of power.”
“Yeah, but I knew what I was doing. And what I was risking. I think I just… didn’t care at the time. Chase, at first, was very charming. Very complimentary. Always positive. And he was the wine-and-dine sort. I think I was just… caught up in a bit of a love bomb and didn’t see it.”
My parents had. And my cousins. Basically, everyone who met Chase and saw us together clearly had reservations about him.
“So, it was good for a while.”
“A short while, yeah.”
“Because of long distance?”
“That wasn’t a huge issue. The company was working on an important account, so he had to keep flying back and forth.
I guess it was more that, once that initial honeymoon phase was over—I guess once he knew he had me—he suddenly was a lot more grumpy, full of criticisms, and hardly ever had something good to say.
But I was kind of all-in at that point.”
Maybe a part of me had been too prideful to admit that I’d been played, that I’d missed everything all the people around me had seen right away.
“Everything didn’t hit the fan until the stick showed me two lines.
” I sucked in a steadying breath. “Chase was back in London at the time. And that wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to tell him over the phone.
So I decided to wait until he came back.
But one day at work, I walked into Martin’s office.
He was on a call and he said something about saying hello to the wife and happy anniversary. I asked who he was talking to…”
“Oh, Willa,” Owen said, wincing.
“Yeah. It was Chase. One little search online and I would have figured that out. But I didn’t do that.
I just took him at his word that he hadn’t been in a relationship in a while.
There was no ring. I don’t even remember seeing a line on his finger where his finger would be protected from the sun.
But, I guess, London isn’t the sunniest area. And he had an inside job…”
“It wasn’t your job to investigate him. It was his responsibility to tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, exhaling hard. “Needless to say, though, I started looking into him then. Sure enough, he married a woman seven years before and adopted her two children. They have a flat in London. A vacation home in Greece. The kids attend private schools. It was the dream family.”
“Some men are never happy. Not even when they have it all.”
“Yeah. I doubt I was even the first affair. Just the only one that ended up with a positive pregnancy test.”
“Did you call him then? Or wait for him to come back?”
“I honestly didn’t trust myself not to punch him in the face if I saw him. I video-called him.”
I’d never forgotten the look on his face when I held up the pregnancy test and asked him if he wanted to tell his wife, or if I should.
“How’d he react?”
“He was… cold.” That was the best way to put it. His face froze; his voice was frigid. But nothing was as chilly as what he said. “He told me in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with the baby, or me, obviously.”
“He can’t make that decision, though, can he? You can’t just sign away your parental rights.”
“No, but he could make my life hell.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me I could either terminate the pregnancy or have it and raise it entirely without him, or he was going to… make up some lies and feed them to my boss.”
“He blackmailed you into letting him walk away from his responsibilities?”
“That’s about right, yeah.”
“But you have just as much dirt on him, don’t you? He overstepped by sleeping with a subordinate.”
“Yeah. But you forget one thing about my work…”
“The boys’ club.”
“Yep. Who are they going to side with if Chase came to them and said I was lying or trying to trap him and take all his money?”
“Wow. That is… something else.”
“Yeah, I really picked a winner there.”
“So you decided to let him go.”
“It wasn’t about my work, not really. I could find another job. Half of my family own their own businesses. But I didn’t want him in my life—or Adelaide’s life—if he didn’t want to be there.”
“I understand that.”
“I could have gone nuclear. Blown up my career, his, and his personal life. Just for him to be forced to claim heredity. But what would that accomplish? He would just be furious with me. Would maybe take it out on the baby. Or try to take her just to punish me.”
“None of your options were ideal,” Owen said.
“Exactly. I chose the one that felt the safest for Adelaide. I didn’t leave it on terrible terms, so if one day she is interested, and he is interested, they can work out a relationship. But until then, I’m fine with keeping my mouth shut and letting him pretend he doesn’t have a kid.”
“It put a lot on you, though.”
“Yeah, but I knew what choice I was making when I decided to have her. I knew that I had my family. A good job with great benefits. I could make it work.”
“You have been. Really well, too.”
“The more I think about it, though, the more I think I need out of that company. I’ve managed to avoid Chase up until now, but I won’t be able to forever. And I really don’t want to keep working at a place where I’m not respected the same as my colleagues.”
“I met your clients at that library event. They love you. You are clearly really good at your job.”
“Thanks. I am.”
“You should have no problem finding something new when the time is right.”
“Yeah, I’m going to finish my maternity leave, dip my toe in remote work just to be able to get my yearly bonus. Then I will start looking.”
“And Chase?”
“I know I probably shouldn’t say this because he is her father, but I kind of hope I don’t have to see him again.”
“And if he changes his mind?”
“I guess I’ll have to figure out how to be okay with him being in her life.”
“He doesn’t deserve her or to be around you, but I get what you’re saying.”
“I think we all deserve to know where we came from, even if it isn’t the ideal situation. But I’d be okay with her not meeting him until she is older and can talk and make her wishes known.”
“Well, it’s been over a year now, hasn’t it, since you’ve heard from him?”
“Yeah. Wow. A year already. Feels like it was just yesterday I was buying my first bottle of prenatal vitamins.”
“Feels like just yesterday I was fixing that leak in your basement,” he agreed, since that was around the same time.
I looked over.
“A lot has changed.”
“In my humble opinion, for the better,” he said, wrapping his free arm around me as Adelaide made a sweet mewling sound.
Yeah, definitely for the better.