13. Fran
— ? —
Fran
We end up at the coffee shop on Main Street because I refuse to have this conversation in Bree’s living room with Rosie underfoot and Rafael hovering protectively in the doorway.
The shop is nearly empty, mid-afternoon lull, just us and a teenager behind the counter who’s more interested in her phone than in the obvious tension radiating off the couple in the corner booth.
I order herbal tea because apparently that’s my life now, and Logan orders black tea and doesn’t touch it.
“You’re pregnant,” he says, like he still can’t quite believe it.
“We’ve established that.” I wrap my hands around my cup, grateful for something to do with them. “Nineteen weeks. I found out at the hospital, after the fire. They did blood tests - standard procedure, apparently - and told me I was about six weeks along.”
He’s doing the math. I can see it on his face, the way his eyes unfocus slightly as he counts backward.
“About a month before the fire,” he says quietly. “That night in the bedroom.”
“Probably.” I take a sip of my herbal tea, which tastes like disappointment. “The timing fits.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
It’s the question I’ve been dreading, the one I’ve been rehearsing answers to for three months.
I’ve got a dozen versions, some angry, some defensive, some designed to wound.
But sitting here across from him, watching his face cycle through emotions he’s clearly not used to showing, I find I don’t want to use any of them.
“Because I didn’t trust you,” I say simply. “Because I’d spent nineteen months trying to reach you and getting nothing back. Because I woke up in a hospital bed alone and scared and I didn’t believe you’d be there for me. For us.”
He flinches, and good, he should.
“I would have been there.” His voice is rough. “If you’d told me-”
“Would you?” I set down my cup. “Really? Because the Logan I was married to couldn’t even remember to come home for dinner.
The Logan I was married to brought another woman into our house to eat food I made for him.
The Logan I was married to stood on a stage and dedicated his life’s work to someone else while I watched from the audience and tried not to cry. ”
“I know.” He says it without defense, without excuse. “I know all of that. And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix it.”
“I know that too.” He finally looks up at me, and there’s something raw in his eyes that I’ve never seen before, not even in those late-night moments when the real Logan emerged.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me, Fran.
I’m not asking for anything. I just - I need you to understand that I see it now.
All of it. Every time I made you feel invisible, every time I chose silence over honesty, every time I let you be lonely in our own house.
” His voice cracks. “I see it, and I hate myself for it.”
I want to stay angry. Anger is easier than whatever this is, this complicated tangle of hurt and hope and the treacherous part of me that still wants to believe him.
“Tell me about Sloane,” I say instead, because I need to know. Not the whole truth, since I’m nowhere near ready for that conversation, but something. Some acknowledgment of what he let happen.
His jaw tightens. “I ended things with her. After the fire. I called her and told her we were done - no more friendship, no more contact, nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because she lied to me.” His hands clench around his teacup.
“That night, when I got home - she was on the lawn. Crying. Playing the victim. And I asked her where you were, and she pointed me away from the house. Told me you weren’t inside.
” He takes a breath. “You were choking on smoke twenty feet above my head, and she told me you weren’t there. ”
The memory surfaces, Sloane’s voice through the bedroom door, the smell of smoke, the terror of being trapped. I push it down. Not now.
“So you believe she knew I was inside?”
“I believe she lied. I believe that lie almost cost me everything.” He meets my eyes. “I don’t know exactly what happened that night, Fran. But I know enough to be done with her forever.”
It’s not enough. He doesn’t know the half of it, the lock, the key, the three-day ultimatum, Sloane’s voice taunting me through the door while she watched the house burn. He doesn’t know that his childhood friend tried to murder me, and I’m not ready to tell him.
But he believes something was wrong. He cut her off. It’s a start.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” Logan says, and something in his tone makes my stomach clench. “About why we got married.”
“I know why we got married. Business arrangement. Family alliance. Convenient timing.”
“There was more to it than that.” He looks down at his hands. “My grandmother had a clause in her will. I couldn’t inherit anything - not a cent of the Davis fortune - until I’d been married for two years.”
The words land like stones dropped into still water.
“You married me for money.” My voice is flat.
“My parents suggested Sloane first.” He still won’t look at me. “I refused. I never wanted her, not like that. She was a family friend, nothing more.”
“So how did you end up with me?”
“Our fathers already had business connections. When I turned down Sloane, my father found another option.” His voice is flat, reciting facts he’s ashamed of.
“He remembered Rafael’s wife had a cousin.
Someone outside our usual circles, someone who might agree to the arrangement for her own reasons. That’s how your name came up.”
I should be angry. I should be furious, actually. This is exactly the kind of information a person deserves to have before they sign their life away to a stranger. But somehow, hearing him say it out loud, I just feel tired. Tired and unsurprised and oddly relieved to finally have it confirmed.
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I should have told you before the courthouse.” He shakes his head. “I was ashamed. A grown man whose family had to shop for a wife so he could collect a trust fund. I wanted you to see me as something more than that, even when I wasn’t.”
“So what changed?”
“You left.” His voice drops. “You left, and I realized that none of it mattered - not the money, not my family’s expectations, not any of it. The only thing that mattered was you, and I’d already lost you.”
“And?”
“And I called my lawyer. About a month after the fire.” He takes a breath. “I relinquished my claim to the inheritance. All of it. I don’t want money that came with strings attached.”
I stare at him. “You gave up your grandmother’s fortune.”
“It’s not my fortune. It was never my fortune.” He says it simply, like it’s obvious. “I have my own money - earned, not inherited. My pieces sell for enough to live on. More than enough.”
“That’s still millions of dollars, Logan.”
“I know.” He holds my gaze. “I also know that every cent of it would have reminded me of what I did to you. What I let this marriage become. I couldn’t live with that.”
I don’t know what to say. I came into this conversation expecting excuses, deflections, the same walls I’d been beating against for nineteen months. Instead I’m getting honesty, painful, uncomfortable honesty that doesn’t make anything better but somehow makes everything clearer.
“There’s something else,” he says. “Your flower farm. The deed your father held.”
My heart stutters. “What about it?”
“I bought it.” He holds up a hand before I can interrupt. “With my own money. Not Davis money, not inheritance money - funds I earned from commissions over the years. And I’ve had the paperwork prepared to put it in your name. Unconditionally. Nothing you have to do in return.”
“You bought my farm.”
“The transfer documents are ready whenever you want them.” He pulls a folded document from his jacket pocket and slides it across the table.
“I’ve been carrying a copy since the transaction went through, in case I ever got the chance to explain.
Your lawyer can review everything first. There’s a clear paper trail, nothing hidden. ”
I stare at the document without touching it. My farm. My land. The flowers I built from nothing, the life I was terrified I’d never get back.
“Why?” My voice is barely a whisper. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you built that farm with your own hands. Because your father had no right to hold it over your head. Because-” He stops, swallows hard.
“Because I love you. I’ve loved you since that first night in the kitchen, when you ate cereal with me in the dark and didn’t expect me to be anyone other than who I am. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
The words hang in the air between us. Twenty-two months of marriage, nineteen together, three apart, and this is the first time he’s ever told me he loves me in daylight.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” I say honestly.
“Any of it. The inheritance, the farm, the-” I gesture vaguely at my stomach.
“I came here to get away from you. To figure out who I am without you. And now you’re sitting across from me saying all the things I needed to hear a year ago, and I don’t know if I can trust it. ”
“You don’t have to trust it.” His voice is steady.
“You don’t have to do anything. The farm is yours to claim whenever you’re ready - no conditions, no timeline.
The baby-” His voice catches. “The baby is yours too. I’m not going to fight you for custody or demand anything.
I just want to be part of their life, if you’ll let me. ”
“And if I won’t?”
“Then I’ll respect that.” He says it like it costs him everything. “I’ll stay away. I’ll send support. I’ll be whatever kind of father you’re comfortable with, even if that means not being one at all.”