Page 56 of Discretion at Its Finest

Alexander didn’t offer sympathy or apologize for asking. “You seem to be handling it…”

A humorless laugh broke from my chest, the sound bitter. “Am I?”

He didn’t answer.

I leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a moment before letting the truth slip out, low and dangerous.

“The night of the gala,” I said. “When I found out. What I did to her on the balcony… in the middle of the party.”

Alexander’s expression didn’t change, but he understood enough.

“She looked at me like she remembered everything. Like she still felt everything between us, and knew exactly what had been weighing on my mind the entire night.” My jaw locked. “And she still didn’t tell me he was mine.”

The bitterness crawled up my throat. “I should hate her,” I murmured. “I do. But that night… she let me close. Closer than she should’ve.” I shook my head. “She let me kiss her like the last three years never happened. Let me touch her like she hadn’t carved me out of her life.”

I lowered my gaze from the ceiling, back to the table filled with the hollow remains of Gregory’s failures, the financial ruin I’d come here to control.

“She let me have her,” I said quietly, “knowing what she kept from me.”

And I was going to use that, every moment of weakness, every confession, to force the truth from her once and for all. “But I’ll get the truth out of her. One way or another.”

“What’s your next move?” he asked.

“I take them with me,” I said. “Both of them. To California.”

Alexander raised an eyebrow. “She agreed?”

“She doesn’t have a choice but to.” I met his stare. “She took my choice from me three years ago. I’m not giving her another one.”

My mother spent her whole life regretting the choice she made to stay with Raymond. She’d never say it, but I knew she did.

I wasn’t letting Genevieve make that decision for both of us.

Chapter twenty-three

Genevieve

Ididn’t remember the drive home. One minute I was watching Eugene swing between us, his small hand gripping mine, the other wrapped around Reid’s like it was the most natural thing in the world. The next, I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, still dressed, shoes kicked somewhere near the door, mascara smudged at the corners of my eyes from the tears that slipped despite everything in me trying not to let them.

My brain refused to quiet.

Every time I blinked, something new surfaced. Reid’s hands on me against the balcony rail. His voice against my throat, broken and angry. His question:

Why didn’t you tell me when you were pregnant with him?

It kept echoing in the depths of my skull.

But just as unbearable was the memory of him at the soccer field, his calm nods, his small smile at Eugene’s growl, his hand catching his shoulder like it was instinct. Like he’d done it a thousand times.

He shouldn’t be that good with him. He shouldn’t care that much or fit so seamlessly into that moment that it felt like the life we should’ve had.

My chest tightened and I turned onto my side, drawing a shaky breath.

Because I ruined that… I ruined everything.

And now it was all coming back in way I couldn’t deal with fast enough.

I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, willing myself to stop replaying it. The way he touched me before he walked away, his shoulders tightening as though leaving me cost him something he didn’t want to admit.