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“So whatever fantasies you’re harbouring towards my son, I’m telling you this to save you the embarrassment. It was a foolish indiscretion but now it’s over. Done with. You truly are better to forget he ever existed.” And then, with a slightly softer tone. “I know he’s forgotten all about you.”
She thought about telling Maria anyway. Or forcing her way into Xavier’s life. But to do so would have killed Ellie.
To see him and know that he wished they’d never met, to know that she’d always be a mistake to him. Would he view their son as a mistake? Would he loathe her for ruining his marriage? And wouldn’t she loathe herself anyway?
The wedding photos had cemented it.
She’d googled him and the pictures had popped up, taken from a Spanish street, the sun shining, the woman Ellie recognized from the hospital at his side.
And Ellie had cried, because Xavier looked so different, and so familiar.
His face was in profile, because he was looking at his bride, a smile on his face.
His body was thinner, but it was still, unmistakably, him.
He was married – but he might as well have been dead to her.
She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell in the past.
That weekend had been a mistake, for both of them. But only one of them had to live with the consequences.
Chapter 3
Present Day
“STOP.” HE SPOKE WITH natural authority, but she kept going, her legs carrying her towards the door. She needed to escape; she needed to breathe air that wasn’t his.
She needed not to hear him, to see him, to have him within reaching distance.
“Tell me your name.”
The words were a command but she heard something deep within them. A plea. She ignored him.
They had a son together and he couldn’t even remember who she was!
He was a pig. A disgusting, dishonest, cheating pig of a man. “ I can’t believe you don’t remember!” She snapped, shaking her head at her own stupidity.
“A few years ago, I was in a car accident,” he said gruffly. “You might have heard about it. I was in a coma for a little over a month. When I came to, I had no idea who I was.”
Ellie bit down on her lip, tears stinging her eyes, surprise and pain etching in her heart.
“For days,” the words rumbled through the room, hitting her square in the chest. “I couldn’t have told you my name, or my age. Then, things started to come back. Gradually. Too gradually for me.” The words were said with self-deprecation, but she understood the ache beneath them.
“And then more things, so that I remembered much of my life. But not all of it.”
Ellie turned around slowly, to face him, to read the truth in his expression, and she knew he wasn’t lying. He looked… lost. A surge of something like confusion was flooding her body. He’d had amnesia?
He lifted a hand, running a finger over his scarred cheek. “I was left physically scarred, but my brain was broken too.”
She swallowed, his confession melting her heart, when it shouldn’t have. His mother’s words were lodged in her brain like a sharp object she couldn’t ignore. She’d insisted that they’d spoken about Ellie. That he’d regretted sleeping with her.
Was it possible the older woman had lied? And when Ellie had been phoning to tell them news of her pregnancy?
Maria had lied. Hadn’t she heard something like panic in Maria’s voice? She’d wanted the wedding to go ahead and she’d said whatever she’d needed to in order to get rid of the other woman. And Ellie had believed her.
Did it matter? The man before her had lied too. He had been engaged. He’d married his fiancé. Nothing altered those facts, and so she focused on them rather than the sympathy that was threatening to soften her towards him.
“We were together before your accident,” she said stiffly. “You were very much engaged, with your memory intact, when you slept with me.”
