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I peek down at my phone to check the name. “Deerfield something.”
She goes pale almost immediately. The color drains from her face so fast that I’m afraid she’s having some kind of heart attack. I lean forward and grab her arm. “Wren?”
She blinks fast, rips away from me, and launches herself to her feet. She looks like she wants to sprint out of here, but she settles for pacing back and forth in wild, random circles.
“What is wrong with you?” I demand.
“Th-the client,” she stammers. “You said you haven’t met him yet?”
I stand up and place myself in front of her. She doesn’t even seem to notice. “Wren, what’s going on?”
“Is his name William Deerfield? It is, isn’t it?”
Even her lips are chalk-white. I want to bite them, if only to bring the color back.
“For fuck’s sake, Wren, will you tell me what’s going on?”
Her eyes flicker to me reluctantly. “We’ve, uh… we’ve… crossed paths in the past.”
That’s all it takes to put my heart in my throat. I can feel my pulse in my wrists and temples as I drag her toward the couch. “Sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“Sit down anyway.”
Surprisingly, she listens. She lets me steer her to a seat, though she keeps chewing on the inside of her cheek the entire time.
“Talk to me. How do you know him?”
“I don’t know him. Not really. Not anymore.”
If I weren’t so impatient to get this story out of her, I might’ve smiled. “You’re carrying my baby, Wren. You’ve also made fast friends with my fake future wife. Like it or not, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. We may as well get to know each other.”
She squints at me suspiciously. “I’ll remind you of that the next time I want to know something about you.”
She keeps scratching at her cuticles, that leg of hers vibrating up and down. I’ve never seen her so agitated before.
“Wren—”
“We were involved,” she blurts out. Her lips press together like it disgusts her to even say the words. “We were… together. But I… He… Fuck, I don’t even know how to say this. I found out he was married.”
My pulse doubles, triples, pounding harder and faster through my veins. The fear on her face makes me sick to my stomach.
“I know this sounds like an excuse,” she continues, “but honestly, I didn’t know he was still with his wife when we were together.” She grabs one of the fuzzy white throw pillows and hugs it to her chest. “He told me they were divorced. And I actually believed him. For a year and a half, I didn’t suspect a damn thing.”
I’m burning hot with a feeling I barely recognize. But as foreign as it is, I know the name of it.
Jealousy.
Jealous that this smug fuck ever touched her. Furious that he lied to her.
But that all pales in the face of what she says next.
“And then…” Her voice quivers. “I got pregnant.”
“You got… pregnant?” I repeat slowly.
Her nod seems more like a cringe. “I was twenty-five. I wasn’t ready, but I was… happy,” she explains softly. “I was naïve enough to believe he would be, too.”
