Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
It was in my nature to say nothing. I had always prided myself on being the type of person who yielded results. My methods were unorthodox, but actions spoke louder than words. I didn’t have to explain myself. Not to fucking anyone. I’d lived like this for so long that, somehow, even Katherine believed that I’d knocked up Fiona.
Because I’d let her believe it. I’d let her think Fiona and I were together this whole time. That I preferred her to my wife. That I was every inch the bastard she painted me as.
I wasn’t a good person or the pinnacle of virtue, but I wasn’t the person she thought I was either. And I was tired of seeing that in her eyes. After Court and I had talked about the Ireland deal, I’d realized that I needed to make this right with Katherine. I’d tried calling her all week. I hadn’t been surprised that she was ignoring me. I’d been planning to track her down after this meeting with Fiona. But then… life had a funny way of throwing me under the bus.
I was done letting her believe the worst of me.
“We didn’t sleep together on Halloween, before or after,” I told her flatly. “And I didn’t knock her up. One, I am not that careless. And two, I would never do that to you.”
She paused at my words. The sincerity in them. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fiona,” I snarled. She jumped at my voice. The command in it. “Tell her.”
“Camden,” she whispered.
“Now,” I demanded. “Right now.”
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. “Personally, I’d be fine with letting you think that we’ve been sleeping together all this time and that it’s Camden’s baby.”
“But…” I ground out.
“But… it’s not,” she said in a huff. She lifted her gaze to mine. “Camden and I are just… friends.”
“Bullshit,” Katherine swore. “You’ve been sleeping together for years. You were sleeping together before we got together.”
“We did,” she said, withdrawing into herself. “Even up until… I don’t know, August?” She looked to me for confirmation, but I didn’t say or do anything. “We stopped when it was clear that he was only using me to get back at you.”
Katherine’s jaw dropped slightly at the words. She stared at Fiona as if she had sprouted a second head.
“So, now, we’re just friends,” Fiona said with bite in her voice. “Are you happy? You’ve taken everything from me. Just like you take everything from every other person you come in contact with. You’re a disease.”
“Fiona,” I growled.
“She is!” Fiona spat. “She ruins everyone’s life. Even yours, Camden. Especially yours. We had it good before you decided on this stupid arranged marriage.”
“That’s enough,” I said in a voice that silenced her completely. “If my life were perfect before, then why did I choose Katherine?”
Katherine looked back and forth between us, as if she, too, wanted the answer to that question. I’d never been forthright with why I’d picked her. We’d come to an agreement quickly, but it hadn’t been love between us. I still didn’t know what was between us. I just knew that I’d wanted Katherine, and when the opportunity had arisen for me to claim her, I hadn’t thought twice about the answer.
“I have no idea,” Fiona said. “Baffles me to this day.”
“Because she’s the one that I want.”
Tears pricked at Fiona’s eyes, and she looked away from me. “I know,” she whispered. “But I don’t understand it.”
Neither did I.
Neither did Katherine.
But it was the way it was.
I turned back to my wife. “I found out about Fiona’s pregnancy right after Thanksgiving. She has been out of the public eye since then. Both because she wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep the baby and because I assumed, as you did, that most people would think it was mine. And it is not.”
“Is that why you answered her call on New Year’s?” Katherine asked.
“Yes.”
Fiona looked between us in anger. “Just tell her I was going to get an abortion, Camden. She can’t think any less of me.”
“She obviously didn’t go through with it, but it was supposed to happen on New Year’s. That’s why she called. To tell me she couldn’t do it.”
Katherine’s eyes stayed on mine, as if she was trying to find the trick in my words. As if she couldn’t believe everything that I was telling her. That it all felt too far-fetched.
How could I expect her to forgive me? I’d blown up on her on her birthday for talking to Penn. I’d let her believe that Fiona and I were together for months after I stopped seeing her. I’d wanted to hurt her, to elicit a reaction out of my ice-princess wife.
Now that I was giving her the whole truth, I didn’t know if it was enough.