“I’ll lie to the world,” she said, her hands trembling now, “because no woman should have to hold a newborn while watching her husband’s betrayal splashed across headlines.”
Jacob’s head bowed. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Caroline looked at him—really looked. At the man who used to be her anchor. At the stranger who had broken her heart. She wanted to hate him more than she did. She wanted the clean lines of rage to carry her through this, but grief blurred everything and left her hollow and aching.
“Get out of my kitchen.”
He obeyed, his footsteps retreating down the hall.
She stayed behind, hands braced on the counter, chest heaving. The silence pressed down on her until even her own breath felt foreign. Years of marriage, years of building a life together, and this was what remained: a man walking away, leaving her to stare at the ruins.
Chapter 37
Liam
Liam was awake before six, rising out of habit rather than rest. The routine carried him forward on autopilot—shower, clothes, coffee—each step a bid to keep his mind blank, to stop last night from replaying in sharp fragments. If he moved quickly enough, maybe he wouldn’t picture Jacob’s hands gripping his hips, or hear the rough rasp of his voice—undone in a way Liam had never heard before.
You ruined me.
On the way home, Emma had chattered about the party, full of stories and laughter, while he carried those words with him, lodged beneath his ribs. After a shower, he had slipped into bed next to her and stared at the ceiling until dawn, hoping for forgiveness. None came.
His phone buzzed across the kitchen counter.
Studio PR:Press meeting rescheduled. Jacob cancelled. We’ll be in touch.
He frowned, reading it twice. Jacob didn’t cancel: not meetings, not press, not anything that carried the studio’s stamp of importance. Unreliability wasn’t in his nature. Liam lingered over the words, trying to make sense of them, before thumbing out a quick text to Jacob.
Me:Everything okay?
The answer came minutes later.
Jacob:Can’t talk. I’ll explain later.
That was when the unease began to settle in—an itch beneath the skin. He drifted into the kitchen, dropped bread into the toaster, and topped up his mug. He kept circling the counter, restless, unable to burn off the energy inside him. It wasn’t panic, just the sense that something had shifted without warning.
Hours stretched. He brought Emma breakfast in bed, scrolled through messages from his agent, and scrubbed down the kitchen until it gleamed. Nothing stuck. Each distraction finished too quickly, leaving him drifting back to the silence of his phone.
By midafternoon the hum in his chest had grown harder to ignore. He was pacing the length of the living room when the screen finally lit up again.
Jacob:Can we talk in private?
His pulse kicked hard enough to stagger him. A second message followed immediately.
Jacob:I’m here. [location attached]
Liam didn’t waste time on a reply. Keys in hand, he was already moving, the door closing behind him with a weight that matched the knot forming in his stomach.
***
The house wasn’t visible from the road, hidden behind a tall gate that sealed off the driveway from view. Liam slowedat the keypad and waited as the iron bars slid back with a low mechanical groan. The property sat deep off the street—the kind of seclusion that whispered money. With all clean angles and tall panes of glass, the house embodied a certain Los Angeles modernism: polished, anonymous, waiting for someone to inhabit the fantasy.
Jacob’s SUV was the only one on the gravel drive. Liam parked next to it and cut the engine. He sat there for a beat, his hand resting on the key. He hadn’t known what he expected to find here, but the weight in his chest told him he was about to find something big.
The gravel shifted beneath his shoes as he crossed to the door, left open just a crack for him. He didn’t knock. Inside, the air conditioning poured cold into a space that looked lived in only on the surface. Neutral furniture, impersonal artwork, the faint manufactured scent of something floral that didn’t quite belong to anyone. It was a house arranged for occupancy, not a life.
Jacob sat on the edge of a low gray couch, elbows braced against his knees, head bowed. He looked as though he had been sitting in that exact position for hours, held together only by stillness.
He raised his head when he heard Liam step inside and the sight of him hollowed Liam out. Jacob’s face carried exhaustion so complete it seemed etched into his bones. He looked crushed, stripped of the polish and control that usually shielded him from the world.
