Then I see her face change.
“What’s your number?” she asks. Her voice is suddenly tight. She looks pale, like she’s just seen a ghost.
I give it to her digit by digit, while she stares, her hand rising slowly to her forehead.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “Spencer… I’ve had the wrong number. I had the last digit as a 1, not a 7.”
Her distress is so immediate, so real, I try to lighten the moment.
“Probably my damn handwriting,” I say. “It gets worse by the year. You know—old-school pixel vs. paper dilemma.”
But it’s like she’s not even hearing me.
“I can’t believe it,” she says, voice breaking. “I had the wrong number. And the woman… the woman was your sister.”
That stops me cold.
“What woman?” I ask slowly.
“When you didn’t respond to my texts, I went to your company’s website to see if I could find another way to contact you. And there you were. At some kindof family appreciation picnic. With a woman and a child. I just assumed…”
“That it was my wife and kid,” I finish for her. My voice is like gravel. “Of course you did.”
Because that’s what the optics were designed to do. One fucking PR stunt after another. Keep the vultures away. Keep me untouchable.
But this time? This time it cost me.
“It was the next day.” Her voice trembles. “The photo was dated the next day. I thought you’d gone straight from me… to a picnic with…them.” She’s crying now, “But Isabelle told me it was your sister and nephew.”
I don’t hesitate. I reach for her, pull her close, and she collapses into my chest, sobbing. Her entire body shakes against mine. And somewhere beneath the ache in my ribs, I feel the sting of my own tears.
Two years.
Two lost, aching, wasted years.
The hardest years of my life—and I could’ve had her beside me.
If only I’d written more clearly.
If only I’d reached out first.
If only I hadn’t let the PR team drag me into one more perfect, staged lie.
If only.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, holding her tighter. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”
TWENTY-ONE
RHEA
I don’t sleep. Not really.
I toss. I turn. I try to breathe past the ache in my chest, the truth unraveling everything I thought I knew.
My first mistake - I’d entered his number wrong.
My second one—maybe the biggest one of my life. I’d given up too easily on contacting him once I knew I was pregnant.
