Suddenly, he laughed. Bitter. Broken. He paced back and forth, running a hand through his hair.
“Oh, I know you were not a cheater.”
My chest tightened. “Of course now you say that.”
“You are mistaken,” he shot back, stopping abruptly. “I knew last year. I already knew the truth.”
The words hit me like a blow.
“I spent months planning how to fix my damn mistake,” he continued, voice cracking. “I thought I was careful. I thought I was doing the right thing. Bringing you back to this town, seeing you again after eight years. You were beautiful. Strong. Full of hatred. It made me want to fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness.”
He laughed again, hollow this time. “Yesterday, when you fell apart, I could not take it anymore. I decided I would finally tell you everything today. But you beat me to it.”
I struggled to process his words as he paced, each sentence landing heavier than the last. But one thing cut through the noise.
“You just said you knew I never cheated on you,” I whispered.
He turned to me. “Yes, Bailey. I already knew.”
The room spun. I staggered back, my legs weak beneath me.
Confusion swallowed me whole. If he knew, truly knew, then why had he looked at me with so much anger when we met again? Why had he pushed me away like I was something he could not bear to touch?
My throat tightened. “How,” I asked shakily. “How did you find out?”
His jaw clenched. Something dark crossed his face.
“Chase,” he said quietly.
The name sent a chill through my spine.
“You remember my cousin.”
The silence that followed felt endless.
And suddenly, the past began to rearrange itself into something far more dangerous than lies.
The truth.
Chapter 16 - Two Years Earlier
ASHTON
He could not remember the last time he had seen Marie.
Years had slipped by. Years layered with silence.
Since the day he broke things off with Bailey, he had no longer been welcome in her bakery. The place that once smelled of warm bread and sugar now felt like forbidden ground. A few times, foolishly hopeful, he had tried to step inside. Each time, Marie chased him out with a broom, her small frame shaking with fury.
He never understood her hatred.
He was not the one who betrayed anyone. He had done nothing wrong. Everyone in town knew that. The evidence was clear, painfully clear. Bailey had cheated. Bailey had ended up pregnant. And yet Marie stood firmly on Bailey’s side, as if truth itself no longer mattered.
Her loyalty unsettled him.
It gnawed at him late at night, quietly, relentlessly. What if she saw something he did not? What if he had missed something obvious? The doubt frightened him, so he buried it. Year after year, he let it fester, eating him from the inside out.
Then the call came.
