I swallow. My throat is tight, and the words don’t want to come out because once they do, they become real.
“It is serious,” I admit. Then, because I’m me, I tack on, “But also… I made a big mistake. Big.Huge. ”
His brow furrows. “That feels extreme.”
“It isn’t.” I inhale. “My parents are coming to visit.”
He freezes, like someone hit pause. Then his expression shifts from confusion to calculation.
“Okay. That’s… not a problem. We have plenty of room—” His eyes widen as it clicks. “They don’t know,” he says, quietly.
I shake my head fast. “No.”
His jaw muscles tick as he looks toward the window like he’s mentally rerouting plans.
“And they’re coming, when?”
“In two days,” I say, and the panic in me spikes. “I forgot. Completely. I don’t know how I forgot. I’m mortified, but I did.”
He studies my face for a beat, and then his voice drops.
“Is this about the marriage being fake,” he asks, “or the fact that it’s fake…with me?”
The elephant doesn’t just walk into the room—it sits down and asks for cookies.
I stare at him, my fingers curling into my palm.
“A little of both,” I admit. Honesty is the best policy here. “My parents know our history. And they know how hard I fought to stand on my own after everything with—” I stop before I say my ex’s name.
The taste of it turns my stomach. We haven’t talked about him, and I know we’re going to have to. But not right now.
Something like hurt flickers across his face and is gone again.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I get it.”
My chest tightens. He’s already dealing with too much right now with reopening and our busy lives. This doesn’t need to be the cherry on top.
So my brain immediately offers the easiest escape route.
“Maybe Phoebe and I should head to Texas for a bit,” I say quickly. “I don’t want to put this on you. Or on her. I can tell them something came up, or that we wanted to surprise them. And then we don’t have to deal with it. We can avoid?—”
“Chloe,” he says gently, “stop.”
I deflate. I can feel it.
There’s only so much I can carry, and I’ve tried so hard to keep it off Aiden’s plate.
I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed him.
He steps closer, then crouches, lowering his voice like he’s talking to someone he doesn’t want to spook. Which is fair—this is too much, even for me.
“Is that best for Phoebe?” he asks. “That was one of your conditions when we agreed to this. We put her first with every big decision, and this counts.”
The question hits like a brick because it’s the one thing I can’t ignore.
But also because Aiden has somehow risen to the very top of my priority list. I’ve been sitting here worrying about how this will affect him more than I was worried about Phoebe.
I know she’d acclimate to anything because she loves my family. But Aiden will struggle.
