She pulled out her phone, scrolling quickly before turning it toward me. “Jack showed me these. Text messages. From Derek.”
I looked at the screen, and my blood went cold.
Messages between Derek and Jack, dated months ago. Before I discovered the affair. Before everything had fallen apart.
Derek: Still treating Paige like shit, I see.
Jack: stay out of my marriage, Peterson
Derek: Someone should be in it since you’re clearly not.
Derek: She deserves better than you.
Jack: fuck off
Derek: Enjoy it while it lasts. She’s not stupid. She’ll figure out who you are eventually.
My hands shook as I scrolled through more messages. Comments about me, about Jack not deserving me and how Derek had ‘always known’ Jack would screw it up.
“These could be faked,” I said, but my ears were ringing.
I need some air.
“Could be,” Olivia shrugged, her expression full of fake sympathy. “Or they could be real. Think about it, Paige. How convenient it was that Derek stepped in the moment you left Jack? That he offered you a place to stay immediately?” She paused before continuing, “It’s almost like he had been planning it.”
“He was helping me.”
“Was he?” Olivia asked, tilting her head. “Or was he helping himself to something he had wanted since high school? Jack said Derek’s been obsessed with you for years. That he has been waiting for an excuse to destroy your marriage.”
The cafe suddenly felt too small and hot.
Derek had collected evidence for months and swooped in the moment I needed him, offering solutions that seemed too perfect, too convenient.
No. No, I knew Derek. He wouldn’t?—
But would he? Derek who had been in love with me for decades? Derek who stopped eating when Jack proposed to me? Derek who watched me marry someone else and never said a word?
I looked at Olivia and saw the calculation behind the concern. Jack’s influence was written all over this stupid performance.
She was playing with me. They both were playing with me.
I set my coffee down and met her eyes. “You know what’s interesting, Olivia?”
She blinked. “What?”
She definitely didn’t like the change in my tone.
“How quickly you went from sleeping with my husband to being concerned about my welfare,” I said with a saccharine smile. “It’s almost like you’re not actually worried about me at all. Like maybe you’re worried about something else entirely.”
“I’m trying to help you?—”
“Help me?” I asked, letting out a soft and cold laugh. “You helped yourself to my husband—ex-husband—while I was pregnant with his child. You helped yourself to my bed, my home and my marriage. So forgive me if I don’t buy your sudden concern for my wellbeing.”
“Paige, you are not?—”
“Let me guess. Jack’s panicking because the divorce isn’t going his way because Derek built a case so airtight that even Jack’s expensive lawyers can’t find a way through it.” I leaned forward. “So he sent you here to plant doubt and to make me question the one person who cares for me and loves me.”
The word spilled out of my lips with ease, and before I could take it back, I saw her face had turned pale.
