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“That’s what we have, to the outside world,” he said, and her stomach twisted at the irony of this entire conversation. Talking about this while they were still in bed felt a thousand kinds of wrong.

“But Hamish,” she said, forcing herself to be brave. To say what she knew she needed to even when it felt heavy and wrong. “We’re not actually married. I mean, legally, yes, but that could be dealt with. If this is something you want⁠—”

“Cressida?” he asked, frowning.

“I know it’s messy, but that’s life, right?”

“Jesus. Are you kidding?”

She lifted one shoulder but inside, her cells were settling, calming, at his reaction—which showed he found the whole idea preposterous.

“I could never trust her again, you know that.”

Trust?

Of course it made sense, but did that mean he still loved the other woman? Had feelings for her, at least, that he wouldn’t let himself express because he didn’t trust her?

“She’s married to my brother,” he reminded her, but it only made it worse, and she couldn’t understand why. Why did it feel like he was physically hurting her? Why did it feel like a weight was pressing down on her chest?

He wasn’t saying anything wrong. In fact, he was demonstrating, as always, what a great, decent man he was. He didn’t need to tell her about Cressida. It wasn’t like she would have found out, he could have said nothing. But Tia wished she didn’t know.

“So, do I have to work on my ‘crazy jealous wife’ act before tomorrow?” she asked, using humour to deflect from the intensity of her feelings, the pain in her chest.

“No.” He moved then, pushing out of bed and walking naked towards the wardrobe, emerging a moment later in boxer briefs. “I told Cressida I wanted her and Ewan gone first thing in the morning. I doubt you’ll see them again.”

But Tia frowned as she considered that. It was a good short-term solution, and a part of her was glad he’d asserted himself and told them to leave, but at the same time, it wouldn’t solve the difficulties that would arise in the future.

Every pregnancy test she’d taken had been negative, but if she were to conceive a child with him, and they were to raise him or her together, then his family would be a part of their child’s life, and that included Cressida and Ewan. It included the woman who’d kissed Hamish, who probably still loved him on some level.

And did he love her? She kept her gaze focused on the window, rather than looking in his direction. It was hard enough to think straight without his bare chest clouding her brain.

“It didn’t mean anything.”

She turned to face him slowly, not realising how loaded with emotion her features were. She nodded slowly, because he seemed to be waiting for that, but he was wrong, of course. It meant something. Tia just couldn’t say what.

She watched as he crossed the room and lay down on the sofa, and her heart gave an awful lurch as she fell back against the pillows, her mind a tangle of memories, thoughts, feelings and aches—past aches that were suddenly in the room with her, making her frozen to the bone despite the warmth of the night.

Tia had worked so hard to outgrow her childhood but in that moment, she felt like a tiny little girl, curled up in their trailer as her parents slurred their way through an argument, hurling abuses, and then bottles, at one another into the early hours. She was scared, and alone, and her whole world seemed to lack certainty.

She bit down on her lower lip to stop from crying, but even without tears, the sense of sadness was utterly and completely breathtaking.

She had lain awake for hours but at some point, she drifted off into a fitful sleep filled with more of the same memories that had been rolling through her mind like some kind of macabre movie for hours.

They were all the same sort of thing. Memories of her being a girl, alone, scared. Then there was Grace and Roman, and suddenly she started to feel like she had found her people. They’d clung together like a little capsized crew on the upturned hull of a boat, surrounded by a whirling ocean but so long as they were together, they were—for the most part—safe.

But Grace was dead.

And Roman was married. Even though he and Kate were careful to keep her in their lives, it wasn’t the same. He’d given his heart away to Kate, and they were a pair. A team.

A lump formed in her throat as the dawn light split through the rippled glass windowpane. Another warm day beckoned, and with the lighting of the sky came a new clarity for Tia.

Finally, an understanding of why Hamish’s revelation about Cressida had rocked her so badly. He’d started to feel like hers. Not because she loved him, not because he loved her—this was more important than love. They’d made each other a promise, they’d formed a bond, a partnership, and she’d started to think of him as someone who had her back, and vice versa. And even though he’d sent Cressida away, it didn’t change the fact Tia had been wrong. Hamish wasn’t hers; he’d been Cressida’s, once upon a time, and despite what he said, Tia would never not fear that threat, looming over her.

They were not a partnership, they were just two people who’d decided to have a baby together. And the worst of it was that they had convinced themselves a contract could save them from the mess of it all, from the emotion, and because of that, Tia had let her guard down completely. All of the usual precautions she took to make sure she didn’t get hurt, that things remained light and breezy, had been dismantled with their contract. She’d been defenceless, and she’d let him get under her skin.

It was the stupidest thing she could have done.

Growing up, her parents had moved whenever they’d worn out their welcome in a place. Her dad had a habit of getting into drunken fights with anyone who looked at him the wrong way, and her mom had sticky fingers when it came to things like cosmetics.