Page 78 of Something Like Shelter

“Coworkers are fine. But I was a subordinate.”

“What I’m hearing is he crossed a line.”

“We both did.”

“Maybe. But he was the one in a position of power.”

“Yeah, but I knew what I was doing. And what I was risking. I think I just… didn’t care at the time. Chase, at first, was very charming. Very complimentary. Always positive. And he was the wine-and-dine sort. I think I was just… caught up in a bit of a love bomb and didn’t see it.”

My parents had. And my cousins. Basically, everyone who met Chase and saw us together clearly had reservations about him.

“So, it was good for a while.”

“A short while, yeah.”

“Because of long distance?”

“That wasn’t a huge issue. The company was working on an important account, so he had to keep flying back and forth. I guess it was more that, once that initial honeymoon phase was over—I guess once he knew he had me—he suddenly was a lot more grumpy, full of criticisms, and hardly ever had something good to say. But I was kind of all-in at that point.”

Maybe a part of me had been too prideful to admit that I’d been played, that I’d missed everything all the people around me had seen right away.

“Everything didn’t hit the fan until the stick showed me two lines.” I sucked in a steadying breath. “Chase was back in London at the time. And that wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to tell him over the phone. So I decided to wait until he came back. But one day at work, I walked into Martin’s office. He was on a call and he said something about saying hello to the wife and happy anniversary. I asked who he was talking to…”

“Oh, Willa,” Owen said, wincing.

“Yeah. It was Chase. One little search online and I would have figured that out. But I didn’t do that. I just took him at his word that he hadn’t been in a relationship in a while. There was no ring. I don’t even remember seeing a line on his finger where his finger would be protected from the sun. But, I guess, London isn’t the sunniest area. And he had an inside job…”

“It wasn’t your job to investigate him. It was his responsibility to tell the truth.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, exhaling hard. “Needless to say, though, I started looking into him then. Sure enough, he married a woman seven years before and adopted her two children. They have a flat in London. A vacation home in Greece. The kids attend private schools. It was the dream family.”

“Some men are never happy. Not even when they have it all.”

“Yeah. I doubt I was even the first affair. Just the only one that ended up with a positive pregnancy test.”

“Did you call him then? Or wait for him to come back?”

“I honestly didn’t trust myself not to punch him in the face if I saw him. I video-called him.”

I’d never forgotten the look on his face when I held up the pregnancy test and asked him if he wanted to tell his wife, or if I should.

“How’d he react?”

“He was… cold.” That was the best way to put it. His face froze; his voice was frigid. But nothing was as chilly as what he said. “He told me in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with the baby, or me, obviously.”

“He can’t make that decision, though, can he? You can’t just sign away your parental rights.”

“No, but he could make my life hell.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told me I could either terminate the pregnancy or have it and raise it entirely without him, or he was going to… make up some lies and feed them to my boss.”

“He blackmailed you into letting him walk away from his responsibilities?”

“That’s about right, yeah.”

“But you have just as much dirt on him, don’t you? He overstepped by sleeping with a subordinate.”