I’d always wanted children. A family. If I were being brutally honest, I’d always wanted both with Griffen. But not like this. I’d wanted it as his real wife. The wife he chose for himself. The wife he loved. Not someone he’d divorce in four years and eleven months.
I wanted to be a mother to my child all the time, not just when I had custody. By now, I knew Griffen wasn’t the kind of man who’d keep me from my child, but that was just a fact of divorce. It wasn’t like I’d keep living here—
Horror spread through me at that thought. I could. I could stay and raise my child and watch him move on without me. I couldn’t imagine how awful that would be. Sitting at breakfast with Griffen and his new wife, watching him dote on her while I was alone, pining for him.
I was in love with my husband and he didn’t love me back. Not like that. As an old friend, sure. Griffen had love for me, I knew that, but there were so many different kinds of love. The love he felt for me wasn’t the one I wanted.
I’d been trying to go with the flow, to enjoy him while I had him and all that. A child would change everything. I rested my hand over my lower belly, wondering if there was really someone in there.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing. Maybe I had a bug just like I’d told Griffen. I wouldn’t know until I took the test, and so far, I hadn’t figured out a way to do that without alerting the entire county.
Just call Daisy and J.T., I told myself.
I loved Daisy and adored J.T., but I didn’t want a crowd involved in this. Not yet. I didn’t want to process the results with an audience.
“Not hungry this morning?” Griffen asked, looking across the breakfast table at me.
I gave him a weak smile. “Just this cold,” I deflected. “I’ll be fine, I just need to get going.” I forced myself to take a bite of eggs, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat.
I was going to eat my breakfast and we were going to have a normal day. I was not going to get dizzy or throw up.
Griffen was watching me, concern in his eyes. Concern and something else I couldn’t read. He was studying me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be figured out. I had enough to figure out myself.
“If you’re not feeling well, we can postpone the trip to Asheville. We’ll do it another day and you can go lay down.”
“No,” I said. “Brax rearranged his schedule so he could show us the Asheville properties today. Better to get it done. I’m fine. I’m going to ask Savannah for a tea to go and I’ll be good for the ride.”
That turned out to be a lie. I’d never been prone to car sickness, but the eggs went sour in my stomach and I sipped at my herbal tea, praying everything would stay put. Mountain roads are no good with an unhappy stomach.
With every curve and dip, my stomach tried to turn inside out. I should have taken Griffen up on his offer to reschedule or just told him to go without me. I gritted my teeth and wished desperately for a ginger ale.
Brax’s office in Asheville was less than an hour from Heartstone Manor. The drive took forever. By the time we got there, I thought if I had to ride for one more mile I was going to hurl all over Griffen’s gorgeous car.
Brax met us at his office, taking a quick minute to show us the small yet elegant space before guiding us on a whirlwind tour of commercial office space, retail locations, and small apartment buildings, most of them in the downtown area.
I barely paid attention to anything Brax said, making random notes and knowing all the while that Griffen could read me like a book. He knew something was wrong. He knew it was more than my having a cold.
Or maybe he didn’t know anything and I was just paranoid. Paranoid and freaked out and scared.
What if I was pregnant? A lot of people would be happy. I just didn’t know if I was one of them. I wanted to be. Oh, how I wanted to be. Having a baby with Griffen… How could I not be happy?
I would be happy, ecstatic, except that every time I looked ahead I saw that deadline. Four years, eleven months. A lifetime of loving him, loving our child, and only having one of them. Of putting on a brave face, never letting anyone know my heart was broken when Griffen moved on without me.