Page 114 of Necessary Cruelty

Her voice stops me, the tone almost threatening.

“You’re not going to ask me who the father is?” Her gaze drops to the ring on my finger, eyes narrowing with anger and a strange sort of sadness. “Considering recent history and who you’re about to marry, I’d think that would be your first question.”

Tension shimmers in the air between us.

My heart freezes.

“Is it Vin’s?”

I wait for her to say yes, because why else would she have brought him into this conversation in the first place. I still remembered what it had felt like when he kissed her at the Founder’s Ball, then swept away with her into the night to do exactly the sorts of things that result in unwanted pregnancy.

All I need her to do is confirm for me that Vin is exactly what I always thought he was.

And then I would tell him exactly where he could put his deal, along with any of the bourgeoning feelings I’ve been trying to deny.

I can’t love someone who would do this to me.

“I stopped taking my birth control a few months ago after Danny and I broke up. I’d been spending so much time with Vin at the pool house, and he never seemed interested in any of the other girls there.” Her glare is full of angry heat, but for the first time I realize it might not all be aimed at me “We fooled around so many times that I had myself convinced it would eventually lead to more. I’ve gone down on him before, but never anything that could lead to this.” Sophia points an accusing finger at her belly. Her eyes have narrowed on my face. But now the anger is gone, replaced by hurt and self-recrimination. She looks absolutely defeated. “When he asked me to go with him to the Founder’s Ball, I just knew that he was planning to make us official.” “When he kissed me in front of everyone, it was like something out of a fairy tale. Then he shut the door of the pool house in my face and told me to find my own way home.”

That sounds like a typically asshole move on Vin’s part. I won’t try to defend what he’s done, but my mind sticks on a very specific part of what she said. “So the two of you have never…”

“Not all the way. It was like he was saving himself, or something.”

“Oh.” My mind whirls at that. Vin’s parties have been legend for years — I always assumed that he was sticking his dick into anything that moved. “I don’t know what to say.”

Sophia isn’t done as she stares me down, makeup destroyed and clothes rumpled. “I really wanted to lie to you, make you think I’m carrying his baby to drive some sort of wedge between you. But you two have always had something crazy and special, something I couldn’t touch no matter how much I tried. And I did try. But I want better than this.” Seeming almost wistful, her hand touches her belly for the briefest moment. “I have to be better than this.”

“Thank you.”

Her expression is droll. “Don’t thank me, Milbourne. You’re the one stuck with him now, and it only takes one mistake to fuck up your whole life.”

Before I can decide how to respond, she is already shoving past me toward the door.

* * *

Another three weeksgo by like I’m living in someone else’s dream.

Vin seems to consider it his mission in life to make me as comfortable being the new Mrs. Cortland as I possibly can be. Even though I know it’s just because he wants to ensure I hold up my end of our deal, it’s hard not to just let myself enjoy it.

I won’t let him buy me a car, not when there are already dozens sitting in the garage at Cortland Manor. But he is also always there to take me where I need to go, so it seems like a moot point, anyway.

Every day, we attend Deception High where we exist in this surreal bubble of attention for a few hours that makes it nearly impossible for me to focus on schoolwork. And every night, we go back to the pool house and fall into his bed together.

The bed he has never shared with anyone before, not even Sophia Taylor.

I still feel a shiver of premonition when I think about her. She hasn’t come back to school since that day I found her in the bathroom, probably because she assumed that her business would be all over Deception by the next day. Because if our situations were reversed, I’d walk into school to find blue and pink streamers decorating my locker and people holding out their bellies and laughing when I walked by.

But I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t. Sophia doesn’t have to worry about that, though I don’t have any way to reassure her.

She is living my nightmare, the one I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy.

It gets easier to forget about that under Vin’s dedicated attention. Although I’ve become as militant as possible about contraception, reminding him about condoms pretty much every chance I get. He promised to take me to a clinic for the pill, but they’re booked out a few weeks for new patients.

The same thing that happened to Sophia will not happen to me.

When I finally tell Vin about what she told me on the way home from school, his reaction is to burst into guffaws of laughter.

“That is rich.” He just shakes his head. “I always knew she’d end up with three kids and slinging diet shakes to the other PTA moms on Facebook. She got there a littler earlier than I thought, but still.”

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