Page 30 of Friends Who Fake It

“What?”

“At that stage, I had been misinformed likewise.”

“This isn’t making sense.”

“She was never pregnant.”

Francesco stared at his brother for several beats then shook his head, as if he could shake the words into his brain, somehow.

“She lied. She got sick of the state of our relationship, knew that I would have no choice but to marry her if she was pregnant.”

Francesco swore loudly. “That’s hardly a clever plan. Presumably at some point she must have known you’d work this out, when she didn’t, you know, have a baby.”

“She thought we’d fall pregnant after the wedding. It was a calculated risk, that didn’t pay off.”

Francesco’s jaw dropped.

“Months passed. Months in which she told me she had regular appointments. Hell, she even produced a doctored sonogram image for me, Cesco. Can you believe that? The sickness of this woman…”

Francesco was inclined to agree. To see this as evidence that Marcia was, in fact, actually sick. “And then what?”

“She should be nearly five months along, by now. Showing, probably. With a baby due any time. So, she told me she’d miscarried. But she wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor, to a hospital, she wouldn’t get help. It didn’t make sense; nothing added up. Still, I didn’t suspect. What kind of an idiot does that make me?”

“You trusted her. You loved her.”

He scowled. “I called an ambulance, against her wishes. I had to. I was worried about her. I am not a doctor, but even I knew that miscarrying at that stage in the pregnancy could bring about complications.”

Francesco closed his eyes on a wave of nausea and anger. Imagining how that scene unfolded was truly mortifying. His poor brother.

“You must have been livid.”

“That does not begin to describe it. I have never known such anger, Francesco. Not in my entire life. I have never known a hate quite like it.”

He lifted the liquor glass and threw it back, his Adam’s apple shifting as he swallowed hard.

“She must have known this would all come out.”

“She thought we would fall pregnant at some point, that she could fudge the dates a little. She is a master manipulator.”

“But why? Just so you would marry her?”

Raf grunted, and Francesco slumped down in his seat a little, his mind spinning at that reality. He’d never liked Marcia. None of them had. But this was beyond anything he’d have thought her capable of. It was so calculated and cruel.

“I know she was not actually pregnant, but to me, she was. I had put my hand on her stomach and imagined our baby there, I had thought about what that child would be, would mean, would become. I was going to be a father, and now…”

Francesco grimaced, his brother’s grief and despair totally understandable.

“Let’s get hammered,” he said, adding another measure of scotch to Raf’s glass.

“Fucking yes,” was all Raf said, before scrunching his eyes closed and letting out a shuddered breath. And for the rest of the night, that was all Francesco thought of, all he focused on, until several hours later, when they were back in his penthouse hotel room, Raf passed out in the spare room. Alone with his own thoughts, Francesco felt the shifting of the wind, the way they moved away from his brother and Marcia, and towards Willow instead. He fell into his own bed and stared at the ceiling, wishing he could get her out of his mind—or that he could be buried inside of her. Either or.

* * *

The second Willow saw his name on her screen, her heart went into crazy overdrive, her insides clenching with remembered desire and need.

She shoved her phone back in her bag and leaned forward, focusing all her attention on Tom. He was telling her about his latest client, and the number of times they’d changed their minds on the paint colours—even when he’d almost finished the job—and Willow was smiling, and nodding, her features carefully arranged to show an interest she definitely didn’t feel.

Seeing Tom this week was intentional.

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