Page 44 of The Fake Affair

Logan Fraser. My boss. My best friend’s brother. The man I thought I could keep at arm’s length.

Now staring at me like I’ve just upended his entire world.

Because I have. Because I’m carrying his child.

TWELVE

BREAKING POINT

Logan

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Twenty-Eight Years Ago

The hospital corridor stretches endlessly. My new trainers squeak against the floor as I swing my legs, perched on a chair too tall for a seven year old. Dad paces, his steps marking time like a metronome—back and forth, back and forth.

“It’s taking too long,” he mutters in Gaelic, a language I’m still learning. “Something’s wrong.”

A nurse rushes past, then another.

“Mr. Fraser!” A voice makes Dad stop pacing. “You need to come now.”

He looks at me, torn. “Logan, stay?—”

“No!” I grab his hand. “I want to see Mum. And the baby.”

But something’s wrong. There is more shouting in the hallway. Dad’s hand is sweaty in mine, but they pull him through doors I’m not allowed to pass.

I press my face against the window, watching shadows move behind frosted glass. The squeak of shoes on linoleum. The metallic smell of fear.

Then silence.

When Dad emerges, he’s not my father anymore. He’s a hollow thing wearing my father’s face. He drops to his knees in front of my chair, and I know—I know before he says it—that Mum isn’t coming home.

“Is it a boy?” I ask because I can’t ask about Mum.

“A girl,” he says, voice cracking. “Audrey.”

I nod, seven years old and suddenly ancient. “Mum liked that name.”

Dad breaks then, sobbing into my small shoulder, and I learn what it means to be the strong one.

* * *

Present Day

“Logan?”

Bella’s voice pulls me back. We’re in our bedroom—my bedroom—and she’s looking at me with concern. The same look the nurses gave me that day.

“You zoned out for a minute.” Her hand touches my arm. “After we both realized...”

She doesn’t finish.

“We don’t know for sure,” I say, but my voice sounds strange. Far away.

“There’s one way to find out.” She’s trying to sound calm and practical. The way she handles every crisis at work. But this isn’t work. This is...

This is my mother bleeding out while bringing life into the world. This is my father drinking himself into oblivion while I learned to braid Audrey’s hair for school. This is every nightmare I’ve had for twenty-eight years.

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