Page 47 of The Fake Affair

Bella again:

Please come home.

But I can’t. Not when I can barely breathe through the fear. Not when this is a crumbled version of the alpha male that Bella wants—a man afraid of pregnant women. Really?

I need time. Space. Need to find a way to be stronger than this terror that’s ruled my life for twenty-eight years.

My fingers hover over Bella’s last message, before I finally send a reply.

I need a few days.

Then I turn off my phone.

THIRTEEN

SILENCE

Bella

His text stares at me from my phone screen:I need a few days.

It’s been thirty-six hours. Not that I’m counting.

The penthouse feels massive without him here. The kitchen where we first crossed the line from fake to something real. The living room where he’d work late, pretending not to watch me over his laptop. The hallway where just days ago he’d pressed me against the wall, whispering, “You’re mine,” like he meant it.

What a joke.

I drag myself to work because what else can I do? Sit here and count the hours? Watch that damn pregnancy test mock me from the bathroom counter?

“You look terrible,” Brian, a co-worker, says when I get to the office. “Logan still in Singapore?”

I manage a nod, grateful he thinks this is about the takeover. Grateful no one knows I’m just another one of Logan Fraser’s mistakes.

My phone buzzes. For a second, my heart jumps, but it’s just Audrey. Again. I let it go to voicemail like I have since yesterday.

By hour forty-eight, I’m cycling between anger and self-loathing. How could I be so stupid? All those years watching him charm Audrey’s friends, watched them fall for his accent and his intensity, only to be discarded when things got too real. I used to judge them for being naive.

Now look at me.

I find myself in his study at midnight, surrounded by evidence of our fake life together. Meeting notes where his handwriting crowds the margins of mine. That expensive fountain pen I bought him as a joke, engraved with “To the most insufferable CEO.” The photo from Audrey’s wedding, the night that started all this.

My hand drifts to my stomach. Barely anything there yet, but everything’s different now.

Melissa lasted three months before Logan got bored. Sarah made it to six weeks. Karen—well, Karen was just a weekend, but at least she didn’t end up pregnant.

None of them did.

Just me.

Just the assistant who should have known better. Who let herself believe all those moments meant something real. The midnight cookies, the quiet conversations, the way he’d reach for me in crowds like it was instinct.

His coffee cup sits unwashed in the sink, and suddenly I’m furious. At him, at myself, at this whole mess we’ve created.

The cup shatters satisfyingly against the wall.

“Very mature,” I mutter to myself, but it feels good. Like maybe if I break enough things, I can break whatever this feeling is in my chest.

Hour sixty brings a new text.

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