Page 65 of Chasing Love: The Owens
“I don’t feel as if it’s my place to tell you the whole story, so I’m just going to tell you my part, which does mix with his, but…”
She holds up her hand to stop me. “I feel like I need to remind you that what you tell me won’t be repeated. I know Bennett is my cousin, and we’re a really tight family, but I’m not going to tell anyone what we talk about.”
I nod and muster up the courage to tell her. “Bennett and I ran into one another in California.”
Her head tilts. “When?”
“Seven years ago.”
She nods and slides back in the booth.
“Leia is his daughter.”
She inhales a sharp breath and nods again. “Not Sean’s?”
I shake my head.
“Bennett cheated?”
I shake my head, and her forehead scrunches, not understanding how that’s possible. It’s such a thin line between what’s his story and what’s mine, but I trust Poppy to keep it between us.
“He and Kristie were separated. She cheated on him. I got a job at the same company as him during their separation. One thing led to something more, and we started dating. Until Kristie came back and told him she was pregnant with his baby.”
“So Wren might not be his?” she whispers, thank goodness, but you can never be sure who’s listening in these small towns.
“She’s his. He had a paternity test to make sure.”
“He left you for her, knowing you were pregnant too?”
And there it is, the assumption that I sought him out and told him.
I shake my head. Poppy’s smart, so she puts it all together.
“You didn’t tell him?” Again, my head shakes, tears springing to my eyes, and she nods. “Gotcha.” She seems to process that for a few moments. “And Sean?”
“He came after Bennett and Kristie went to Willowbrook, after he’d broken off what we had. Sean moved into the apartment next to mine. At first it was friendship between us, but I knew he wanted more. He started doing really nice things for me. Expensive dinners, trips, gifts. He adored me, or so it seemed. I think I really needed that after Bennett left, and maybe I just got caught up in it. When I found out I was pregnant, I contemplated telling Bennett for a long time. I looked them up on socials. Bennett wasn’t really posting, but Kristie was chronicling her pregnancy, and he looked really happy. I didn’t know what to do.” Tears free fall down my face. “Would he even accept our child? Would Kristie? I picked up the phone a couple times, started text messages, but I never followed through. I have no excuse other than I was scared and mad, but I didn’t do it from spite. I did it because I was trying to protect my child.”
“Here you go, ladies.” The waitress pretends I’m not falling apart in the booth, which I’m grateful for.
Neither of us touch our sundaes.
“I was truthful with Sean. He said it changed nothing and that he’d raise her as his own. I didn’t know then that he had his own agenda for our marriage. He was offering us safety and security, a future that Bennett couldn’t, or didn’t, want to give.”
Poppy dips her spoon into her ice cream, bringing a heaping helping to her mouth. “Man, I had some suspicions about some things, but you just blew them away.”
“Suspicions?”
“I’m just gonna say… Leia doesn’t look like Sean, but what was I going to do, ask you why your daughter bore no resemblance to your husband’s olive skin?”
I dig into my own sundae, but the ice cream doesn’t cool my overheated body.
“Well, now I know it all,” she says.
“Some of it,” I say. “You should probably hear his side.”
She scoffs. “No, thank you.” She piles another spoonful into her mouth.
“Poppy, I never told him that Leia was his.” I stress the truth in one sentence.
