Page 141 of Fault Lines
She scanned the café, spotted me, and walked over, one hand bracing her lower back in the way pregnant women did when they’d had enough of pretending everything was fine. I stood, awkwardly, and she gave a stiff nod before sliding into the seat across from me.
“Olivia,” she said. Her voice was soft, maybe intentionally so.
“Lacey.”
The silence was immediate and heavy. I waited for her to make the first move. She peeled off her sunglasses and set them on the table. Her eyes were rimmed with red, like she hadn’t slept—or maybe she’d been crying for longer than I’d known her. I tried to muster some sympathy, but I was too busy bracingmyself for whatever nuclear option she’d called me here to deliver.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” she said.
I nodded, folding my hands on the table so she wouldn’t see how badly they trembled. “You said there was something I needed to know.”
Lacey laced her fingers together, stared at her knuckles, then back up at me. “I should have reached out sooner, but I—I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to make anything worse. But after our last call, I realized you deserved the truth. About Cam. About the baby. About everything.”
I swallowed, wishing I’d brought a flask instead of a phone. “I appreciate that. Just—say what you need to say.”
She looked relieved to be given permission. She took a deep breath and let it out all at once.
“Cam never wanted to sleep with me,” she said. “Not at first. Not even after your arrangement started. He—he told me point blank that he was only interested in an open marriage because he was spiraling and didn’t know how to stop. He told me he didn’t want to sleep with anyone he worked with. Too messy. Against the rules. Blah, blah.”
I didn’t want to believe it, but the way she said it—so matter-of-fact, so utterly without drama—left little room for doubt.
“He told me you pursued him,” I said. My voice was flat, but inside, the floor shifted under me. “That even when he told you no, you pushed and pushed until he broke.”
Lacey smiled, a sad, crooked thing. “That’s not wrong. It started with him confiding with me. He didn’t want you to know how depressed he’d become. How sometimes he thought of ending it all. But it was me, Olivia. I’m the one who kept pushing. I told him all the time how much he deserved a family, how wonderful a father he’d be, how unfair it was that he was beingdenied that. I—I made it my mission to convince him I was what he needed. To wear him down.”
The air felt tight in my lungs. I tried to piece together the man I thought I knew, the man I’d loved, with the story Lacey was telling me.
“Why?” I asked, finally.
Lacey dropped her gaze. “Because I was desperate. Because I was already pregnant. And the man who—” She stopped, composed herself. “The man who got me pregnant left the moment he found out. I didn’t know what to do. I knew Cam wanted a child more than anything, and I knew he was vulnerable. I convinced myself he’d be better off with me, with my baby, than with you or with nothing at all.”
I stared at her, stunned into silence.
She continued, the words coming faster now, like she needed to empty herself out before she lost the nerve. “I started inviting him out for coffee, for drinks after work. I’d corner him in the elevator, make jokes about baby names, about what color eyes our kid would have. At first he laughed it off, said it would never happen. But I kept going. I made it—inevitable.”
I wanted to hate her, but the truth was, I recognized something of myself in that relentless drive to make things turn out the way you thought you deserved.
“So when did he—” I started, but Lacey shook her head.
“It was when we went to Vegas,” she said. “He was in a bad place. I could see it. I took advantage of it. He slept with me, and I let him believe it was the first time I’d been with anyone in a long time. I told him I was on birth control before we hooked up, the condom conveniently broke, and then after I claimed he was the father, I said must have forgotten a day or two of pills. I just wanted him to believe he could be the father.”
I stared down at the table, fingers digging into the fake wood. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“He never loved me,” Lacey went on, voice almost a whisper. “He never stopped talking about you. Even when he was with me, he’d go on about how much he missed you, how he just wanted you to be happy. I thought if I could give him a family, he’d eventually come around. But he didn’t. He tried to end it—us—so many times, but I always found a way to get back in.”
I let that sit, feeling the heat build behind my eyes. I didn’t want to cry, not here, not with her. But the urge was there, raw and suffocating.
“So what changed?” I asked, voice barely audible.
Lacey wiped at her eyes, careful not to smudge the mascara she’d barely bothered to apply. “He found out the truth,” she said. “The real father showed up at my office one day, demanding a paternity test. I couldn’t say no. The test was positive, obviously, and Cam was—he was so angry, but not at me. At himself. For believing it could ever work out. For what he’d put you through.”
She leaned in, urgency in her face. “He was devastated, Olivia. Absolutely shattered. He kept saying, over and over, that he’d lost everything. That he’d ruined the only real thing he’d ever had.”
I looked up, finally meeting her eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”
Lacey looked surprised by the question. “Because I wanted you to know the truth. He wasn’t the villain. Not completely. I was, though. I did everything wrong. I hurt you both, and I’m sorry. I’m not a bad person. I just made some bad mistakes.”
She hesitated, glanced around the empty café, then back at me. “I know you probably hate me, and you have every right to. But I want you to know that Cam—he never stopped loving you. He talked about you every day. Even after you left him.”
