Page 25 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

He looked at her, his dark gaze pointed, and she felt the full impact of him down to her toes. “I do everything more carefully than Alex does. Did.”

She did not correct him on that. Because the fact of the matter was, he had not been careful when they’d had sex.

They had not used protection, something she hadn’t realized until she’d missed her period. The entire night was such a blur that it had not sunk in. Maybe it never really would.

She still couldn’t quite believe it was her life.

A Cinderella fantasy turned upside down. Prince Charming was nowhere in sight. She had Prince Brooding and a precarious fairy tale that could be broken as easily as a glass slipper. And still she wanted to cling to it, even as she knew she was doing something wrong.

But she was doing the wrong thing while doing some right things, and that had to count for something?

In some ways, she was protecting the baby, and Constantine, and his parents.

Still...

Bravery took hold just for a moment, and she got the courage to test it. To test him.

“Did you ever think that it might be your child?” she asked once they were driving down the road. “We didn’t use condoms. We never even talked about it.”

Her mouth was dry as she laid that out there. Seeing what he’d do, what he’d say. If he seized on it, or if he’d deny it.

He looked over at her. There was something dark radiating from him. The same emotion she’d sensed when he’d told her he’d never have children.

Never?

Never.

“No,” he said. “You are far too advanced in your pregnancy for that.”

She wasn’t though. Whatever it looked like, she knew she wasn’t.

“Are you an expert in the appearance of women during various gestational stages?”

“No,” he said. “But I can see the obvious.”

“Or is it just that you don’t want to entertain the idea because it’s inconvenient for you. Because then you have to admit that... That something happened between us. We both know that you were doing your best to pretend that was not the case.”

It was dangerous to push him, and she knew it. And she didn’t know why she was doing it. Didn’t know what result she was after.

He didn’t want a child.

She knew what it was to be an unwanted child.

And she would never...

She would never.

“What exactly would you like me to do? Did you wish me to grab you and kiss you at my brother’s funeral while you played the grieving widow? You and I know the truth. That you were done with him, and rightly so. That he had betrayed you. We also know that we had an indiscretion. And I regret that. But none of it matters. Alex is gone, and he does not have the ability to defend himself or share his side of the story. His reputation is set in stone, and we are the keepers of it. The only way that it changes is if we tell stories about him, is that not so?”

“I... I suppose so.”

“He cannot defend himself, nor can he make amends.”

That seemed so entirely sad to her.

Because there was so much to love about Alex. He had made mistakes. A lot of them.

“A lot of people make mistakes,” Constantine said, as if he could read her mind. Suddenly, the sound of the tires on the asphalt seemed almost deafening.

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